GJGood

If it happens again this year, I'd think the best bet would be #5 on your list. That is an example of a game where a team could take us lightly and they're coming into our place. I don't see MAC teams taking us too lightly and I think both BSU and BG will be at the top of the standings this year.

That looks about right... for now.Give it a week and a half, and we'll see if Rodgers or possibly even Jordan Miller will be able to make a push for the top.I guess I am surprised to see Wagner ahead of Patterson. I haven't followed it that closely but I remember hearing a lot of good things about Patterson last year at this time.

I can agree with an occasional road "payday" BCS game, maybe not one a year but maybe two or three in a four to five year span. I still would like to get more home and homes with mid-level BCS schools and decent non-BCS schools. Even if we can only get a road BCS game without a return game I'd like it to be with an opponent that we have a legitimate chance of knocking off. I actually really like this year's non-conf schedule.

That perception seems to be a really tough thing to overcome. Even the staunchest UA supporters seem to be stuck in 1989...referencing games played 20 years ago...asking for 1-AA teams on our 2009 football schedule. Does that happen at Miami? Toledo? No. It happens at places like EMU, K.e.n.t and unfortunately Akron.We are getting a 60+ million dollar football palace. The place WILL be full. The teams WILL win. The opponents SHOULD be exclusively quality, 1-A OOC and MAC opponents. If the stadium is NOT filled to capacity -- heads should roll. You don't spend 60+ million dollars and use the same techniques to garner crowds that were used in the Rubber Bowl era. The bar has been raised, both on the field and in the stands. 5,000 person crowds and 4-8 teams can no longer be accepted.The "low hanging fruit"..."the easy way out" is:* Schedule 1-AA cupcakes to inflate the team's record (this is known as the "Lee Owens Technique")* Schedule "Band Night" and get a few thousand HS bands to pad attendance* Schedule YSUThis is 2008, not 1988. The Low Hanging Fruit Days are over. It is time to expect a quality Division 1 NCAA Football experience in Akron.Personally -- I think that dawn has arrived. But to many, only seeing is believing. So we'll need to wait until September 2009 for people to forget about Jim Dennison's firing, Murray State, YSU and HS Band Nights. I can't wait.Excellent post.I'm with you as far as not playing I-AA teams every year. As far as other teams around the MAC before I get to my question, Toledo played Liberty in 2007. BSU, favorite to win the MAC West, is playing Northeastern first game of the year and WKU later in the year. Here is the question.... Are we missing a scheduling trend in college football that is benefiting other schools and we are not taking advantage of it? I don't know the answer to this, but in recent years, UofA has been late to the party on various trends happening around college football. For example, running a Heisman Trophy campaign for a player who would never win it, late to the party with the spread offense and picking up the 3-3-5 defense when everyone is running away from it. Could the trend in college football, with the addition of the 12th game, be to allow D-I teams to schedule one cupcake per year to collect money and tune up the team for D-I teams since spring practice allows for less tune up time? The goal of the team should be to win the MAC East, make the post season and then let the chips fly. Does a tune up game in August against a I-AA team hurt or help win the MAC East or is it neither?Some of the I-AA teams Owens played were mid season games. I am completely against that as there is no reason to tune up mid season. I just see the trend of I-AA teams early season for I-A teams and it worries me that we are once again going to be the last to catch on. It might be nice to tune up on someone instead of everyone else tuning up on us.I hope my questions provide some discussion.I still like the way Akron has not scheduled any 1-AA, or FCS, school recently. In conjunction with the $$$ the most important thing the football program needs is a better national perception. From the national perception point of view , scheduling 1-AAs is a "no win" situation. If you win, you only did what you were supposed to. If you lose, then how it hurts the program in the eyes of potential recruits could be immeasurable.To some degree I may agree with avoiding some of the perennial top 10 or 15 type schools until the program is more nationally established, but would still like to see some BCS conference competition. Cincy, Indiana, and Syracuse are probably good matches for the Zips. Hopefully in the future we can get home and homes with schools like Iowa, Purdue, Minnesota, Baylor, and Iowa State. I know those schools have played in MAC stadiums in the not too distant past.

Hopefully he'll make a campus visit. Our facilities have to be better than the other schools currently in the hunt.

I saw this morning on minorleaguebaseball.com that former Zip Doug McNulty will begin his professional baseball career with the Kingsport Mets in Kingsport, Tennessee.Does anybody know anything about the status of the also recently drafted Tom Farmer or about any other former baseball Zips?

