you am i

I just looked at RI's wiki entry to see if it had been updated to reflect his firing. It hasn't, but someone has edited it so the first paragraph reads: "He is somehow still the head coach at tThe University of Akron despite being the worst coach in NCAA history." As hard as this has to be for him, this has to be a huge weight off his shoulders at the same time. He, of all people, had to know that he was in way, way over his head. He'll land on his feet as an assistant next year, never to be a head coach again.

Owens fired 11/16. JD hired 12/16. And: JD fired 11/28. RI hired 12/9. If history is a guide, we should have a new head coach in two weeks to a month.

Owens fired 11/16. JD hired 12/16.

Live in the past much? Things happen fast!

It would be very easy for TW to just issue a statement to the press that RI will be back. That's usually what the AD would be expected to do in a situation like this if the coach was coming back. He hasn't. One reason I can think of NOT to pull the trigger is to show whoever is the next coach that he will get a minimum of three years to turn things around. I do not recall any college coach getting canned after two years because of a bad record. That being said, I do not believe that any coach has ever had as disastrous a first two years as we have been subjected to. Ever.

I have been privileged to attend many games in a friend's suite since the stadium opened. They feel that it has been a complete waste of money. Food and drink only go so far. When going to a game--in a luxury suite--is a dreaded weekly burden, something needs to change. My friends and I cannot and will not tolerate another game of Ianello-ball. So, personally speaking, I know of tens of thousands of dollars that the coach is ALREADY costing UA. Not to mention the empty stands and many other suite owners whose renewal notices will go unreturned. College football is a big business. UA better realize that and get in the game....or get out altogether. They're putting a coach and product on the field that's like milquetoaste compared to Cardinal Mooney, Chagrin Falls, Mentor, St. V. It's pathetic, Luis. College is about EDUCATION. If football is all about big business then it should be left to those willing to take financial risk for financial reward. You seem to be OK with others footing the bill in all things. The university to provide your entertainment and your friends to provide access that entertainment. Your attitude is exactly what is wrong with society today. "Give me", "Provide it for me", "I/we deserve it" Ridiculous post. You missed the entire point. How much revenue is UA going to lose holding onto The Grim Reaper as head coach? College may be about education, but college football has nothing to do with education and everything to do with entertainment and revenue generation. I simply don't understand how UA puts ANY butts in the seats other than parents/family anymore. You talk about financial risk. How about the financial risk of building a 68 million dollar football stadium without the ability to sell any tickets to events held there? You're OK with that? You're OK with suite/box subscribers walking away? Football in the MAC generates REVENUE but not INCOME. YES...I am OK suite/box subscribers walking away rather than asking students to subsidize their entertainment. College football is just not that important. Colleges should NOT be in business to provide entertainment. Sorry...you just don't get it. Sports are intended to enhance the student experience. But not at any cost. Mount Union, Xavier, Dayton and other schools have great student experience and don’t ask its students to subsidize football for the entertainment of a few fans. The ship you wish for sailed long ago. FBS college football is almost entirely about revenue generation. While I would agree that maybe it shouldn't be so, this is a FBS program operating in a FBS league. You can advocate that UA should perhaps go small-time in football (aren't we there already?) but UA obviously hasn't figured out what it wants to be. They have spent money on facilities as if they would like to be a larger FBS program and have yet failed to do ANYTHING which would allow for additional revenue generation to support those moves. What exactly is the point of a 68 million dollar stadium? How do you pay for that facility? Do you believe that the advocates for its creation pointed to "enhanced student experience" alone as justification? How much "additional revenue" was anticipated through luxury box sales, catering, team shop sales, tickets, etc? If the Doug Snyder vision were uniformly applied the team would be FCS or smaller, it would play in a stadium seating 10K and would just be a nice little adjunct to Fall weekends. Come to think of it, that would actually be a gigantic improvement over where the program is right now, but still, that's not what UA appeared to be going for when the whole Infocision thing started. Now that the facilities are built and as long as UA is FBS, they must generate revenue. You wish it weren't so, but someone has to pay, and "revenue generators" sure as hell aren't lining up right now are they? The 68M for the Info was paid for by donations...not student fees. Also...a big reason WAS student experience. The Rubber Bowl was to far away to add anything to student experience. Also...the cost of maintaining the Rubber Bowl was cost prohibitive. If we wanted to stay in the MAC and have football, a new stadium had to be built. The real decision was how big and how much. But part of that 68M went to build a facility that would house more than just football. I am more than OK with private money being donated to improve facilities....but students should never be asked to foot the bill. They spend $1,200 per year (assuming just 2 semesters) in student fees to subsidize athletics. I don't believe that is money well spent and I certainly don't think they should spend more. I have an accounting and finance degree…so I guess you can count me as one who considers the cost of things and who pays. UA is making annual payments of $3.15 million toward the Infocision construction debt. I promise you they were expecting bigger crowds to help toward that payment. They are not. The money is coming elsewhere from the budget. This is not how the plan was supposed to work.

