Captain Kangaroo

You know you’ve arrived as a program when you can hang with the likes of Temple and OU for an entire half.

Being young is one thing. Being young, and bereft of talent is another. We went 0-12...1-5...and are staring 1-11 in the face this season. I can't see adding a year of experience to what we have have on the field today making any difference in 2022. If we are only young, and somehow these larvae are going to turn into butterflies next year, I don't see it. Our lines, and LB's are completely overmatched by the worst of the MAC this season. Why in the era of transfers would anyone even try the "build with Freshman" approach? I think we are young, plus woefully bare in talent. We need more Irons-like talent...like 10 more of him...before we're competitive in the MAC, let alone OOC.

My search committee would consist of Hunter Yurachek. Former UA associate AD. He gets credit for outside the box thinking that has taken Costal Carolina to a Top 20 ranking. Not North Carolina…not South Carolina…not NC State…Costal Carolina. We need someone with a creative approach. Rehashing Paul Winters for the 28th time won’t work. Hiring a high school school coach won’t work. The right answer is out there, and Hunter probably has the experience and acumen to figure it out. Massive whiff by UA letting him get away when he wanted to be our AD.

We need a coach that can recruit. Period. Irons is a player. He can almost singlehandedly win football games. Dollard was a player. He could almost singlehandedly will football games. Mathison, while not at their level, is a player. After that...all our present players are essentially interchangeable. There's no other Arth-recruited talent on our roster that ANY other MAC program would want, let alone a P5 program. Yeah, you can see flashes of potential here and there from a DB or WR...but we are flat-out woefully short on talent. The proof: 0-4 MAC teams that lost to Duquesne curb-stomp us on our home field. You want linemen that are big, strong and agile. Our lines are small, slow and unathletic. Ditto the linebackers. It isn't will, or scheme, or conditioning that gets us pushed around the field. We're just smaller and less talented than all our opponents. Arth made the decision to build the program predominately with youth. It has hurt. Bowden had the same choice when he arrived, and liberally supplemented his classes with transfers. He once said (paraphrased) - "If we only recruit freshmen, we'll get killed and I'll just be recruiting the next coach's kids. AD's don't wait 5 years for you to win now-a-days." Can't argue with that. Transfers like Williams, Marcus, Davis, Coe and Natson were the types of impact P5 transfers we needed to start winning games at Akron. However, he also recruited NFL talent like Gilbert, Kyron Brown and Jatavis Brown out of high school. Maybe Council lands in the NFL too? I predicted 1 win when this season began. Irons' play made me hopeful we could possibly see two...but it's not going to happen. Lee Owens was a marginal coach (see him sitting at 2-2 at Ashland right now). But with a decaying off campus stadium and zero facilities he recruited the likes of Frye, Hixon, Blackburn, Payne, Hendry, Dwight Smith, Matt Cherry and many other solid, fun-to-watch players. Several landed in the NFL. Bowden once said - "We need to find a way to win at Akron." He also said - "Sometimes the local HS programs know you too well. Kids from Florida don't know Akron from Kent or BG, so that's where we need to recruit until we get better." It's true. I see zero value in making local recruiting a major emphasis right now. Of all the players I listed above as NFL caliber...how many were from Akron? Hendry was from North Canton. That's it. There is a way to win at Akron. It starts with identifying and recruiting talent. Period. Then lather, rinse, and repeat. There's no other option.

Paul Winters career HC record. 63 years old.

Bubba out for 4 weeks.

If Irons is out, we're in bad shape...I see no chance to win. I see this one as similar to the epic UA/UMass game of two years ago. OU has turned the ball over 5 times in 3 games. Their kicker is 3-7 on the season. They rack up 60 yards in penalties per game. So they have the ability to keep the Zips in the game. I hope the Zips win. I'll have a nice 12-person tailgate in Lot 9, and it would be nice if the Zips put on a good show for them. But... OU 31 Akron 27 Our OL and DL are just sooo porous... If there are 3+ turnover pencil sightings, the Zips could pull it off. That's what it would take.

Next time you see him, give him a ham sandwich!

While not to be confused with Shaq or Lebron, Freeman looks to have added a little upper body bulk?

In one post someone said Irons was out. Was there any truth to that?

If the HoF stadium was built prior to InfoCision, the Zips would probably be playing there, and the InfoCision grounds would still be dilapidated old rubber worker houses. I agree With GP1. We have a nice, 30k seat stadium on campus. The only road game we should be playing within 10 miles of our own stadium is against Kent.

Hope script Akron is on the front! 🤮

DII allows 36 football scholarships. I believe they also allow partials.