Butt$ in $eat$ is my guess regarding West vs. East. Three more bowl games ... right between "Who Gives a Flip" and "Whoop-Tee-Do" in my interest/excitement scale.Silver lining is teams like Akron (ASSUMING a .500 or better achievement) may get a game against a team that wouldn't give them the time of day otherwise. All of the new bowls = a LOT of mediocre po$t-$ea$on football. Sure glad the MAC basketball season gets going about then.I understand what you are saying about the lower tier bowl games, but at the same time you have to acknowledge that very mediocre teams from BCS conferences have going to bowl games for decades. Why not have teams that finish in 3rd in 4th in non-BCS leagues make it to the postseason when team that finish 7th and 8th in BCS leagues do?I also don't see what the games hurt. It is not like we are including mediocre teams in a tournament to determine a national champion or anything it is just a reward for a winning and at least somewhat successful season, not to mention a chance for a program to practice and theoretically improve before the next season. It is really a "win-win" situation, isn't it?The games that excite me the most are the ones that are close. I don't care if its the Fiesta Bowl or the International Bowl. Although, I will admit I do like to see interregional matchups, teams meeting for the first time in their histories, and non-BCS against BCS school type games. Just a quirk of mine I guess.

I think we are about maxed out in the number of bowl games if they add three more but I'd like to see some of the tie-ins rearranged or more games open to "at-large" participants. Why don't teams from the West ever play bowl games in the East? If East meets West in the postseason it is almost always either in the west or part of the BCS.I'd love to see the MAC get a tie-in to a bowl game with either the Mountain West or WAC or even a mid-level Pac-10 team. I like to see interegional games and otherwise unlikely matchups in the postseason.

Wow! This program sure has made some major strides in a short period of time if they are getting Florida AA players of the year to come into the fold as preferred walk-ons! POYs in Florida usually end up at BCS type programs and on scholarship. On top of that, though, how many other D-1 schools must have been offering him scholarships if he is that highly touted? There's a bunch of mid-major D-1 schools in Florida alone that HAD to be interested. I agree that it does sound like he has some prior connection to Akron, but still this has be considered a major recruiting accomplishment to get him here on those terms.

For the record, and you can correct me if I am wrong, but close to 50% of 300 million has been spent on classroom and technology upgrades to the campus. A lot has gone to dorms, but we do have an integrated WiFi setup for the campus, the Auburn Science center has a brand new science library, there is the College of Arts and Science, there are teaching and instruction areas in the student union and the recreation center. Leigh, Zook, Guzetta, Goodyear Science Center, and Kolbe, and Schrank North and South have had uprgrades. Not too mention what is going on with Medina, and Wayne campuses. Oh, and the fact Carrol Hall is being raised for a new classroom space and the that the stadium will have class room space.Now, on the subject of "not selling out the JAR". We don't, and I'm not going to give you a 'build and they will come' comment. But the fact is, that our school is trying to be taken more seriously, we do not receive 1 and 1 commitments from big time schools. Why? Because our facilities are not adequate enough to support a Duke, or Michigan or OSU. These schools bring 4-5 thousand fans where ever they go. They are not going to play in an arena that only seats 5000 period. We want to say it's "out of fear of losing" and some of it is, but the truth is that we do not have the state of the art facilities that are going to make a Major feel comfortable playing against us. When the football stadium is complete we will probably be able to get any tier 2 school from a major conference to play us at home. Why? Because if there is an injury the player can be treated on site, an X-Ray will be able to be done, we are minutes from nationally ranked hospitals. These factor hugely into what kind of team you can draw to your stadium/arena. So yes, the JAR is only 25 years old, but it is so far behind technologically speaking, that it might as well be 80 years old. When it was built, offices and nice locker rooms were the main thing, now you have to account for Sports Medicine facilities and fan experiences. And on that the JAR is horribly out of date.Now we have a mayor and city that is willing to work with the University to build something special, and I am pretty sure that the powers that be are leaning that way, because it gives the Campus a larger footprint if an arena were to be built downtown, and it is more impressive for the student/fan/athlete experience if it is wrapped up in a nice neat universal package that includes shopping and entertainment. Bottom line is, we need a new arena to be taken seriuosly. Can't is constantly improving the MAC Center and all we've done with the JAR is a Scoreboard and new court. A partnership with the city to build a 10-12,000 seat arena would make Akron the premier program in the MAC and maybe even give us the push we need to get into a real conference like the Big East.I agree with most of what you are saying, but do we need a new arena or just to update and expand the current one? Which would be less expensive?As far as moving to the Big East I'm not for that anytime in the near future because of how much I like the MAC as a conference. I'd rather see the entire MAC move up a couple notches on the national scale and have us be a perennial power in that newly more respected league.

