ZachTheZip

Because the bridge is a part of the JAR, and Memorial (which the JAR replaced as our primary sports arena) was retrofitted to connect to it. We only wanted to tear down Memorial, and that's all we did. There were plans to put a new College of Education building in that spot, but they were put on hold due to a lack of funding and significant delays caused by the original demolition crew bungling the job. The plan was to have the bridge connect to the new building, and I assume that is still the case when it eventually gets done (This sounds like a job for VP Tressel, who earned his Masters degree from the very same College of Education that we're trying to build a new home for).

No one was supposed to know about that!

Rumors of an Ohio school? Haven't heard of any from reliable sources.

Nice to get any kind of mention out of that station.

http://bsncollegiateshowcase.com/index.php Apparently this is happening at the Stile Field House. I sometimes get the feeling that the effect the fieldhouse has had on UA and the athletics department is under-appreciated. It has brought in more events than the rest of the athletics facilities combined, and most NFL teams would love to have a place this nice.

I'm really going to miss watching Charlie Coles on the sideline.

Keep in mind that C-USA soccer lost SMU, UCF, and Memphis in the realignment process, and that they might not even exist as a soccer conference in a few years. They would be WVU's first choice, but the instability plays to the MAC's favor.

It would bring more pressure on the rest of the MAC to step up their game.

ABJ does a breakdown of Tressel's past and present salary

A Marshall fan proposed Akron as a candidate for the new merger conference on the C-USA board. I have refrained from posting in that thread because I wanted to see what their reactions would be without an Akron fan there influencing opinions. But enough time has passed and I think it's ok to correct some of their assumptions. The thread is a good read if you want to know how we are viewed.

With the move to the Big XII happening in July, WVU needs a new home for its men's soccer team ASAP. The MAC is the best choice for them right now. C-USA is in flux and the MAC is willing to take in single-sport members for soccer.

I would be surprised if they showed up. The JAR needs to get some suites. I expect that the reaction would be mixed. Some people would be appreciative, some wouldn't care, and some would be obnoxious and make fools of themselves.

http://www.ohio.com/news/local/university-...-arena-1.264926

National exposure? Do you have any idea where these schools in the merger are located? National exposure comes from playing teams in big media markets on TV games. This new conference doesn't have those and won't have half the TV games the MAC has. Name four teams from the merger that would excite a local college football fan more than playing Ohio, Can't, BG, or Miami would.

Average Sagarins of the new non-BCS landscape as it will be in 2013: MAC: 62.53 Merger: 62.51 WAC: 57.87 SBC: 57.05 So the MAC is the top non-BCS conference, and we don't have to spend outlandish amounts of money on travel to remote small-market cities to make it happen. Football drives the boat, but travel expense for non-revenue sports sinks it. Their TV contract will take a massive hit after losing all the good teams from both conferences and you're feeding so many mouths that the payout per team might end up smaller than the MAC's current contract. It could get even worse if they try to poach some WAC or Sun Belt teams. And on top of that, the whole thing will fall apart in a few years when some teams get tired of this stupidity and try to split. I say we wait it out in the top non-BCS football conference and then try to get in on an eastern conference once this thing breaks up.

The MAC is terrible, but it's a stronger football conference than this new amalgam of bottom-feeders.

Do you think it would be a good idea for the MAC to eliminate divisions in basketball and move to an 18-game conference schedule? I'm asking because I heard it was a possibility as soon as next season.

The "merger" has been made official. And it would be an absolutely horrible move for Akron (or any MAC team) to join it. With this move, the MAC has become the premium non-BCS football conference, simply because the huge amount of dead weight of this new conference drags them down below the MAC.

Because we played NIU. They're so bad that even a win caused us to drop by 10 spots. But we play good teams from now until the tournament. Our RPI will improve by at least 20 spots even if we only go .500 the rest of the way.

I have an idea, but I will leave it up to NewZipsFan to decide if they want to divulge that kind of info.

Yesterday (Feb. 12th) marked the 200th day until our home opener against UCF. It's weird that it's on a Thursday, but it means we'll hopefully get a good TV spot as part of the college football season's opening day. Here is a link to the UCF message board and their discussion on tailgating at Akron in particular. They should bring a good crowd. If anyone has a Rivals or a Yahoo account, maybe you could give them some advice on tailgating at Akron because they seem to be in need of it. Or you could always direct them back to Zipsnation.

4,300

VCU beat ODU on the road, which should help. Discovered a neat feature on RPIForecast.com. At the bottom of the team page for Akron is a sortable list of all the teams that factor into our RPI and how much weight each one has in the calculation.

I would take NIU, Temple, Ohio, and Toledo over most of those teams, except for Southern Miss and Tulsa. In fact, Temple, who has never beaten a winning MAC team, waxed Wyoming only two months ago and Toledo beat Air Force in a shootout.

http://www.newsnet5.com/dpp/news/local_new...ersity-of-akron