ZachTheZip

Zarek Valentin looking forward to watching his old team play.

What timezone was this scheduled for? I've been listening for a half an hour and there's no indication that this is going to happen.

It also doesn't mean that they care more about the sport.

Article on Bice, Pachuta, and Ransom

You seem to be confusing rural and suburban areas. Can't, Buffalo, and EMU are suburban. NIU, Miami, Bowling Green are rural. I've been to most MAC campuses and quite a few Big Ten campuses. The Big Ten is made up entirely of land grant universities. That and their academics tie them together, but more importantly than any of that, they share the same culture. The MAC does not share a culture across its member institutions, in fact it varies wildly. Akron begged to get into the MAC, and it was a horrible mistake. If I had my say back then I would be dead against such a move (I am well aware of how the MAC was around the time we got in, so I am not judging based on where we are now). We never belonged in this league; the MAC has never treated us like one of its core members. As far as EMU's budget, they spend it funding non-revenue programs. That is where their priority is. they can be just as successful in a non-football league or a lower division. If you're in the MAC, as an FBS school football had better be your top priority, followed by basketball. Ball State is another school who doesn't care for sports, but keeps them reluctantly. They drove away Brady Hoke after he became too successful.

Interested in knowing who in the Mac, perhaps with the exceptions of emu and ball state, are not like minded athletically with Akron. And most in the Mac are ranked above Akron academically, correct? Bowling Green is being carried by a few big donors. Their administration has no interest in D-I athletics except to keep those few donors happy. They have a miniscule athletic budget compared to the rest of the MAC (even EMU). Some schools in the MAC care about athletics, others do not. Some that do not care still have success, but aren't interested in taking it any further than they have to. Some are not satisfied with where they are and strive to improve. Akron is in the second group. Quite a few MAC schools are in the first group, happy with how things are right now. Academic philosophy is not the same as some ranking. A gigantic state research institution and a small private college be ranked close to each other nationally, but they don't share the same philosophy. Should they associate with the same conference based on that ranking, then? The MAC is a hodge-podge of urban and rural, research and undergrad, eastern and midwestern, just all sorts of things mixed together for the sake of short travel distances. It's hard to relate to the other schools. Part of what makes some of the conferences great is that you're playing against schools and opposing fans whom you have a lot in common with, culturally.

I started this thread today because I was reading about this very topic somewhere else today. Not weeks ago. And if you care to recall, even before he resigned I have been an advocate of somehow getting Tressel here. I was hoping for a situation like Ohio has with Frank Solich, where he comes here to coach in a lower-pressure situation until he wants to retire.

Your first and second points are not the least bit true. As for your third... in football it pays to cheat. Until the NCAA grows some balls and re-implements the death penalty there's not a punishment in the world they could throw at us that would outweigh the benefits. befides, do you think that he'll be able to get away with that level of stuff again, with all the scrutiny surrounding a move like this?

It's not about Ianello. The benefit would be there even if Ianello was successful both last year and this year, or if we had an entirely different coach. It's too good of an opportunity to pass up. And he WILL be coaching again. After this season he'll be back on the sidelines somewhere, and we had better make damn sure that it's here.

Tell me why we shouldn't be doing everything within the university's power to hire Jim Tressel as our next football coach. We'll need a new coach after this season and there's not a single person in the world that could bring to Akron what Tressel could. Money shouldn't be a long term issue, as hiring Tressel boosts attendance and donations to levels we've not seen in the history of the football program. He brings in nearly nightly coverage on the Cleveland and Columbus TV news stations and most newspapers in the state of Ohio. He brings in national sports attention. These are things that you couldn't buy with 10 times what you would have to pay him. And most of that's before he ever coaches a single game for us. Some of you would be concerned about possible sanctions that he might bring with him. But we're already operating so low under the scholarship cap thanks to Ianello that you have to wonder if it would even affect us. I'm trying to think of a negative to this. I don't see one. It should be Dr Proenza and Tom Wistrcill's top priority from now until December. It affects more than just athletics, it's a tremendous boost to the profile of the university and an instant game-changer where it comes to local perception.

