UAZipster0305

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.

It's a sad day when even the Can't fans are making fun of us for this. How can a group of hippies see through the cloud of hash smoke enough to realize this was a bad idea yet our own sober administrators weren't able to do so?

Proenza is an OSU alum but you never heard anything like this from him in 2001 when OSU played Miami for the National Championship.

This is disgusting. It's bad enough that the entire community, most alumni, and many posters here are bandwagon Suckeye fans and don't believe UA competes with them. Tell that to our men's soccer and rifle teams. We play OSU nearly every year in baseball too. tOSU doesn't need the luck, their soccer team knocked us out of the NCAAT in a seemingly endless series of penalty kicks. I am continually amazed by the incompetence of people associated with UA Athletics. When in doubt, don't do anything! "Do no harm!" is the ethos of medicine, and it certainly applies here. Anyone who was a part of this needs removed from their position. What an epic step backwards. This is certainly not "thinking bigger!" UA Athletics would be much better off it were operated by posters from ZNO. Cut the salary burden, the dead weight, and the poorly executed bad ideas and all of a sudden you have better management and marketing with less operating expenses. Nothing short of an apology to Zips fans is acceptable here. Go Ducks!

I really don't see us beating UL-L on the road. They destroyed us in Akron during the 2013 season, and I don't think that much has changed with either team since. Pitt will be tough with their All-American running back returning and a more competent coach at the helm. I wouldn't count Pitt as an automatic win. I'll go with 7-5, 1-3 OOC, 6-2 MAC. The last game against BUGS will be for the MAC East, but I don't think we'll quite have the talent advantage yet to take it. The toughest aspect of the schedule might be the entire last month on the road. 4 in a row at home then 4 in a row away? How does that happen? There should be a line in the scheduling algorithm that prevents this.

I've followed this as well, DiG, and am happy to see the MAC moving up. However, unless the MAC becomes a multi-bid league to the NCAAT, none of this matters including our standing relative to other similar conferences such as C-USA. C-USA is a big upgrade with respect to football and men's soccer. It would also separate us from the other Ohio schools in the MAC in terms of national stature. It would put us as a third choice in the state for recruits behind OSU and Cincy in that order. It would be tough to see the days of the MACC at the Q behind us, but I think it would be the best overall option for Zips Athletics.

Great post, Captain! "Rob Ianello's Pigskin Holocaust" is classic! The below link speaks to the inflating benefits of going to a top-tier program and is another separating point between the haves and have-nots: http://www.ohio.com/sports/osu/college-football-playoff-ncaa-will-reimburse-ohio-state-oregon-athletes-families-for-traveling-to-title-game-1.555678 These recent developments associated with the college football playoffs are exactly what GP1 anticipated.

Yes, I think the dominoes are about to start falling again. Cincy and Memphis to the Big 12. Then three MAC school filling into C-USA. I think we will be one of them. UA, UT, and Ohio. The MAC will be in lousy shape if this happens.

The MAC has stability because it is a garbage conference that no one wants in. Also, very few member schools are attractive for promotion to other conferences. Believe it or not though, the MAC used to advertise that it had the largest alumni base of any D-1A conference. This is surely not the case anymore given that the power conferences have expanded in number; however, it does underscore that the MAC does not fail because of too few potential fans.

This is Caleb Porter level dominance. Never truly a rebuilding year even when there is a lot of turn over on the team...amazing! The accomplishment is especially incredible given how terrible the program was when Coach Kest took over. Unlike men's soccer, there wasn't tradition or a recent history of success to build on. I hope she stays at Akron for a very long time!

Pretty much any other school we'd be competing with for a slot in CUSA would not have great overall facilities. An arena is the only part of the puzzle that is missing for us. There are plans on the table, which I expect would be enough to placate league officials. Keep in mind, aside from NIU, no other school has the media market that we do, and that is a huge part of the appeal.

This is where having beautiful new facilities and big name coaches really matters. If league officials visit they will no doubt be impressed. Moving to CUSA would give UA a more national profile as well. Could this be what finally allows the locals to see UA as a national research university rather than just a city college and commuter school?

Looking exclusively at this situation as what do we gain from moving from the MAC to CUSA, it might not seem favorable. However, if you consider that two or three other MAC schools may leave to join CUSA and we are left behind, the MAC becomes highly undesirable. Would you want to be in the MAC if NIU, Toledo, and Ohio left? I wouldn't! Besides, a north-south divisional alignment in CUSA would not be too bad travel-wise. CUSA would be a huge upgrade in competition for soccer.

Yes, you are correct. The "center snap" was invented on Buchtel Field, not the "forward pass."

Hard to say if those guys would have succeeded at UA or not. Likely so, but I'd also note that none of those guys stuck around to build a program. They had a couple really strong seasons and left for greener pasteurs. If we had a miracle coach, we would likely be back to the same old shortly after he moves on. I know we would all love to have such a problem on our hands though.

I have come across several articles online mentioning that UAB is likely shutting down its football program. Although not discussed in the articles, many of the comments describe that the University of Alabama system is governed by a centralized Board of Trustees. One of the members is Bear Bryant's son who is seeking to undermine UAB and divert as many resources to Tuscaloosa as possible. Thankfully, the Ohio system does not have a centralized Board of Trustees yet somehow OSU still manages to have a vast majority of the resources and attention. Prior to the Big Dialer being built, I think it would have been a reasonably responsible decision to shut down UA's football program. After the iCoach debacle, I really thought this should have happened in favor of a more widely utilized basketball arena and debt servicing on the Rec Center. It is amazing how far the millions of dollars for the Info and annual football budget would go towards other sports or being invested in academics. I loved seeing us beat Pitt, and I think Bowden has done reasonably well bringing us out of the abyss, but I am not sure we will ever be dominant to the point that the Big Dialer is regularly close to capacity as the administration envisions. If a person with the brand of Bowden can't achieve that here, what coach could? If no one, was the investment in the program worth it? I don't know. Just as soon as I think about recent seasons being so embarassing, I also consider John Heisman has an uncelebrated history at UA, the forward pass may have been invented at Buchtel Field, and we have over 100 years of football tradition. Two separate UA players made huge interceptions in the Super Bowl (and one was nearly the MVP), and I had classes with both of them!. Another was Defensive Player of the Year in the NFL and will soon be the first UA Hall of Famer.

I was at the Georgetown-Syracuse game today. It is the first Tournament game I have seen live other than at Akron. Syracuse dominated but neither team was terribly dangerous in the final third, and neither team used the width of the field. Lots of choppy midfield play. The Georgetown facilities were nothing to speak of either. Overall, I was not impressed, but Coach Porter spoiled all of us. Let's hope Embick has us making deep runs in the Tournament again soon.