Would you like to go on record some more? Wow....you manned up and called him out after 2 years. Impressive. CK knows of one guy who will not post here anymore because of Skip Zip. I know 3 that won't post because of you. True story. Then you know three people who will be failures at life. Seriously, if you can't take a little heat on an internet message board, I would hate to see how you deal with problems in real life. Those three ex-posters have revealed themselves as "failures in life" because they find one poster annoying and so they avoid ZN? Wow. That is a shame. I did not know it was so easy to fail in life. Seriously, everyone is in a foul mood right now. No sense arguing over petty crap like this.

That could just mean that his departure is not going to made willingly. Or it means he's coming back. All we have now is a rumor. If he is gone and the decision has been made to can him, they may as well announce it now. If there's no word within 48 hours, I'm afraid that means he's moving back.

Do you have access to inside info, or are you just guessing like everyone else? As is now evident from examining Ianello's contract, UA would not likely incur a heavy penalty by releasing him early because it's likely that Ianello would land a well-paid assistant position in a major program that would offset most or all of what UA would owe him over the remaining 3 years of his contract. Based on the Zips' record over the last 2 years, including the most recent team performances, UA would have to have really deep and abiding faith that Ianello is on the verge of a major turnaround next season to keep him in place. I'd be just fine with Ianello as UA's head coach if it were true that a major turnaround is just around the corner. But, like others on this forum, I've seen no evidence to give me deep and abiding faith in that scenario. I am pretty sure that he would not be required to accept a position below HC. We would like be on the hook for a few years. The contract just says that he must make a good faith effort to mitigate damages by looking for a coaching job or comparable position. I think that any coaching job that he would get would mitigate damages, not just a head coach position. I love the clause in the contract that specifies that the contract is terminated if the coach dies. The lawyers who write these things are something else.

Unless we could some how convince a big name coach to come in here, we will be losing immediately. Obviously someone who has won in the past but just let go at their school, Tressel? I'm not saying it will ever happen, but that is the only way. If anyone hears TW talk about football his first topic is grades. I understand this is the most important part, but all he says is we're winning off the field and we got a plan in place and progressing to win on the field. Could be just me but I see ZERO progress. The right guy - even if we have never heard of him - could turn this thing around in a couple of years. But after this debacle, I have very little confidence in TW's ability to make the hiring decision. If his next football hire turned out to be a good decision, it would be an accident.

I think you can somewhat fairly compare what has happened at Akron the past 2 years with what has happened at Can't in just less than 1 season. Hazell has 4 wins in his first year. That team is 3-3 in the MAC. It has played better as the season has progressed. Hazell also is playing with players he inherited from the previous coach. Ianello has had almost 2 seasons to install whatever program/system and players he wanted to install. Ianello has 1 MAC win,2 total wins,only one win is over a D-I opponent. There appears to have been little if any progress in the competitiveness of the team in the MAC. Not wins,just competitiveness. The players are buying what Ianello and his coaches are selling. We can piss and moan all we want on this site. But until lots of fans start rattling the cages of the Administrators,who we hope are embarrassed by this, nothing is going to happen. This is a point I made some time ago. When you bring in a new coach for a bad program you cannot expect an immediate turnaround. But you should be able to see steady signs of progress, during the season and year-to-year. Instead, we are witnessing a total face plant almost two years into this. The only positive thing I can say about the situation is that it looks like the players are still giving a good effort.

At this point, Paterno's lawyers have to be telling him not to say another word about this to anyone. I am trying to imagine Joe Paterno being called as a witness and asserting his 5th Amendment right not to incriminate himself.

