you am i

As of this morning, Scott is holding on to a slim lead, 23 to 22.7. One more day. Vote. Vote. Vote.

Tied at 21.8. Vote. Vote. Vote.

Wow. I thought that was photoshopped. More power to her. I think it's great, but she is so small how I don't see how she can possibly generate the power needed to be a D-1 kicker. If she can't knock down 40+ kicks, what good is she. Who knows, maybe she can. The only other female college player I can think of is the kicker from Colorado who ended up transferring (New Mexico?) after getting a hard time from her teammates. April has to be a hero to little girls everywhere who want to play with the boys.

Vote. Early and often. Time is running out.

I agree with everything you said - except the part about Can't's record not being a fluke. I think it is a fluke. They are much, much improved from past years, but they struggled against a weak Akron team and their schedule is one of the weakest in all of football. Kentucky is a terrible team and they embarrassed Can't for their only win of the season. In the event that Can't wins the division, I expect Northern Illinois or Toledo to make short work of them. If they beat either NIU or Toledo, I'll become a believer. The Rutgers win was a great win for them, but the 8-1 record is deceiving.

Excellent play call by Can't to win the game. It's minor consolation that anyone who bet on Can't lost their money. Coach Hazell may be gone next year.

Crap. Use the timeouts. Hold them to three plays and a field goal try and hope for a miracle ending.

I'm not sure you are using the best judgment to come on this board and "rub it in" to your fellow Akron fans during the Akron-Can't game. Actually, you are using lousy judgment.

Sorry for the mangled syntax. I have one eye on the computer screen and one eye on the TV. This team is fired up and ready to play.

You need to get the Ianello loser stench off of you. I like the offensive play calling has been good. Very aggressive. Dix Stadium looks awful on TV. What a dump.

You are overlooking Toledo. The NIU-Toledo game should be a good one. Toledo knocked off #21 Cincinnati tonight 29-23. Akron plays at Toledo the week after the NIU-UT game. Win or lose, Toledo may have a letdown after NIU. Akron has UMass the week before playing Toledo, so assuming a win in that game, the Zips could go into the Glass Bowl feeling better about their chances. As long as I'm dreaming, let's have Akron beat Can't too.

Correction: Its 28-3 at halftime because Coach Ianello decides to kick a field goal at the end of the half.

Another big difference between last year and this year is that this year when this team falls behind early it does not quit. Last year, if we are behind 14-0 after the first quarter, its 28-0 at half and we lose by 40. There is much more fight in a Bowden team. They don't quit.

Since Akron is still in the beginning stage of putting the program back together, I assume OU will win. But any team that struggles to beat a bottom-of-the barrell team like UMass is beatable.

I thought Terry's post-game comments were pretty much on target. He said that BG did a good job of making adjustments in the second half to exploit Akron's weaknesses. Terry was very candid in his assessment of the team's performance, which is a nice change from the BS Ianello used to sling after each 40 point loss when he would go on and on about all the positive things he saw in the game. When he did that, I knew we had a loser on our hands. Bobby Bowden gave a talk where he said that there are four steps to rebuilding. First, you lose big. Then you lost small. Then you win small then you win big. Sometimes its easy to forget how totally awful we were the past two years. Terry Bowden deserves our patience. He stepped into a real mess. He has this program headed in right direction but he is not a miracle worker. Right now, I'm thinking if we can knock off Can't and maybe find another win along the way, I'll consider Terry's first season a success. I've already had more football entertainment from this team this year than the previous two years combined.

And you really should go to the OU football message board and talk about this.

Last year Rob Ianello was the head coach of this team. We'd be down by around 40 points right now if he had not been canned.

Ohio will be the new Boise State when they play a Boise State schedule with Boise State's results. But not until. I'd love to see a MAC team become a serious BCS championship contender, but this talk about OU is a joke. By the way, look at the wiki entry for '1960 college football season': "The Ohio Bobcats were named number one by both the UPI and the AP in the 'small college' polls." Congratulations.

Timing. The high school kickers have extra time to execute their mechanics because the game is so much slower at that level. In college everything moves much faster and distance and accuracy suffer. That's why a lot of really good HS kickers are busts in college. Their mechanics get messed up when they have to do everything faster. Its the same thing in the pros. Good college kickers are often busts in the NFL because the game is greatly speeded up. Of course, at each level there is greater pressure to perform and some kickers just can't handle the extra pressure.

I don't doubt your sincerity, but how bad have things gotten when a 42 point loss to Central Florida can make you feel good? That is a defeat of Ianello-esque proportions. I no longer live in NE Ohio, so I could not make this game, but the news accounts are describing Akron as "mistake prone." No knock on Terry, though. He inherited a bad situation. This is going to take time.

The idea that Can't State's journalism school is "one of the best in the nation" is ridiculous. OU's program is highly rated, but Can't just has a journalism school. It's decent, but not more than decent. No national listing that I know of rates them among the "best. It does not hold a candle to OU. Akron's law school is an excellent value. But the market for newly minted lawyers is bad for everyone except for grads from the elite schools. I would not advise anyone to go into law or journalism. But I guess if that's your passion, that's the path you should follow.

Thriller in the Military Bowl. Final: Toledo 42, Air Force 41. Air Force scored a TD with 52 seconds. Set up for the tying PAT and then ran a fake for 2 to win that failed. Shades of RI.

I'm not an expert in the law of sports contracts, but I think its safe to say that reassignment clauses are common for head coaches. Having said that, nobody in their right mind would sign a contract that also reduced his pay upon reassignment. It would make the contract to be a head coach at the pay of a head coach essentially worthless. As I understand it, when coaches are reassigned they continue to receive their salary for doing non-coaching work. From a coach's perspective, this is career suicide if it goes on too long. What it does is provide some financial security for the fired coach until he can find some other acceptable position elsewhere.

I noticed that too. There was nothing in there that was complimentary about the leadership in the athletic department. That was intentional on his part, I'll bet. Well, good for Paul. He's happy and content where he is. We should all be so lucky at that stage of our lives.

The headline of the SI story began with the phrase "A Modest Proposal." As in Jonathan Swift. The column was intended as a joke.