UAZipster0305

Kent State should be the first game of the season, every season, and it should be played on a late Saturday afternoon...presumably good weather and all day for tailgating. It's the only way for the rivalry to mean anything more than pride. This way, the season isn't yet sunk, and one team starts off with a winning record and some momentum while the other will likely not have their head above water the rest of the season. Given the current status and long abysmal histories of each program, I don't think there is a better way to feature the rivalry and garner alumni/fan interest and attendance.

No, I was making the point that Thorpe's "college" team did not play Buchtel/Akron, implying we were not considered a major football program then either, but that so many of the schools we are looking up to now were already established. We have been trying to play catch-up to the big boys since the early days of college football.

A bit is made about Akron's football history with regard to John Heisman as a former coach. However, I am still amazed by how relatively under-celebrated this relationship is and how there is virtually no awareness about the deeper and more distant history of Akron sports and the University in general. I am currently reading Path Lit by Lightning: The Life of Jim Thorpe by David Maraniss, which goes through some early college and professional football history. One thing that really stands out is who the Carlisle Indians opponents around the turn of the last century were. Their opponents included Alabama, Auburn, Vanderbilt, Georgia Tech, Virginia, Notre Dame, Michigan, Penn State, Wisconsin, Ohio State, Minnesota, Illinois, Northwestern, West Virginia, Syracuse, Pittsburgh, Army, Navy, Lehigh, Lafayette, and all the Ivy League schools. There was not a single reference to Akron or another MAC-level team. So, Akron football has literally been trying to play catch up with the big boys for 125 years. We are not consistently at the level of the Big Ten, historically or now, and there is nothing wrong with that. Anyone expecting otherwise is ignoring history and not being realistic about the current or future. That is not to say we should accept mediocrity or worse in the MAC. Instead, we should be embracing the history we do have. Specifically, it is a mystery to me as to how I did not previously know that the owner of the first NFL Champion, the 1920 Akron Pros, was an Akron alum and former Akron football player, Art Ranney. He was also the first secretary and treasurer of the league and took notes of the league's founding meeting in Canton on Akron Pros stationary! A co-owner, Frank Nied was also an Akron alum and NFL co-founder. By my research, there are only four universities that can lay claim to having alums as founders of the NFL: Akron (Ranney and Nied), Dayton (Carl Storck), Notre Dame (Stan Cofall), and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (George Halas). Hence, Akron is the only university with multiple alums as founders of the NFL. Not Kent, Not Ohio State, not Pittsburgh, not Penn State, not West Virginia, not Michigan, AKRON! How is this not celebrated by the University, especially when the alumni and football program are starving for something to favorably change focus and momentum?! It makes me wonder, how many other alumni accomplishments are unknown or not publicized (and not just with regard to athletics)? How many Rhodes and Goldwater scholars have we had? https://www.sports-reference.com/cfb/schools/carlisle/head-to-head.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_Ranney https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Nied

I respect that approach. At least it is based on objective merit and not P5 bias, etc. I was hoping we would get in, but did not think we deserved to with the way the season ended...no wins in the last five games is highly underwhelming. For me, the whole point of the NCAAT is to crown a champion, so whether a team could win the championship should be the ultimate question in determining what bubble teams to invite. Early in the season I felt we were NCAA Championship worthy, but our offense became anemic and we stopped winning. Championship teams either find a way to adapt or run over such challenges with quality.

It's hard to say what's uglier, Kent's uniforms or their 1-8 record. Nice 4th quarter...where has that been all season?!

Respectfully, I disagree. Unlike most international leagues that allow ties, the NCAA permits re-entry on substitutions, so there's no requirement that the same players play all those additional minutes. AND the ability of a coach to manage minutes to prevent injury and the bench's exaggerated role in the game is a good indirect way to award wins and losses based on merit. The other thing I disagree with is that both the NCAAT and FIFA require a full 30 minutes of extra time rather than golden goal. Why continue playing after breaking the tie? The full 30 minutes diminishes urgency and potentially recreates, through both teams scoring, the exact circumstance that was intended to be broken. I always liked the idea of both teams being required to remove a player from the pitch every three minutes to open up more space and create more opportunities. I suspect that with this approach, penalties would rarely if ever be needed.

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And yet if we lose at Xavier in the Big East Tournament, with only two losses, we likely won't make the NCAAT. Bring back over time! In the sport as a whole, ties only make sense in a table format in which team plays every other team home and away and there are thirty-eight games to separate the quality of teams. Ties in NCAA soccer are unjust.

Another crappy tie in a game in which we totally dominated a respectable opponent. Blah! Wish the NCAA still did OT. In several of these games, it's doubtful the opponent would have been able to hold out for another thirty minutes.

Injury? I am only following the statcast.

At this point, it has to be a statistical anomaly that we have had as many epically bad coaching hires as we have actually had.

Maybe you should just tailgate and go home, pretending the Zips won. Seems to be a healthier approach to me.

Gents, it's still soccer season and we are legit National Championship contenders! Don't rush to basketball so quickly.

Maybe it's a good thing that so many people were distracted by the marathon today? It is often said that any publicity is good publicity. In terms of Zips football, I strongly disagree. What an embarrassment!

We can't beat bad teams (IU and UB) even when they try to hand us the game. That's been the story of Akron football for as long as I've followed with a few exceptions during Brookhart's and Bowden's tenures. Untimely penalties, poor discipline, narrow play calling, and an inability to adapt a game strategy are all coaching. New coach. Same Akron. Let the revolving door continue until someone like Tressel wants to rescue us out of sheer pity.

What are the chances that Jim Tressel wants to return to coaching?

If there ever was a game that deserves to end in a tie, this is it. Poor play by both teams.

Up two men for a good portion of a game that we dominated, but we can't get a second goal?! What is going on?! That's three games in a row that we should have won yet come away with ties. These new OT rules definitely do not work in our favor. They let inferior teams sit back and defend and play for a tie or lucky counter attack. Another 30 minutes of OT onslaught makes that much more difficult. Between this and football it was not a good night for the Zips.

And imagine if he weren't out for a large portion of the 2nd quarter...no pick six, we win kneeling on the ball to end the game in regulation.

What's so frustrating to me is that right now, the difference between winning and losing has been razor thin, and most of the handicap against winning is self-inflicted.

Nothing like snapping defeat from the jaws of victory.

Damn it! How did we lose that game?! Shoulda gone for it on 4th!

On IU's 2 point conversion, there was a back wide open outside!!! How lucky are we?!

Shoulda gone for it on 4th!

Go for it!