UAZipster0305

We never play well at NIU or in Canada. I chalk those games up as losses every season regardless of how good either team is. BUGS and WMU are a different story though. Home or away, we own both of them. In a nail-biter or a blowout, Zips win.

I could seriously see one of the recommendations being to end Can't football or moving it to D-1AA. If it weren't for the capital investment in the Big Dialer, I could see that being the case for UA as well.

If there ever was a thread for DiG to headline, this is the one!

Indeed.

I missed the recent Tweet from OSU acknowledging the amazing track meet recently held by #4 Akron and #6 Can't State. It's not like we compete with OSU or anything. http://trackandfieldnews.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2215 http://trackandfieldnews.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2216 http://www.gozips.com/sports/track/2014-15/releases/201501208zrwm2 The rifle team is top-15 as well. Yet only standard press releases from the Athletic Department and not a peep from the Beacon. Let's celebrate excellence already!

Answer: FORGETTABLE!!! Even bad advertisements can be beneficial if they are so bad they lead the consumer to remember a product. This is especially relevant when the product does not even have a presence. I am not saying we should have bad advertising. Rather, something edgy or inflammatory can be very beneficial. I love your idea! Let's make it happen. It would be as good as any investment made directly to UA. Let's cutout the middle man.

Close! I should have qualified it as existing advertisements.

Do you remember the last time their basketball team was doing well? I do. Bucknuts are crazy for football AND basketball. The university administration is also fond of both because at the national level, they are huge revenue sports. I have family members who are UA alumni who were just at the OSU-Michigan basketball game a couple nights ago continuing the love fest from football season. It's disgusting.

Put a big picture of John Heisman on a billboard with a Zips logo that says, "Last time the playing field was level....University of Akron Zips 6, Ohio State University Buckeyes 0" Why the hell don't we do this kind of stuff? Some media outlet will pick it up and run with it. That's all we need. Get people talking, make them aware! General question to ZNO: what's the worst thing that an advertisement can be?

The most pragmatic approach is to stay quiet until all the OSU hoopla blows over and in early February start hyping the MACC basketball in NEO. Draw attention to our National Champion pole vaulter and future Olympian. Advertise the rifle team's top 15 stature and incredibly tough schedule. Advertise excellence where it exists! Post the soccer team's all-time record against OSU on huge billboards in Akron, Cleveland, and Columbus! It's something like 24-6-4! (If someone has the exact record, please share.)

If a tri-series, nothing short of one at OSU, one at home, and one at the Q is acceptable. Call them out on it. Bring it up on the sports talk radio shows. Have the coaches openly discuss this on their radio shows. Make a billboard. Do something, do anything antagonistic but certainly don't lay there and take it.

I intended to qualify the current state of the football program as not worthy of attention. However, is there any reason we couldn't call them out publicly in men's basketball? KD consistently says big programs won't play us because we are too good and have the potential to create an upset. We should make OSU the offer to be on upcoming schedules. If they decline, call them out on it publicly via advertisements. As I see it, this is a win-win for us.

Regardless of the relative state of the athletics programs, we should not be openly conceding our support to OSU.

I was referencing their presence as a challenge to Cincy, not OSU. If there were a vacuum of Cincy fans, the southwestern part of the state would undoubtedly be gobbled up by OSU, not Louisville or UK. However, if a fan wants a OSU alternative, the Kentucky schools are there for the taking. UA doesn't have that interstate handicap.

The "bUCkeye State" thing is brilliant! Hopefully the person who came up with that got a raise and a promotion.

NIU is another great example. They are starting to own Chicago and all of Illinois in general. At least that is the perception from Ohio, and afterall, isnt that what it is all about: perception? Athletics is about promoting the presence and stature of the university. Unfortunately for all UA alumni, the athletics department and president admitted that OSU's degrees are superior to ours. UA is apparently a place for students who weren't good enough to get into OSU. I was accepted at both schools and CHOSE UA, and I am sure there are many others who were as well.

Don't forget that Cincy also has Louisville and UK to compete with and each are less than 90 minutes away with Louisville being a top 10 program in football AND basketball. We don't have that handicap. In fact, we have one of America's top 25 largest cities only 45 minutes away, and it does not feature a D-1A university. We should own Cleveland!

