ZachTheZip

WE ARE RIVALS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We don't even play OSU. We are not rivals by any means. We play them in soccer. Speaking of, there were a dozen OSU shirts and jackets in the crowd near where I was located at the game last night. Multiply that throughout the crowd and there really is a problem.

What do our athletes think when people wear another school's gear instead of Akron's? It's disrespectful to them. What are our recruits supposed to think when we just accept it?

You don't wear a Bulls jersey to a Cavs-Knicks game. You don't wear a Cowbows shirt to a Browns-Panthers game. You don't wear a Yankees shirt to an Indians-Angels game. So why do people insist on wearing OSU stuff to Akron games not involving OSU?

Attendance was 3,225. I think we can stuff another thousand in there for the next game.

Louisville scores again. 2-1

It's hard to OSU to dominate when the refs aren't so blatantly biased towards them.

OLB Percy Johnson verbals to Cincinnati.

Louisville vs. OSU video feed

but expecting them to stop wearing OSwho crap to Akron games/events, is perfectly reasonable. +1. When this happens, the Rowdies should ridicule the guilty person with chants to the point of utter humiliation. Perhaps that would curtail it from happening again. Yeah, because then they'd want to come to another game for sure... Who cares what they wear? They are a PAYING customer who, on that night, made the decision to go to an Akron Zips game over other forms of entertainment. If they have a good game experience, they'll probably come back. If they're ridiculed for wearing a shirt of a school that isn't a rival, isn't in our conference, and never plays us because some of our fans have an inferiority complex with Ohio State, they will probably say screw it and go to the movies next time. When we start selling out games, you can start being concerned with what fans wear. If it's not graphic or vulgar, who cares? Good God...it's no surprise our fan base (especially student fan base) has trouble growing with short-sighted, ignorant attitudes like this. Our fan base has trouble growing because of the short-sightedness of allowing people to think they can get away with wearing the colors of a school we actively compete against for recruits and TV time. How can you be taken seriously when nobody cares that half the fans are wearing the gear of another team and not the one they're watching? Complacency kills.

Maryland wins 1-0. They'll play Michigan to decide who heads to Santa Barbara.

UNC is leading a charmed life this tourney. They scored in the 90th minute to send this one to OT. More like life on the edge. They are ripe for an upset. Also, Maryland scores in the 88th minute to go up 1-0 on Penn State.

Cal up 2-0 on Brown, who is playing a man down due to a red card. I think it's safe to say we'll be playing UC-Berkeley this Saturday.

Hijacked. So difficult to have a constructive discussion these days.

Article on Bre Ford. We recruited him as a Safety.

Our roster indicates that he is being converted to an Offensive Lineman. I wonder why, given that on the D-line we lose both Shawn Lemon and Almondo Sewell to graduation.

K Michael Branthover verbals to Virginia Tech.

My immediate thought upon hearing that was "The feeling's mutual".

and losing both kickers is a problem because..................... ...because we have two other kickers on the roster, and neither of them could even beat out the seniors. One of those other two kickers will be starting next year.

Look at who we graduate. On offense, you lose your top two receivers (LaFrance, Carter), your top two RBs (Allen, Burney), and two O-linemen (Ward, Woods). Nicely will be surrounded by inexperienced players. On defense, you graduate your two best DL (Lemon, Sewell), an outstanding LB (Mike Thomas), and safeties (Davis, Richardson). Both kickers graduate (Iveljic, Rogovic). Not much production coming back on either side of the ball. Ianello needs to have a stellar recruiting class with some 4 star guys if we want to be competitive against more than the absolute worst teams. Luckily, being in the MAC, we play a schedule chock full of those absolute worst teams.

Maybe, if you are generous, 15-20% of that. I will say about 75% of the crowd was on the home side (lots of the seniors families in attendance and they all sat on that side) which isn't shown in that pic. But that still puts the crowd around 1.5 thousand and that's being generous. Maybe you get to 2.5k counting the gameday crew, both teams and coaches, food vendors, security, and the like. Still, nowhere near the announced attendance. But what do you expect from a game with the teams having a combined 2-20 record going in? People would much rather be shopping today.

So, I am struggling to come up with a minumum acceptable number of wins next year. We'll likely play an FCS team at home next season. Losing that game should be grounds for a forced resignation, regardless of the outcome of the rest of the season. Outside that, I think Ianello needs to show a clear improvement over this year. Is 3 FBS wins a reasonable expectation? That would put us at 4-8, which is vastly better than 1-11. Less than that and I think it's clear that he's not getting the job done. More than that and things would be looking up. So I'll put 3-9 and competitive in most games as the minimum needed to keep him around and even then it's 50-50 whether we should keep him. Less than that and he needs to go, period. Remember that we'll be one of the youngest teams in the country next year by far and lose almost all our playmakers on both sides of the ball to graduation. No matter who is coach, it would be a tall order to have success under those circumstances.

Zeke is supposed to be our identity.

http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/news/story?page=bottom10084: "Rules are rules. One of the first rules in the Bottom 10 bylaws states that a win of any kind guarantees removal from the Bottom 10 for at least one week. Wins over FCS teams won't put much wind in the sails of the Syracuse, Washington State and UAB programs, but those wins will allow the trio to sail off the Bottom 10 this week. Utah State earned its exit with a win over Bottom 10 neighbor Idaho." I can't find an actual list of the rules, but they frequently mention this rule and one other one (a loss to an FCS team means automatic inclusion that week) in their introductory paragraphs.

I'm hoping for some of the assistant coaches to be replaced this offseason. BTW, if the radio guys couldn't get the head coach for an interview, why not try and get one of the coordinators instead? Maybe the special teams/safties coach, who has been with both Brookhart and Ianello.

Yeah! Bring on Ohio State (our next opponent)! We're totally gonna kick their a$$es!