Can you ever envision the Zips eating more than 1 year of a HC contract? If they could make a great hire...a real head-turner...they would easily make up the $350k/yr in Ianello's salary. But no one typically looks deeper than "We're going to pay a guy $350k/yr NOT to coach the Zips? Forget it."The empty stadium and horrific team performance is dragging down the entire University. And I have no faith that Wistercil knows how to fix it. None whatsoever.Does anybody think this guy has a snowball's chance in Hell of turning this program around? Better yet, specifically, does TW have any confidence left in this guy? If the answer is no...if lead pipe cinch confidence in the process is not there you gotta eat his contract and make a change now. You have the cost of the contract on the one hand and the costs of keeping him on the other, like the lost revenue from the empty seats, the alienation of the fanbase and perhaps the biggest cost of all...If you allow this guy to continue down this road of incompetence, implementing his process and his inept offense, you totally hamstring the next coach, who most certainly will not run the pro set, with a roster loaded with fullbacks and tight ends whose positions will be obsolete.We can't afford to keep betting on a losing hand.Now, attracting that head turner coach that you talk about would be extremely difficult not only because the same AD who hired this guy would be making the decision again, but also because what up-and-comer would want the job?This is a mess of epic proportions.I don't care if the next coach is a "head turner" or someone I never heard of, as long as he turns this program around.And I agree completely that any potential head coach with options is not going to be attracted to this job. Hiring a coach is pretty much a crapshoot under the best of circumstances. At any rate, we have at least one more year of RI, and if we win a few games next year, he'll probably be back the year after that. Because TW has a huge professional interest in RI's success, he will give him every possible opportunity before pulling the plug and admitting that he screwed up.

This is first time under RI that I was proud of this team.

God Bless The ProcessI would love for someone with nothing better to do with their time to do the following content study. How many times since taking over the Zips has Coach I or the AD used some form of the word "win" in a public statement? Coaches need to publically talk about their desire to win and what it takes to win. When the "process" is the key element of public discussion, it becomes the theme of the program. Of course we all want the Zips to get better and there needs to be a process to do that, but winning has to be part of the process or everyone is spinning their wheels. Winning needs to be talked about in public and the "process" should be talked about between coaches behind closed doors. When Marshall was in the league, they publically stated they wanted to "win championships", whether MAC or a bowl championship.I like to listen to Brian Kelly after a loss. Everything he talks about is why his team lost and what they need to do to win games. It isn't process or any of that nonsense. It is a discussion on why they lost and what creates losing. He then discusses his faults and his teams faults and what needs to be done to win. No process....winninig.I pay attention to what coaches say at the press conferences after games too and the best coaches do exactly what you say. When they lose, they don't talk about the good things they saw; they focus on what they need to do to get better. I love listening to Nick Saban after games. Even when his team win, he talks about what he saw the team do wrong and how he needs to do a better job of coaching. The guy is never satisfied with himself or his team. All he wants to do is win championships.That's why I cringe when I listen to RI's post-games press conferences. With the exception of last week, when he really did sound down, most of the time his conferences are focused on how pleased he was with the progress and improvement he saw. It is ridiculous. Nick Saban would jump off a bridge after watching his team mess up as bad as the Zips have this season and last. Improvement. Process. Progress. Its a shell game to try to distract you from the fact that RI's teams have managed to get only one win over a DI team and have gotten regularly blown out of games against quality teams.Someday we'll be discussing what was the low point of RI's tenure. So far, the 49-0 halftime score against Cinci has been the bottom, IMO. Ironically, it would be a significant improvement for this team to function at the level that resulted in JD getting canned. That is how far things have sunk.That being said, nothing would please me more than to be proven totally wrong. Three potentially winnable games are coming up.

