ZachTheZip

Ditto.

It's a lateral move competitively, sure, but it gives us an edge in local recruiting because of the biases against the MAC. It allows us to improve faster and to a higher ceiling than the MAC offers. Travel is more expensive, but their TV deal pays out far more money. There is a much higher opportunity for an at-large basketball bid in C-USA. They have better paying and more prestigious bowl games.

Right now it's the Big East, who despite all their problems, is still miles ahead of the MAC or C-USA. But there's also the possibility of a split into an eastern and western conference. I would like to be in an eastern conference with ECU, Old Dominion, and Marshall. Even being in C-USA as an eastern division with them is better than being in the MAC. It's a matter of differentiation from the other MAC schools. Familiarity breeds contempt, and the people of Ohio are familiar enough with the MAC to know it's a bad conference full of uninteresting local teams. Going somewhere else tells people that we're not like Can't, Ohio, Miami, or BGSU, who all suck according to the people we're trying to attract to our athletics programs. They don't know about the C-USA schools, but they have been raised since birth to believe that anything from outside Ohio is superior to whatever's in it, so belonging to a conference that's not saturated here could make them believe that we have a better athletic program than the rest of the MAC (because they're all stuck in an Ohio league, and a league from Ohio must suck by definition).

Because it's full of schools who aren't satisfied with where they're at. They all work towards improving and eventually exiting to a better conference. How many schools in the MAC can you say that about? Most of the MAC schools don't care. They do just enough to stay where they are, and they'll never improve themselves, which means the conference will never move forward. C-USA is at least trying to move forward, so while they might have dropped behind the current MAC, they will jump it in a few years.

Who's next for Conference USA? Akron the only MAC school mentioned.

The ECU Chancellor did an interview yesterday saying that C-USA's target is 18 teams. He mentioned that they were looking at some Sun Belt and MAC schools. We're not done yet.

http://www.stationcaster.com/stations/wknr...-1336417549.mp3

Anita Brown article.

You'll just have to remain wrong, then.

ABJ Article

If you watched more NCAA tournament games, you would realize that if they didn't spend that time talking about LeBron, they would just use it to talk about the matchup between the .500 record BCS conference also-rans that's coming up later that day.

Transferred from Washington to Howard for more playing time. Graduated from Howard with a year of eligibility left, decided to use it at a FBS school and chose Akron over Arizona State. Seems pretty straightforward.

He goes to OSU and Kentucky to be seen and to self-promote. He goes to Akron games to support his former coach and, previously, his former teammates.

Originally played for the Washington Huskies before transferring to Howard. He will use his last season of eligibility to play as a Zip. Chose Akron over Arizona State. https://twitter.com/#!/KMangum3/status/...077571555012608

http://fox8.com/2012/04/30/jim-tressel-beg...rsity-of-akron/

Story. Hopefully we see more stories like this in the coming days. The coaches are out there beating the bushes for anybody who looks like they can play D-I ball.

C-USA added Old Dominion and Charlotte today. Good move for basketball, terrible move for football. The MAC just moved ahead of them even further. Now they're where the Sun Belt was at, as a starter league for football moveups.

I'd rather live in a condemned house in a rich neighborhood than in the nicest house in the ghetto.

A link to the survey. Everyone should fill this out.

C-USA, the MWC, and the Sun Belt have all back-filled their losses and become weaker. I think they've all fallen behind the MAC at this point. The MAC is now sitting in 7th behind the six former BCS conferences simply by virtue of not panicking when Temple left and not adding a bunch of regional FCS schools with questionable success. It's crazy, but right now unless we somehow, some way, get an invitation to the Big East, we are best served by sticking with the MAC. C-USA is weaker than the MAC now. The Sun Belt took several steps backwards. The MWC lost everything that made them great, and the WAC is all but dead.

What was the deal with the team playing in their warmups through the first half?

Zips OT Jake Anderson signed a UDFA contract with the Browns. Look for a few more graduating Zips to sign in the next few days.

Good day for the Baseball team, beating CMU 7-0 and Andrew Brown setting the program record for career innings pitched. They're now 17-25, but are 10-6 in the MAC and are 3rd in the MAC East and tied for 3rd overall. They need to pick up momentum against CMU because the toughest games are still to come with series against Ohio and at Miami and Can't.

Was there for about an hour before leaving to catch up on some beta-testing. I think they're learning from the previous Springfests, but there is still a lot of unfulfilled potential.

The thing is that despite all that's been said, DW was still right there with our other two QBs, or only a small step behind at most. And he was clearly ahead of at least two of our QBs that got converted to WR. That tells me that the QB position is not in great shape. We'll have to wait until the other three QBs (Steve Franco, Dan Harding, and Marcus Prather) come in this fall to see where we really stand. It's entirely possible that none of the QBs that played in the spring game will start against UCF.