Go Minutemen! and by more than 5 points! That will make me feel a little better too.

The only thing that prevented the MAC from being a 2-bid conference this year was the Zips' loss to K.e.n.t. in the MAC finals.Exactly. Plus there have been a number of years recently where many people have thought the MAC should have had multiple teams in but the committee hasn't seen it that way for whatever reason.I don't think you can simply say that the MAC is a one-bid league when speaking in generalities. The MAC is certainly nothing like the Atlantic Sun, the SWAC, or the Northeast Conference. Those leagues are perennial one bid leagues with no change in the foreseeable future. They are "low majors". The MAC and other "mid-majors" are usually close to getting multiple teams in even if they do only get a single team into the NCAA.It's kind of strange but even though the MAC has had only one NCAA team for a number of consecutive years now, most of those same years they have had three or four teams playing somewhere in the postseason. (We all know 2006-07 should have been another one of those years as well) Most "one-bid" leagues only have automatic bids to rely on to get teams into the postseason. The MAC does get at-larges into the postseason, even if the recent trend is not for it to be for inclusion in the NCAA tournament.

I agree. Although if we were going to go to the NIT and win one I sure would want it to be over a big name program like Florida State. If the question had been whether it is better to go one and out in the NCAA or make a deep run in the NIT then that would have been much more difficult to answer. I think I might rather have the team make it to Madison Square Garden in the NIT then just play 40 minutes and lose in the NCAA simply because of the added experience for the young players and more opportunities for perspective recruits to watch the Zips in action against good competition. The younger the team is the more important I think NIT wins will be, they are building blocks to the future. This year I would have preferred NCAA if even just one game because the seniors deserved to get there at least once. I wonder, though, if it might be us playing Florida in the NIT semifinals had we just been able to finish against UMass.

At least it sounds like he must be strong and agile then. So, if he was 6', 260 going into his senior year then I assume we are talking about the class of '08. I thought maybe I didn't know much about him because he was still a year away.

The following is a paragraph from today's (April 1) Columbus Dispatch. Does anybody know anything about Mike Williams? I don't and I live in the Central Ohio area. College signings• The following Pickerington Central football players have made their college choices: Kyle Wood will play at Capital, Chris Turner at Otterbein, J.D. Wisniowski and Austen Payne at Adrian, Brennen Fraley at Walsh, Eddie Jackson at Muskingum, Aaron Rittgers at Toledo and Mike Williams at Akron.

I want to be like Memphis....

An Akron alum living here outside of Columbus I make it a point to see Zip recruits in my local area I have seen a lot of high school basketball the last few years. I love the fact that so many Zips, like Linhart, the McKnights, Steward, and Hitchens are coming out of central Ohio.I would like to comment on the Hitchens conversation. He certainly is an impressive point guard and can easily be the most talented PG in the MAC in the near future. I do, however, see a problem occasionally with his decision making, especially in the area of taking ill-advised shots. Hopefully that trend will go away when surrounded by a bunch of D-1 college players. For what it is worth, though, I still say the Zips next great guard is Ron Steward. I'd actually have him ahead of Hitchens when it comes to being a college ready player at the conclusion of his high school time. I really hope he will be healthy next season. If he is the Zips could have the best 1-2 (and even 3 with McNees) punch at point guard in the MAC, and I don't mean eventually I mean by the second half of next season once these guys have gained just a little experience.Wow, I'm really excited and quite intrigued to hear you say that you'd pick Steward over Hitchens right now! While I have never had the opportunity to see Steward play ball, I was literally shocked when I saw how fast, quick and skilled Humpty is! So your comment really whets my appetite to see Steward do his thing! Steward must be an amazing talent as well! And, as you could tell from last night's bitterly disappointing loss to Can't, we desperately need athleticism at the PG position. Ironically, it looks like that may be our calling card as soon as next season w/ Steward & Humpty. (Additionally, Darryl Roberts is a quick player and new recruit Alex Sullivan is also heralded for his quickness and athleticism.)Yes, I think Hitchens may be the more talented of the two but I worry more about his decision making. Steward seemed to me to be more of a PG in command of the offense while staying within the gameplan of the offense. Humpty at times seemed to want to put the offense on his shoulders and try to carry the team by himself. Plus Steward may be the better defender of the two. That is a tough call though. I just hope Steward gets healthy and uses this year of observation and learning to its maximum benefit. If KD can find ways to frequently get Hitchens and Steward on the floor simultaneously and neither has a "me first" mentality then Zip fans are probably going to be very happy before they graduate from the program.

