72 Roo

Brilliant article! Darlington writes with a passion that is genuine and relatable. The more you learn about Darlington, the more you realize he is one incredible human being. It is a blessing that he once decided to play for the Zips.

We once again have a problem at QB. Our inability to move the ball on offense is equally divided between the ineffective offensive scheme (Moorhead) and the QB (Finley). Is it time to look to Roggow, who is raw, or Tahj, who can't throw. Either way a hurting, nervous, happy-feeted Finley is not the answer. Should we rest him, allow him to heal and look to the others? What can it hurt? We are a bad team now.

I watched the entire game. I have read all the posts on this disaster, most of which I heartily agree. My greatest fear is that this loss was most determined by the coaching. That is a fact. Yet any turnaround for this season can only come thru better coaching. I am not confident that will happen. Prior to this game I have been a staunch believer in Joe's vision and path to achieving it. Now I worry that he has checked out. How else can you explain a once universally heralded offensive genius coaching the way he does? I refuse to buy the idea that Akron is a program destined to always be in the bottom ten. The right coach can lift us out of this malaise. The wrong coach will keep us there. Once again I challenge Joe and staff to prove they are right for us.

I always get a kick out reading Catdaddyp's review of how much playing time former Zips get with their new clubs. After reviewing all the transferred players I've come to the conclusion we didn't lose as much as what we gained thru the portal. Still I wish we could have held on to a few, especially RT Nate Williams. He would have improved our weak OL. I can't help but wonder how good our DB's would have been if Tyson Durant and Corey Thomas had stayed. We picked up good replacements, but depth is a luxury we need against this schedule. Overall, the talent is improving under JoMo and I believe that will continue if Jo hangs in there. Still, I hate losing good ones, but I can't blame them for wanting to play for winning programs and possibly have the chance to get NIL dollars, which I hate.

Thank you for sharing once again. This time I went thru it page by page. Very interesting reading.

This is so riddled with falsehoods it is close to comical. No one who witnessed Arth's programs would ever make these statements. Talk to the athletes, the support staff, the asst coaches, the administrators, they all spoke of a program floundering, one that was lost because Arth was. Of his ten coaching hires he had a total of 9 years of D1 coaching experience. He could not recruit in the MAC. He had a budget bigger than Moorhead had today. The enrollment decline had not hit athletics yet. His teams were terribly prepared for games and in the off-season. Guthrie cares about winning. He has told all the head coaches they must have a viable plan to be in the top three in the MAC. A quick look at athletics finances will show they have no money to buy out coaches. They weren't even willing to buy out Melissa Jackson last year, even though she was out-coached in every significant game and her record against the .500+ teams in the mAC was terrible. Moorhead needs to show the team is improving every week, which it has not. Yet we are where we realistically should be after four games. Firing him and his staff is stupidity extreme. They can coach and recruit. They present the best chance to turn around football. Please care enough to do research and spell his name correctly.

I stand by what I said. Tressel would have been so much better than Scarborough that it isn't even up for debate. Somehow Miller has been brought into a discussion of events five years before Gary came here. I did not criticize him nor the job he did. I think he was very good for Akron following what Wilson left him. Please criticize someone for what they say, not what you think they say. I do appreciate Zippy 5 for his advice to read all the posts before commenting. He/She is right. I should have read ahead. But he/she did call me "brother" and I appreciate getting all the family I can.

We should seriously investigate what YSU did to increase enrollment. Any program they instituted when done by Tressel. The same guy who wanted to be president at UA but was opposed by the AAUP. He would have been great here.

