ZachTheZip

Good ideas. Now, what is your plan to pay for it and maintain it once it is buillt?If we build it strictly for basketball, we'll never be able to pay for it even if we put in some high priced luxury suites and sell them off to local companies. But if we build it to host many different types of events then we can rent it out. Concerts, ice skating, monster truck rallies, and all sorts of crap like that.

I don't see travel as an issue. There's nothing close either way. In the MAC you have to send your team to places like Boca Raton, Florida and Oneonta, New York.I bet it all comes down to WVU not wanting to be in the C-USA simply because that's where Marshall is and they would never stand for being an equal with Marshall even for something like Men's Soccer.

We own a whole city block west of Brown Street. It has a bigger footprint than our baseball field and the JAR. Why not put the arena there? You can walk across Wheeler to get to Manny's. That whole neighborhood is off-campus student housing and has cleaned up in recent years (a few blocks south or west is an entirely different story), and an arena there would help that process along.

West Virginia looking into putting their Men's Soccer program into the MAC or C-USA.If they joined they would be the second-closest team to Akron in terms of travel, behind only Bowling Green.

OK then. How are you going to pay for it short term and long term if nobody shows up? If it was as easy and reasonable as you say, it would be done already.Usually how these things work is that you secure a certain amount of funding first and then build the best facility you can with that. So my answer to your question is that we would pay for it the exact same way that we would pay for a smaller arena. Last time, we got screwed when we hired a terrible architect to build a scaled down version of what was originally planned to be a gorgeous, 10,000 seat arena. Instead we got the JAR. Hire a better architect and we can get what we need for a relatively cheap price.

I think that is true. But I will argue that is better for us to be under rated than over at this time. I would rather them have something to prove....and work to prove it.No, we need a top 4 seed for the Tournament to be guaranteed home games through to the Final Four. The prospects of playing UConn or Maryland on the road are ominous.Oh my God I am a selfish jerk! I am living in the Tampa area now and I would love to see a scenario where the Zips have to come play at USF. I am still pissed about missing the Lady Zips playing at University of South Florida.Next Sunday, November 6th, the Zips will play in Boca Raton against the FAU Owls. Probably the closest you'll get.

Not a good start.

After reading some articles, apparently our holder made the call to go for 2 the first time. There are so many problems with that. First is how we line up for PATs. Coach says that we always line up as if we're going for 2 before hand, and then shift to kick-protection if we're going to kick it. This decision was likely made early in the season or pre-season when we had a less reliable kicker than we do now. There's no need to do that now.Second is that the coaches coached our holder to make that decision. He did what he was coached to do in practices. So our coaches are coaching our players to make bad decisions on the field.Third is that our holder had the option to kick or run the fake, and he made the wrong call based on the circumstances of the game. Can he not do simple football math? Did he not know the score? Or did he want to impress someone on the sideline by orchestrating a risky trick play? I hope somebody grabbed him by the helmet and yelled at him about knowing the score and not taking risks when the best possible outcome is a point that didn't mean anything in terms of football scoring.

It would be nice to have baseball play in Canal Park more often. We could schedule around the Aeros easily enough.As far as a new arena goes, the JAR is undersized in the MAC. The average MAC arena has 7,769 seats. Only WMU, CMU, and BG have smaller arenas than us and everyone else has at least 6k seats. So a new Arena should have 8k seats, minimum. That would still put us behind sush powerhouse basketball programs at Eastern Michigan and Northern Illinois.Don't tell me that it would always be empty. That shouldn't matter, anyways. It's more important that it's really nice and luxurious. You oversize it for two reasons: potential and recruiting. Potential for this team to string together several years of NCAA tournament appearances and make a run in one or two of them is there, and you don't want a crappy arena to hamper that. An arena, like a football stadium, is usually the only physical form of interaction between fans and a university. It's all they see and all they base their impressions on, so it had better be impressive. And with recruiting these days, kids would rather play in a really nice, huge arena that's three-quarters empty than a three-quarters full dump.

You need to be aggressive against teams that are better than you. You need to be conservative against teams that let you beat them or are beating themselves. We're doing the exact opposite. Why is that a good thing?

If the best way to win is to take the game into OT and you don't do that, can you really call it "playing to win"?

Hard to believe, but we finally got another commitment!Right now it appears to be a soft verbal, but 3-star WR Elijah St Hilaire from New Jersey has reportedly committed to the Zips.

OG Adam Pankey commits to Pittsburgh.

It is something to build on. Next time we can try to sing along instead of stopping and staring at the trumpet player.

Did you read posts #18 and 19 in this thread? It was not a sideline decision by the coach.It changes nothing. When there is absolutely no advantage to getting the two points, couldn't the coach be calling off the "option" of going for two beforehand? No matter what his players might see when they run out there and line up?The single point at that particular time was way too critical. It made two TDs with extra points a win instead of a tie. There should not have been an "option" in that situation. The TWO was absolutely insignificant at that point in the game.With your assumptions, you are correct. However, the game could have played out in many different ways. If it had played out in a way that 2 points on that play would have made a difference in the Zips' favor in the final results, it would have also been easy to criticize the team for not taking advantage of the opportunity presented by the CMU defensive alignment that invited a 2-point attempt. The problem was not with the choice of going for the 2-point conversion, but in the execution.Believe me, I love Monday morning quarterbacking, too. I've never lost a game on my Monday morning calls. It's a great feeling to have a perfect record. It was a terrible decision when it happened, and it's still a terrible decision now. Why are you defending it?I was screaming my lungs out at the coaches while the team was lining up to take the PAT. Both times. I didn't decide it was bad after the fact, but before. Because anybody with the capability for rational thought knew that it was a bad call.

A lot will leave to go to other programs. They don't want too many years at Akron on their resume.Who would hire them?

Interesting that Ianello and his assistants were argueing constantly over the scoring decisions today. I wonder who made the call to go for 2 after the first TD, and who wanted to kick the FG down by 14. We might see a bunch of assistants fired after the season. If we're not going to fire Ianello, then I hope it was the coordinators making the boneheaded decisions because they can be replaced mroe easily than the head coach. And I hope they do get replaced if that's the case.

Kick two PATs and you win. Kick the second PAT and you go to OT with a huge amount of momentum and likely win. Go for a TD instead of a FG when you're down by 2 scores and a FG doesn't change that fact and you win. Coach doesn't want to win. He also is pretty terrible at math.The first TD, you're down by 20. What does going for 2 do in that situation? If you make it, nothing. If you miss, you're down 14 instead of 13 for the extra point. Then, down by 14, you go for a FG instead of a TD, so you're still down by 2 scores. A FG does nothing there. Then at the end, you go for 2 again (with a really stupid play) and lose the game instead of sending it to OT at home with all the momentum. But it wouldn't have been neccesary if you weren't stupid earlier on in the game.

Merriwether is gone.

OT Logan Dietz commits to Bowling Green.

It's not idealism. It's a question. How will this work? So the NCAA passed something ground-breaking without figuring out how to implement it.

New offers:JUCO CB Brett HarringtonJUCO WR Alonzo AgwuenuWe are really hitting the JUCO recruiting circuit hard right now.

So how does this work for partial-scholarship players, which make up the majority of student-athletes in the NCAA? Should someone with 10% of a full scholarship get $2k to spend? What about walk-ons? Every male student in the university would be walking on to the football team if it means getting $2k.

New offer: JUCO DE Albert Presly

Just had an interesting thought: if Louisville goes to the Big 12, their soccer program will be looking for a new home because the Big 12 doesn't sponsor soccer. Same goes for WVU. Will Ken Lolla end up back in the MAC?