By popular demand I am forced to predict the OSU/Akron score. Our defensive line has no hope to slow down OSU. Our offensive line has no chance to slow down OSU OSU is primed to show they don't suck as bad as their fans think they do. OSU 63 - Akron 10 The Zips best chance to make me look bad - Irons needs to build off last week. He played well at Auburn, then took a step or two backwards against Temple. Last week he saved the team from a supreme embarrassment with a Herculean effort. The only difference between Gardner-Webb 2010 and Bryant 2021 was Nicely vs. Irons. Irons runs with a purpose, and his long stride covers a lot of ground quickly. When given time, he does a nice job of hitting open receivers (not a given for many recent Zips QB's). But if he runs as frequently as he did against Bryant, he'll get pummeled and we'll probably be seeing Gibson behind center against OU. We don't want that. Could he and Mathison go "Tim Rattay / Troy Brown / Nebraska" and run up some big numbers on OSU's 2021 secondary? Probably not, but it would be fun to see Arth try it. Best case scenario - Keep Irons healthy. Get through the game with minimal injuries. Keep the clock running. On to OU.🐈

"The Brian Wood of Indiana"

LCJ left some big size 8's for Tavari to fill.

During my time at UA, a kid who was a bouncer at The Townhouse got shot at the Katheryn Place party. He was in my (now) wife's Spanish class. He survived. Katheryn Place was a great college party in the mid-to-late 80's. Over time, more non-college kids began showing up. At the last party I attended, I saw a co-worker from Mentor. He'd heard about the big party and drove down with a van load of friends and some Stroh's 15 packs. Katheryn Place was always packed with people. Shoulder to shoulder, for a full block. The night of the shooting a group of maybe 10 kids just began pushing through the crowd trying to start a fight. I left. The next day I read about the "riot" in the Beacon. Glad I left. I used to love the Katheryn, Wheeler and other block parties. We had a 15 kegger in our back yard, complete with beer truck, a couple times. But once things get too big, the riff raff comes in, and things get out of control. Having a 20 year old son @ UC right now, I can't imagine getting the phone call those parents received. Absolutely heartbreaking.

Difficult game to handicap. Zips are terrible. Bryant is a bad FCS program. Zips pull away late and win 31-16. I don't care how bad the rest of the MAC appears to be, I still don't see a second win on the horizon. Mathison is the only Arth recruit that is proven to be worth the price of admission. Offense or defense. That's not enough. Hope I'm wrong.

I’ve become an expert on bad football.

What a bungled train wreck of a sequence. Giving the gave away on a silver platter. Unreal…

Bowden had is early tenure surprises against Michigan and Pitt. The clock is ticking for Arth to coach his first "The Akron fans were pleasantly surprised..." game of his tenure. At some point he needs to give Zips fans some tangible hope that things are improving. Playing an AAC team that's 1-7 in their last 8 games, at InfoCision, seems like a great opportunity. Losing 56-12 would deflate the bandwagon in record time. Dre is right...this is sort of a do-or-die game. The champagne popped after the BG win has long since evaporated.

I think the casual fan will lump Akron and Temple in the same non-P5 grouping. But Temple's success over the last 10-or-so years blows the Zips away. Al Golden left Temple for Miami FL, Steve Addazio left for BC, Matt Rhule was hired-away by Baylor and Geoff Collins took the Georgia Tech job. They hired Rod Carey away from NIU. They've had one losing season since 2013. In that same time JD Brookhart left Akron to sell CAD software, Rob Ianello's forced exit landed him the coveted Buffalo's WR Coach job, and Terry Bowden recently resurfaced at doormat Louisiana Monroe after being fired. Over the year's Kent has had some terrible teams...but they maintained some respectability because they had some great QB play. Jose Davis, Josh Cribbs and Julian Edelman compensated for horrible defenses with a high-scoring offense. I hate Kent, but those guys were fun to watch. If Irons can prove the Auburn appearance wasn't a fluke, and Arth opens the offense up, the 2021 Zips could actually be watchable. I wouldn't have thought that when the season began. I see this game playing out slightly worse than the the UAB game a couple years ago. Temple 45 Akron 23. I don't see us stopping Temple, no matter how badly they appeared to play against Rutgers. I'd tighten the spread if a few more Jeslord Boateng's joined the defense this week. He makes plays behind the line of scrimmage. I like him.

The Auburn game was easy money. No way a Zips defense that couldn't make Kent punt once last November was going to hold Auburn under 50 nine months later. Temple is a little more difficult team to gauge. And Irons is a wild card.

Going off 35 year old memories, I believe Akron’s first “major” D1-A opponent was Auburn. I was watching it on Channel 55. The cameras panned to some Zips fans in the stands with a sign that said “Just let us score.” Probably just as applicable a sign today. Auburn 59-0.

Did it feature Teon Dollard?