It seems I have started a bit of a wildfire here, much of which is spinning out of reality. Here are some thoughts: It seems Guthrie is the focus of many disgruntled fans. I do not believe, nor have I seen, any evidence that he cut the MSOC budget for FB. Athletics took a $3M hit that Charles is trying to make up thru big paycheck games. Still FB had its budget cut by nearly $1M. All sports took a 10% budget hit. I think Charles is doing the best he can in face of declining enrollment, resources and struggling FB. Most schools that are elite do have a Dir of Operations. We don't have one supposedly because the women would also need one funded. That's too much to spend. Charles thought about hiring one for both programs and found that unworkable. The equipment budget (primarily gear and Uni's) is less than most other schools with D1 football. When Louisville tried to hire Jared away they revealed they were getting double what Akron got. The disparity has grown in light of the contracts given to the P4 football schools with soccer. Soccer has benefited at those schools. Coaching counts. The NCAA has allowed full-time soccer coaching staffs to expand and many schools have taken advantage. Akron can't afford more coaches, just like its DoO position. The renovations to the soccer locker room have been funded by the alumni and day of giving. That has taken place over two years and two fundraising campaigns. The former players are generous and are to be thanked. The university did not fund the improvements and it has not happened all of a sudden. NIL money is a growing issue. We lost a kid last winter/spring who wanted money to live off campus. We couldn't afford the $ he wanted nor the precedent it would set. Contrast that to the University of Kentucky. They have set up a collective for soccer. My relative, a CFP and former captain, sits on the collective board. I only sought to offer a fuller perspective as to the challenge Akron faces. We can debate the hell out of it on this forum, but at the end of the day, the coaches have to figure a path out of this and back to elite performance.

Same old troubles: discipline, player control fouls, poor decision making, mouthing, poor performing OL. The staff is either tolerating it or coaching it because they are not fixing it. A great coach once told me his best assistant was the bench. If you are playing contrary to how you are coached you will be on the bench. He said it is surprising how fast the players corrected their mistakes. Discipline comes from the coaches, not the players. The coaches must demand it, then young men will give it. We will not win games because Joe is an offensive genius. We will win games because the players are well prepared down to the smallest detail. I still think we can go 4-8

This thread is fueled by frustration as well it should be if you care about Zip soccer. I am not an apologist for the staff, but I think they are being asked to keep the standards on an elite level w/o elite backing and resources. They have no director of operations that all top programs have. They are short a full-time asst coach and have no GA's. They are now losing players to NIL offers because they can't match them. The recruiting budget has been cut. Their equipment budget (uni's, gear, jackets, backpacks, field equipment, etc.) from Nike is nearly half what Nike offers the elite programs. Those are a lot of limitations to overcome. The talent pipeline has shifted from elite high school players to 1) transfer portal D3 & D2 players wanting to upgrade, and 2) overseas club players who have been told they are not going to make the top professional side. Academy players are being told to steer away from college as the academy route offers a better way to the top MLS team and money to boot. This does not give our staff a pass. They have underperformed. If the same problem keeps coming up they are either coaching it or allowing it. They need to correct it. I hope they do. In the meantime don't expect a savior to come in if a change is made. Our program is devolving into a stepping stone for a coach on his way to an elite program. We cannot compete at the financial level that an elite program now runs. Our best hope is for Jared and company to fix it.

I admire your optimism, but the MAC is not improving, the better teams are. As a whole the MAC is crap and the bottom is getting crappier. The top teams, Toledo, NIU, Miami, are figuring it out. The rest are not.

AS I watched Joe's presser the one overriding impression I got was here is a guy who is not happy in what he is doing. When Joe came to Akron one of the factors was that he and his wife really enjoyed their previous 5 year stay when he was OC under JD. Their quality of life was good and the job was very fulfilling. Joe came to Akron as a HC when the fundamentals of the college game in D1 were about to shift big time. He didn't sign up for that, it just happened. Turning around a program that was losing, but had potential became a herculean task under the new conditions. I could see Joe fulfilling his contract and exiting to an OC position at more money and less headaches, like he had at Penn State. I am beginning to wonder if Joe demands the discipline needed in the long run to turn this around. Our players do not show much discipline. From player control fouls, offsides, delay of game and (my pet peeve) lack of pride in appearance with blue undershirts hanging out against white uni's I see an issue. Last year we all saw the tolerance of Gaithing's lack of self control. It was continued all season even with Joe acknowledging it needed to be fixed. Discipline is an issue he can fix. NIL, talent or our opponent have nothing to do with it. It is on Joe to fix it. I hope he does because it is foundational to turning around football.

It is. They took away the permanent ads/signage on either side of the video board. With the new board they can run ads on the side if they want or switch to a huge video display. This gives more flexibility in what they wish to display. My hope is that they will stop shying away from replaying controversial plays, penalties and sidelines stupidity. The home TV audience sees them repeatedly on replay, but the folks in the stands apparently may riot if they see a controversial play.