I completely disagree. Cincy has carved out a decent niche in its area of the state and that started with its own alumni and growing its local fan base. They were in-your-face about calling out the bandwagon OSU fans. That is exactly the approach we need. Could someone please find and post the ad where they did that? You mention these primary OSU fans and secondary Zip fans. The only one I know of is Buckzip, and he has good reason. My own family members who are Zip alums are also universal OSU zombies with no loyalty or appreciation for their own school. Changing the culture starts right there, but conceding to OSU via social media only reinforces the problem and encourages the behavior. The fans who follow the Zips and are members of ZNO are diehards! We are also the ones in attendance at games, not primary OSU fans who sometimes follow the Zips. Those supporters are non-existent. If ZNO'ers are upset about the media post, who will be left to support our programs?

Amen to that. They also didn't go out of their way to promote the University of Oregon, Oregon State, Baylor, or the University of Texas-Austin football programs. Being a winner starts with competing like we have a chip on our shoulder. That is, we openly welcome the challenge of potentially toppling OSU. We also should not concede to them just because it is a way for us to partially share in their moment of glory. We need to create our own moments of glory. That social media appeal by our athletics department and president demonstrates a desperate and pathetic attention-whoring mindset. If you are a recruit, do you get excited to hear that the goal is to be at the top of the MAC or by knowing the ultimate goal is to topple a giant like OSU? It's the difference between the approaches of Keith Dambrot and Caleb Porter. Sure, the starting points of the programs were different but the mentality should be very similar. Winning the MAC was one of many goals Caleb Porter set. For any sport, if you don't strive to be the best among your peers, why bother competing? "OSU is not our peer, and the deck is stacked against us." If that is the mentality then move back to 1-AA or shut down the football program. No more vacilating at 1-A if we aren't there to compete with the best. A popular quote from the movie, The Rock, seems appropriate here.

I was being facetious.

The solution is simple: 1) Get rid of the worthless OOC preseason schedules. Instead, allow 2 interscholastic scrimmages in the spring and 1 in August. 2) Go immediately into an eight game conference season +1 championship game. 3) Conference winners get placed as one of 16 teams in the 4-round single-elimination playoff. 4) Major bowl games and sites are determined by tradition and rotate for the final four teams. 5) All other bowl names and sponsors can be assigned to the other playoff games. 6) Teams eliminated from the playoff and those not making the playoff play a total of four OOC games with RPI-matched teams from other conferences. Hence, a team losing in the second playoff round would have two additional games to play, potentially against other teams eliminated from the playoff. I mean, who wouldn't want to see FSU play 'Bama this week? 7) At-large conference bids for the following year's playoff are determined by the current year's final conference RPI. 8) If a playoff at-large bid is granted to a conference, the conference selects/determines the team it is sending as the representative. No national selection committees. In this regard, the B1G would have gained a lot towards next year's playoff based on this year's post-season performance. Everyone has skin in the game, no ridiculously unfair matchups, no home biasing (e.g. OSU 8 home games every year), objective, and most important for the schools, super-lucrative! This would also create a lot of conference loyalty and settle the musical chairs game that has gone on for the past fifteen years and is about to start again with the Big 12 needing to field enough football teams for a championship game to more definitively assure a team in the current playoff system. I guarantee 5 major conferences and only 4 playoff spots will not last.

And yet this is what builds a resume and gets one a new job at a more prestigious institution. Let's drop 90% of the athletics administration and insist that ZNO do the work. Better results, less expense. I only see benefits here.

If we kicked off both halves in a game, why can't we end an eight game conference schedule at 2-5? If only OSU media had wished us good luck...

I (seriously) agree, the playoff system worked for the most part and is much better than the BCS. However, try telling that to TCU. Until the playoff features 16 teams with ALL D-1A conference champions receiving an automatic bid, I will be critical.

In terms of this scheme, I think OSU's win last night may have helped us with RPI points. I'm all about those. When struggling to win, get recruits, garner favorable local media attention, or have any fans in general, I'll take the RPI points all day. http://www.realtimerpi.com/college_football/ncaaf_power_rankings.html I think we're trending upwards. Must have been that OSU win last night. Maybe someday we'll even get to play in the Horseshoe. Though I hope the field doesn't get torn up for the B1G season.