You are correct sir.

I agree with what you are saying. So many people talk about toughening the schedule by putting marquee names on the schedule. While I'd like to see us get some BCS conference type schools on our schedule, I think it is equally important to get the weak schools off of our schedule even if it means only playing a mediocre team. The SOS numbers could have been much better this year if Binghamton, UNC Central and NC A&T were replaced with even middle of the road teams.Since Akron has to travel to VCU next year anyway I'd like to see them also schedule a game (or preferably a home-and-home) with Richmond also. That way it could be a two game road trip against good programs that are of equal caliber to many decent MAC schools. Just a thought.

The Zips seem to be loading up on guards, but if they don't end up with big Zeke from Pennsylvania they really need to start looking at some big men. Check that....big men (6'10" +) that can move well. I don't care what size school they come from (more likely to find a steal in the mid- to small high schools) as long as they can shoot from point blank range, rebound, play defense, and just get in the other team's way.

An Akron alum living here outside of Columbus I make it a point to see Zip recruits in my local area I have seen a lot of high school basketball the last few years. I love the fact that so many Zips, like Linhart, the McKnights, Steward, and Hitchens are coming out of central Ohio.I would like to comment on the Hitchens conversation. He certainly is an impressive point guard and can easily be the most talented PG in the MAC in the near future. I do, however, see a problem occasionally with his decision making, especially in the area of taking ill-advised shots. Hopefully that trend will go away when surrounded by a bunch of D-1 college players. For what it is worth, though, I still say the Zips next great guard is Ron Steward. I'd actually have him ahead of Hitchens when it comes to being a college ready player at the conclusion of his high school time. I really hope he will be healthy next season. If he is the Zips could have the best 1-2 (and even 3 with McNees) punch at point guard in the MAC, and I don't mean eventually I mean by the second half of next season once these guys have gained just a little experience.

This may be unrelated to the topic at hand but to those of you Akronites who are talking about dropping the Browns as your NFL team, how about considering the Saints as a team to follow instead of the Steelers?This team just drafted Zip lineman Andy Alleman and then followed that pick up by selecting Akron native Antonio Pittman. There is definitely a Rubber City element on that team now.

Charlie Frye was the QB for a program that was a perennial bottom feeder when he arrived on campus and then they transformed into a team that while not great was certainly much more competitive.Brady Quinn went to Notre Dame, which is arguably the premier football program or at least the most overrated, program in the nation and with all that talent still didn't lead the Irish to any huge top 10 type wins.You have to judge Quinn and Frye upon not only the talent around them but also on the expectations for their programs. The bottom line is Frye exceeded expectations right from the beginning (a 28-14 loss to OSU) while Quinn and ND certainly did not exceed the expectations for the Irish.Looking at the abilities and intangibles...which of the two has the stronger arm? Which is more accurate? More mobile? More elusive? A better teammate? Better in a broken play situation? Who is the better leader? You look at these questions and I think you may have to put Frye either even or above Quinn.However, when you give up what the Browns did you have to play the guy eventually to avoid getting "egg on your face", even if you have another guy that is just as good or better. That is why I hate this pick by the Browns. They made the best pick they could have possibly made in Joe Thomas, but they may have really hurt their overall draft this year and next by picking up Quinn. It certainly isn't one of their better drafts in recent years even though it was on course to be until pick #22 came along.

I really don't know as much as I should about Alex Kellogg. I have only seen him play once even though his school is only a couple of blocks from my home.From all accounts he is a tall, strong and very athletic and is one of the best pure basketball players in central Ohio (along with guys like Brett McKnight and Ron Steward). It is really hard for me to tell about Kellogg in many respects because he has gotten so much publicity down here. This is because he plays for Columbus' biggest name parochial school as well as the fact that he is the son of OSU great and CBS analyst Clark Kellogg. The question is how much of the accolades are truly earned and how much of it is hype because of who he is and where he played?From what I've seen in person he is pretty darn good. Is he a superstar in the making? I don't know (actually I think Steward will be the biggest star in the future) but he does seem to excel in the biggest games and in front of the biggest crowds. I did get the sense that he is definitely a team player and not a 'me' guy. In fact I have that impression about all the guys the Zips have landed both last year and this year no matter where they are from.

I agree with Big Zip. The best pick for the Browns in the first round would be Joe Thomas. The O-Line is easily their biggest need. If they think #3 is too high to pick a lineman then they should trade down a few spots and stockpile some more picks but still concentrate on the O-line first and foremost. A good line will allow the offensive skill position players to reach, or come closer to reaching, their potential.