ZachTheZip

http://www.collegeinsider.com/mmpoll/ It's the pre-season poll. Right now we're sitting in 28th. There's a pretty large gap between the number of votes we got and the teams ahead of us. Our schedule provides lots of opportunities to move up, however.

If I'm directing my comments at the same thing as K-Roo, and I think I am, it's a direct hit at their inability to draw attendance....whether they're bad or average. did the math and they need to average a tad over 11k for their final 3 games to reach that 90k mark. You are only counting home games, right? It's supposed to snow this weekend.

Expect another shake-up very soon.

I listen to his press conferences. I can't say that he says the right things because in order to do that he would have to actually say something. This guy is the master of talking for a half hour without saying anything of meaning.

I learned that the U has gargoyles stashed away somewhere on campus that they bring out for Halloween events once a year. Why not free up some warehouse space and permanently attach them to the Info press box in an attempt to scare away the evil spirits plaguing us?

Ball State message board. Nothing about the game yet.

While you're on their website, throw in a vote for NIU's Jake Coffman for football. Once you read his bio, it's hard not to vote for him no matter what you think of his school.

Tons and tons of lurkers. Sign up and join in the discussions.

This statistician thinks the Zips lose by 15.

How do you know the current players don't like him? Not all of them. You've seen for yourself some players leave the program. There are more of them who are sticking through to the end of the season, albeit unhappily.

I'll give him this: he sticks by his plan, even when it is blowing up in his face.

If he wins a game, give him one more year to prove himself. The current players don't like him, but they are all free to leave after the season. The remaining players will go through spring practice and pre-season camp at least knowing what to expect this time, which can make a huge difference. I think he needs to be here until the end of next season regardless due to a number of reasons, but if not enough progress is shown after that then it's time to look elsewhere. I don't like it, especially if he goes winless this year, but two years is enough. Can you expect any quality coaching candidates to apply for the job if we fired the previous coaches after just one year?

Zips down 1-0 at half time.

We were cursed by our players' own egos. They thought they could stroll in, goof around, and come away with a win even with the gigantic target on their back. You can't just turn it on and off, like the team thought they could do. Hard work and intensity is a habit, just like being lazy. You give it everything whether you're playing a top-10 team or the community college the next town over.

Temple is ranked #22 in both the AP and Coaches poll. Minnesota is receiving a good amount of votes and would be 29th (Coaches) or 30th (AP) if you carry the rankings through. Dayton got two or three votes in each poll. Ohio got 4 votes in the AP poll. Best case scenario is that Akron wins all their OOC games and Ohio does the same. That sets up two ranked teams facing each other in the MAC.

He looked great. Another player we should look into for the future is that LB from Buchtel. I think his name is Odin.

So I went to Rivals and looked up who Ianello recruited while at Notre Dame. His records from '06 to '09 show a bunch of overrated recruits who haven't amounted to anything. Not what I was hoping. I hope he can find players here that are the opposite of that, players who come in underrated but become good through hard work and determination. I don't know if he's capable of that. We'll have to see.

Take a look at this list. It's a list of "defensive-minded" coaches who will likely be hired in the near future. Mark Stoops is there, as is Luke Fickell. Was Ianello on any "soon to be a head coach" list before we hired him?

UA to begin offering degrees out of Stark State. It's just the one right now, but it opens the door to more in the future. I could see the state folding Stark State into UA, and then us operating it as a joint branch campus with Can't State-Stark in an effort to save money.

You could buy some steak, some Captain Morgan, and some plastic bags like this Zips fan did.

I agree with what you say except for the issue of salary. I'm pretty sure that top assistants at programs like OSU are likely to earn more, and sometimes significantly more, than a MAC head coach. But, as you say, you've got start somewhere if your ambition is to be a head coach. And there are only so many openings each year. Fickell at Akron would have made sense. I know hindsight is 202/20 but he's the guy I was hoping would get the job. Fickell makes $250k as a "co-coordinator". Ianello makes $350k as a head coach. You do have to wonder how much excitement we could have seen by announcing his name as coach. As opposed to the incredibly neutral reaction surrounding Ianello's hire. Who was honestly excited about that? I don't think anyone outside of Wistrcill showed any excitement.

Golden came in to a situation with to a significantly less talented team than Ianello was left with at a basketball-crazed school. In just his second year people could see that he was going to be good and that he was turning things around after going 1-11 in his first season. Will Ianello show the same turnaround? I doubt it. not without removing about 20 rebellious players from the team (players he should have kicked out before the season began).

Do you still stand by what you said? There are two possible reasons we haven't won a game yet. The first is that the players are in rebellion and actively working to screw things up on the field. The second is that the coach has removed those players and the remaining players aren't being put in a position to succeed. So either Ianello can't control his players or he's a terrible game-day coach. Which is it? And as for this: Ianello makes $350k. That's a significant jump, not "a few dollars more". And if he really wanted to be anything more than a position coach, he would have to leave OSU at some point. Why not go to the only other school he ever coached at? And if you don't think that Tressel and company couldn't walk anywhere in Akron or Cleveland and not get the same treatment as in Columbus then you're kidding yourself. Fickell could come here as head coach, simply say he trained under Tressel to recruits' parents and get any recruit he wanted.

Luke comes from a top-10 program. Ianello comes from a program that wouldn't win the MAC. Their resumes are similar, but Luke has a previous conection to Akron and at least sees his team win as a position coach and co-coordinator (does that means he calls plays?), while Ianello's only conection to Akron was through the AD and his recent teams were terrible as the assistant head coach (but never called a play). Ianello was so non-aggressive and had such a lack of leadership that he allowed his team (yes, it was his team as he was the interim head coach at the time) to opt out of a bowl game and the additional 15 practices that come with that, despite them clearly needing the extra time for underclassmen to improve for the next year and for seniors to prepare for the NFL draft. Instead, they quit, like how Ianello quits when he tells the offense to go for fieldgoals when down by 21. It should have been a red flag that he wasn't able to control a team or inspire confidence in the players.