A&M made it official on their athletic website. Now the SEC takes one or three more, and the lines of dominos begin to fall once again. I hope Dr Proenza is on the phone with FBS presidents all across the Eastern US. Get us into a conference with like-minded schools both academically and athletically.

I have never panned the players on the team. I have maintained, however, that Ianello's recruits are not heads and shoulders above Brookhart's recruits as some here make them out to be. Tyler Williams is the most explosive player on the roster. I have seen him play. I have seen the other players on the team play. Williams is the player we want returning kicks and punts, and the one we want the Wildcat to center around.

So the most explosive player on the roster won't see the field... Is this another year to spend developing, ramping up to some theoretical season when we can finally put winning at the top of our priority list? I don't want to have to sit through another year of "building".

Apparently a lot of the depth we had on the O-line is out due to injuries.

He's already had lots of chances. He had a chance to take a talented roster and mold them into a winning team. Instead he removed dozens of players and then complained that the resulting lack of depth made it difficult to prepare for games. He had a chance to start the season off right with home games against a weak BCS team and an FCS team. It was a chance to show that his system worked and to let his players have confidence in his ability to lead them. Instead he left his playbook at home against Syracuse and literally kicked the game away against Gardner Webb. He had a chance to connect with existing fans and to add new ones with a still-new stadium and the promises of improving over his predecessor. Instead he isolated himself from everybody who wanted to support the program and from most of the athletic department as well. He already blew his chances. Anybody with half a brain knew what was important for a new head coach to do, and he did none of them. It's time to clean up the mistake and start over with someone who knows what they're doing.

We're in a fight against time. I can't sit on my hands when someone is taking something I love and utterly destroying it. The more time we give Ianello, the more time he has to irreversibly damage the football program. Time is an excuse. Everything is an excuse. You either win or you lose, no excuses can change that. I bet if we went 0-12 you'd still argue that he needs more time because he had a new QB and a new defensive coordinator.

Right here is one (THE?) reason that when I read the threads about moving the the Big East, I generally have the "careful what you wish for," thought. I'd rather stay in the MAC and dominate this conference every year. We'd have consistent, perhaps annual, Top 25 rankings, even if no real chance at winning the national championship. But that's fine w/ me. My grand vision for Akron football is lower-eschelon Top 25. And we'd be packing the Info & everyone would know who/where Akron is (even though I guess LBJ's already accomplished this one). Become the Boise State of the MAC. Boise State translated their success into moving to a better conference. Akron needs to get to C-USA if your "grand vision" is to happen.

Ianello wastes some guys time at a wedding, reads a few books that don't tell him anything other than what he's already led himself to believe. Kevin Cosgrove begins his proccess of ruining yet another defense.

If Ianello planned to build using recruiting, then he needed a better record to attract better recruits. How do you expect to out-recruit even an average MAC team when you struggled to get a single win? So why would you sacrifice an entire year when you needed to use that year to establish a foundation based on winning? How do you expect to win after teaching your players for an entire year that winning isn't important? I take back what I said about last year setting us back five years. It was the hiring of Ianello that truly set us back. We won't recover until we have a real coach who can clean up this mess.

5,241 is the new home attendance record. And we're not even done expanding the stadium. In other college soccer, Louisville set their own home attendance record with a crowd of 7,821. Unfortunately for them, Dylan Mares is out for the season with a torn ACL.