You are correct in Akron having little in football NIL. I was told by Guthrie that the MAC had decided not to play that game. All they would be doing was driving the price up for talent the bigger schools want. Well apparently that is not exactly the case. The Director of Operations at Toledo has stated they are in the game. To that point, this past Tuesday night Toledo held yoga on the 50 yard line led by Crandle's wife. All the money went to NIL. Toledo has a good, admirable program. Akron needs to model their future on them. In basketball we are well prepared. The best NIL in the MAC. All thanks to the leadership of Bud Wentz.

OSU has the best announcers in college football: Paul Keels, doing play by play , and Jim LaShay, doing color. They are the best.

While we ask Joe to clean up his act I'd like to ask the equipment manager to give the players white shirts for under their jerseys. That way when they pull up their white jersey over their bellies they don't show a wide band of blue, almost like a cumberbun. It makes us look like we've got no pride in the uni. This has been a pet peeve of mind since last season. Agree with me or not, but I feel the team has to project pride in their appearance and play. End of rant.

Your questions are ell thought out. I don't think the system of play is at fault. What I noticed is that our mids were not going to space to help relieve pressure on the back line so they could pass out. I also saw this when the ball got into the midfield. There was too much ball watching. We needed movement to unbalance the defensive pressure in the mid and create space for our forwards to run on to the ball, have a pass thru a created channel or have a wing back run into the attack. The need to go to, or create, space could go to chemistry, but the bottom line is that is our style. If you don't want to commit to it go to the bench. I thought this game was more about attitude than it was about strategy. For that the players are accountable.

The excuse is money. When the new scoreboard was announced Guthrie did not know athletics would have its budget cut by $3M. Many people criticize him w/o knowing what he is dealing with. Akron has many challenges, yet in the face of those I feel he is doing the best job an AD could. Just my opinion.

This was one pee poor soccer game by past Akron standards. Our forwards don't seem to create or play with a sense of urgency. The Midfield was non-existent and the back line was reckless and leaky. That's a bad combination. We are a program that has had four straight years of declining talent in our recruits and it shows. I'm afraid opposing coaches know this. Hence average CSU and OSU teams can play even or dominate. I am very disappointed. I thought ND was a turning point. Apparently not.

Celebrate! We are better, but not by much if you measure us on today's performance against OSU. Defense is a strength if they aren't out there forever. Playcalling was good, thanks Joe. Running game sucked. Our OL is better, but has a long way to go. Where was our supposedly all-world lineman from Florida, Seymore? We are headed for another 2-10 if Taj is our QB, he has not improved his passing. No passing that stretched the D. Where was Adams? Without a running game we were too easy to defend, especially by one of the country's best D's. There is reason for hope since we started with the best team in the country, but don't buy into the thought that we will excel against the MAC. We have too many weaknesses to address. We have a shot at 4-8. Solve our problems (OL, QB, RB, Special teams) and we can go 5-7 or 6-6.

I'll take Lingard over any MAC runner. He was behind a poor line and still proved to be dangerous any time he touched the ball. Thank you for putting me in the same opinion as Bud Went. He dreams big and then produces. Akron needs more of him.

Your observation about Joe calling the plays is not to be overlooked. Fesler did a horrible job last year. We had the best back in the MAC and Fesler refused to increase his carries when everyone in the stadium wanted to see Lingard pounding the ball more. When you are a Zip football fan you cling to the smallest sign of hope!

Thanks to Captain for giving us a shot of hope that we are getting better. This week I was on campus visiting athletics. The word I got was Seymore has not healed and is not ready to start. Additionally football is running a bare bones operation. Athletics took a $3M cut and football has suffered. No GA's, no publicity, cuts in support staff. The money games are saving the budget this year. The attitude seemed to be 4-8 is reasonable and it will be the foundation for a better year next season.

NOOOOO! 😱 Stop the madness. In these days of mental health awareness you are close to getting a call from the police regarding the deliberate infliction of harm and duress on the U of Akron community. Talk about crimes against humanity!