Looks like WVU to Big XII. I guess schools with low academic standards like Baylor and Texas will have another friend to play football with.Want to know why teams like Missouri, WVU, etc. are passing on the Big Ten? It has nothing to do with academic standards and the Big Ten passing on them. If it was, Nebraska wouldn't get in. It's because the league is crap and schools want to be part of something bigger, not smaller. Adding Nebraska to the league does nothing more than add an average Big 12 team to the league. Granted, Nebraska is still better than 90% of the Big Ten, but the rest of the league isn't very good.Academics have noting to do with the moves conferences are making.You honestly believe that WVU and Missouri took a "pass" on joining the Big Ten? Wow. They would kill to get an invite.Maybe pass isn't the right word. They looked at better options. Missouri was always rumored to join the Big Ten and they didn't because the SEC is a better league. WVU didn't go crawling on their hands and knees to the Big Ten. Outside of Notre Dame, future Big Ten expansion will be adding garbage to an already bad league. Certainly not a Leader in college football.ESPN, 10/6/11: MISSOURI WANTED BIG TEN INVITE THE MOST - Missouri is hoping to join the Southeastern Conference but would have preferred an offer from the Big Ten that never came, a university official said yesterday. Missouri hoped to join the Big Ten last year but the league instead chose Nebraska. The university official said the Big Ten remains Missouri's top choice but that conference "has no interest." "That's what's left," the official said, referring to the SEC.Sporting News, 10/5/11: BIG TEN COULD STEAL MISSOURI FROM SEC - The Big Ten carries the academic prestige that so attracted Missouri a year ago. Missouri is a member of the Association of Academic Universities and school officials thought that would be its ticket. *** Given that the SEC currently maintains no buyout for members to escape the league, even after joining the the Tigers could walk away the moment the option to join the Big Ten became available.There are lots of other stories about this but you get the point. The SEC was Missouri's second choice. My prediction is that within the next few years the Big Ten will expand to 16 teams and that Missouri will be in. Probably Pitt and Syracuse as well. Then they will go hard after Notre Dame to be the 16th team. WVU need not bother begging and crawling to get in the Big Ten. It would not help. The school that is going to get screwed the worst after all this shakes out is Cincinnati. No BCS conference has expressed any interest in taking them in. They will be drop down to a non BCS-school when all is said and done.

Looks like WVU to Big XII. I guess schools with low academic standards like Baylor and Texas will have another friend to play football with.Want to know why teams like Missouri, WVU, etc. are passing on the Big Ten? It has nothing to do with academic standards and the Big Ten passing on them. If it was, Nebraska wouldn't get in. It's because the league is crap and schools want to be part of something bigger, not smaller. Adding Nebraska to the league does nothing more than add an average Big 12 team to the league. Granted, Nebraska is still better than 90% of the Big Ten, but the rest of the league isn't very good.Academics have noting to do with the moves conferences are making.You honestly believe that WVU and Missouri took a "pass" on joining the Big Ten? Wow. They would kill to get an invite.The Big Ten is paying each member $22.6 million this year. The Big 12 is paying out $12 million to each member. No one leaves the Big Ten once they get in. No one.

Looks like WVU to Big XII. I guess schools with low academic standards like Baylor and Texas will have another friend to play football with.Want to know why teams like Missouri, WVU, etc. are passing on the Big Ten? It has nothing to do with academic standards and the Big Ten passing on them. If it was, Nebraska wouldn't get in. It's because the league is crap and schools want to be part of something bigger, not smaller. Adding Nebraska to the league does nothing more than add an average Big 12 team to the league. Granted, Nebraska is still better than 90% of the Big Ten, but the rest of the league isn't very good.Academics have noting to do with the moves conferences are making.You honestly believe that WVU and Missouri took a "pass" on joining the Big Ten? Wow. They would kill to get an invite.