Zach, Sorry if you took my post as a personal attach towards you...was not meant to be. I do like you and although I have no proof...I think you are bright. But lol some of your post make me question that. I don’t mean to imply that you are stupid...or even average. You have my apology. I don't want to answer your questions because I don't want to have a back and forth debate with you. Please don't take that personally. I don't want a back and forth debate with anyone. One observation... when you post things about ICoach...one could read them as very personal attacks. Wouldn't your complaint be something like the "kettle calling the pot black" sort of thing?? I believe the Zips will have a better season than most expect. It will be interesting to see how the big ICoach detractors will handle that. One thing for sure...we will find out soon enough. Doug Fair enough. I apologize. I go after Ianello because I can only base my opinions of people on what I have seen of them, their actions and words. I just haven't seen anything, not one thing, that makes me feel good about where he is taking our program. You and the rest of Zipsnation have every right to be optimistic if you want, I just don't see what it would be based it on.

Zach, Lets look at this from a very logical perspective. RI's job depends on him winning football games. That's really what it boils down to. His current and future jobs depend pretty much on that alone. He's doing what he thinks is right to do that. The man is not going to risk that for some "inside agenda". One area you may be correct though, winning at this instant may be secondary to making sure his long term plan works. If that means he has to get rid of what he might consider undisciplined or players who won't put in the effort he requires even if they are a little more talented, then he is right to do so. He is staking his whole future on it. If he's wrong, we're disappointed as fans but he is out on the street and will likely never get another head coaching job. Sometimes people who are too close to the program may not have that perspective or may be the ones "run off" and then they have an agenda. I remember one of the first jobs I had after Akron, I felt the management were all idiots and they didn't care about the employees, blah blah blah until I became one of those people and realized why some of those decisions were made (and had to be made). Rarely is an organization guided by a megalomaniac without some sort of checks and balances on it. Everyone was disappointed last season (even though in the end it is just a game) but we will have RI for at least two more seasons and all I want is to see improvement each year to show that his plan is working. We have no idea either way right now if it will, but that is the way businesses work and trust me college football is a business. You will have a certain amount of time (you can even tolerate a loss for a bit) as long as the end product becomes profitable (or wins). I can understand how people in the middle of something they do not like or are upset about can feel about it. But you really need some time on the other side to get the total perspective. So I believe your accounts about how people associated in some way with the program feel, I'll just tell you that is not generally the entire story. You start with a false premise. Ianello's job doesn't depend on winning. It depends on knowing the AD from a previous job. And that the AD gave him assurances that he wouldn't get fired if he got off to a bad start. As far as the coach throwing games, I can put it this way. There are four explanations for a season as terrible as the one Ianello handed us. The first is that he was trying to win all the games, but did such a bad job that he could only scrape by once in twelve tries. The second is that winning wasn't top priority, and he made decisions that he knew would make it more difficult to win games in order to fulfill some other agenda. The third is that he specifically didn't want his team winning those games. Fourth is that he was so arrogant that he thought he could come in and his system would instantly work and when it didn't he refused to adjust in any way. Which coach would you want at the helm? I don't want any of them. All four types should be fired. Every year counts. Every season should be competitive. Sacrificing this year set us back by five years. Is that an acceptable tradeoff? You lose six years and gain nothing. Ianello cannot win. He dug his own grave by making the team so awful that he can't recruit himself out of the hole he dug. He either saw this coming, in which case he threw the games and should be fired, or he didn't, in which case he is a moron and a terrible coach and should be fired.

Thanks for not answering either of my questions. You could have clarified your original point but you instead chose to devolve your argument into personal attacks.

Ianello is more interested in having his players than in winning immediately. You don't kick nearly 40 players off the team and then complain that you have no depth. You don't redshirt good talent hen you're struggling to win a single game unless you've written off the concept of winning games for the season. I won't say that he deliberately threw games, but I will say that winning was way down on his list of priorities below spying on his players, replacing Brookhart's players with his own at all costs, and installing his unimaginative formations and playcalling. If you think I'm the only one, why don't you talk to some of the biggest supporters of the football program who avoid this website.

He wouldn't have had that problem at Akron. Last season when Fickell should have came in, Nicely was the returning QB. It's not like at OSU where you lost a three-year starter with no clear #2 to take over. LOL THAT is your answer?? Would Fickell have recruited Moore to come in and take over? Or are you working under the false assumption that this would have been his first year as our coach?