Twenty years ago, this guy was around Ambrose's age.I don't know exactly who I want, but I want an experienced coach who understands the challenges in the MAC. Specifically, how to get good players to a MAC school, which is something a school like Toledo has always been able to do for the most part. We don't need flash. We need a guy who knows the MAC and can actually get some players of MAC talent and turn them into something.Everyone is looking for that "one guy". I think there are a lot of coaches who could win at MAC schools and they never get a shot because they aren't the right age or have the flash of others. KD was exactly that guy for the basketball program. His career in coaching was basically over, but he was a good coach with successful MAC experience and a talent for coaching the game. It would have been easy to look past him when change came.In closing, I'm not surprised to see a thread like this. I am surprised to see JZ84 started it. Things must have been really bad yesterday. Very sad for UofA, but the truth is the truth.Everyone has their breaking point I guess. I am generally an optimist who will give people the benefit of doubt much more often than not. I was critical of the hire from day one, but I backed off and have done my best to be open minded over the last season and a half. Besides the poor showing on the field, something else got my attention yesterday. On the post-game show, one could audibly discern the first evidence of cracks appearing in iCoach's confidence. Up until now, he (like many coaches) could always seem to exude a brashness that s probably necessary for any chance to succeed in the coaching business. I wonder if anyone else heard him the same way I did. I had the feeling that the house of cards was beginning to collapse.Moore is a terrific coach, but he's been at Appy so long I wonder how easy he'd be to pluck away, especially to a MAC school.I noticed the same thing at RI's press conference after the OU game. I felt bad for him.Three years ago Toledo fired its coach after a 3-9 season. They had won a total of 10 games the previous two seasons.Two years ago Akron fired its head coach after a 3-9 season. We had won a total of 9 games the previous two seasons. Akron and Toledo were in a similar position when their new coach was hired, except that Akron had the added advantage of having beautiful new facilities. Toledo's coach had an immediate positive impact; RI had an immediate negative impact. What really gets me is that we have squandered the advantage of our new stadium. The crowds and the quality of Akron football these past two seasons have been worthy of the Rubber Bowl.The Towson coach is having a good season so far, 5-1. But this is just his third year. he was 3-19 his first two years. So who knows, maybe there is hope for RI.My biggest concern is that if the present situation continues for too long it will be difficult to attract a talented young coach to come here.

I like the deep throws even though they haven't connected. May as well shake things up.

There are 126 football teams in what used to be called Division I, including Akron. The other teams on the list are in what used to be called Division I AA, which includes VMI and Gardner-Webb.

The stats from yesterday's game: Rushing: FIU 216;Akron 112 Passing: FIU 308; Akron 157 First downs: FIU 29; Akron 14 Though the Zips kept the score reasonably close, it's clear that FIU thoroughly outplayed Akron. FIU is a decent team, but not as good as the better MAC teams. Sagarin has them rated at 87, I think. That being said, I also saw glimmers of improvement yesterday. There were times where the offense was moving with confidence. But then things would breakdown. I'm not making my remarks based on the team's performance based on one game. I'm making them in the context of RI's entire tenure, including the numerous embarrassing blowouts. As far as I am concerned, his grace period is over. I don't expect miracles but I do expect progress. And that means wins, at least over the teams in the lower tier of the MAC. He has not shown that he can do that. As we say every week, we'll know more after the next game. OU is no super team if they can lose to UB.

It is a sign of how low things have sunk with this program that the discussion among the fans is about measuring progress in anything but wins. Wins are all that matter. I don't care about all the improvement people see if the end result is more losing. BTW, there seems to be a feeling on the part of some people that if you are critical of the program then you don't support the team. That's not true. Personally, I've seen enough already to make me believe that RI is not going to be successful here and that he will be fired before his contract is up. But if lightning strikes and he somehow gets this thing turned around and develops a winner, I will be extremely happy to have been proven wrong. And a comment on the Belichik reference. I think getting fired made him a better coach. It forced him to change. I think that he has said that himself. Had he not been fired, I'm not sure he would have ever developed into the coach he is today.

+1 But for me....this last loss was disheartening. There was improvement but other areas regressed. Right now...it seems like that kids game where a ground hog head keeps popping up to be wacked down. I really thought the D-Line was better than it showed Saturday and was a strength of the team. And the mental mistakes were too numerous to overcome. This was a game where we could gauge our improvement as they were close to us in talent. Well...we now know were are not as far along as some would have hoped and we have a ways to go...but we are young. The good thing is that we did not quit. Can we get there with ICoach?? It is looking more doubtful. I will continue to support the team and coach through this year. But I will no longer defend him from the negative hyenas on this forum. Negative hyenas? Right now, Akron is the worst football team in DI. Don't blame the fans for being negative. They are lucky they have any fans left who care.

I thought winning the Wagon Wheel trophy changed this year. I was listening to 1350 early and they were talking about it being a competition for all the sports programs. Each program gets a point to determine the winner of the trophy this year. Too bad Can't doesn't have a men's soccer team to beat on. There is some sort of over-all trophy presented for what they call "The Wagon Wheel Challenge," but the actual Wagon Wheel goes to the winner of the football game. As long as TW is AD, we're in trouble. This was his signature hire and he screwed it up completely. I just went back and read what he said when he announced the search for the new football coach. He said, "This is not a rebuilding process. The cupboard is full."