ctmjbowes@sbcglobal.net

OK, so then I have a question for you. Do you guys use canes or walkers? Cap'n, you're just angry because your kid was rocking to the tune and singing the lyrics while busting out his brand-new grill!

Just remember: 1) If it's too loud, YOU'RE TOO OLD. 2) If you're offended, YOU'RE TOO OLD. What do you think your kids are listening to when mom and pop aren't around? What do you think they're watching? What do you think they're saying to each other? That song, and the dance team, might well be the only things your kids think are relevant and/or interesting at the Zips BB games.

Botzum was once a thriving canal town, if I remember the Towpath Canal plaque description correctly. Nobody lives in Botzum anymore. Being old fashioned doesn't always serve well.

And what was he? Something like third choice at a previously major program that has become utterly mediocre in recent years? I think that since he had made the choice to take the SDSU job and move to the west coast, Brady Hoke would have been better served to stay west, continue to build the Aztecs' program, and look for a HC job at a MWC or PAC-10 school. The Big 10 is utterly yesteryear. The PAC-10 and MWC are today and tomorrow. In any event, all I hope for anymore is for the Zips and the MAC to do something, anything, to become even slightly interesting again.

CONGRATS Socceroos! Great game, only wished I could have been in Cali to see it. Great great great! GO ZIPS!

It's the perfect end to a great game in this season of going all the way! The Zips seek perfection and it's a wonderful thing that their quest wasn't ruined this afternoon! GO ZIPS! STZ

It's time to end the 20+ year experiment and accept for numerous reasons that quality D-1A FBS football isn't going to happen here, ever. Little did we all know that 2005 was the peak folks, the top of the mountain. I'd much rather click my fingers and watch Dennison-style D-1AA FCS football than this garbage. This football program has done nothing but play into the hands of those who think ill towards UA. It's way past time to make the nightmare end.

...and you would enjoy coming to the Akron Zips Football forum and seeing zero posts for the 2010 season?

sorry, couldn't pass this one up! With all your tongue-in-cheek military personnel knowledge, one must wonder what military credentials you hold. Perhaps (and you set yourself up for this), maybe a stint with the US Navy as a "Rear Admiral". That's rank. that's Rank - u got me this time! It would appear that...................you were OUTRANKED Major Bummer Actually I would say he was outflanked and suffered a REAR GUARD action. Oh, and Sergeant wasn't spelled correctly in the first mention.

I don't believe you. Can you provide a Internet site like google.answer to verify your assertion that someone other than a Zip fan came up with the Titanic deckchair statement? The phrase was actually first uttered by Sir Horatio Shuttlebobberzipswin, whom ZipsWin! honors in his ZN board name. Shuttlebobberzipswin was a deck hand on the Carpathia, and not-so-coincidentally the college room mate of one Johnathan Heisman. Shuttlebobberzipswin was notorious in the late 1800's for his raucous buggy-gating prior to Buchtel College football games. While the UA Company line touts "Zips" as being derived from a rubber shoe...it is as true as crediting SeeTeeZip with the phrase "You win some, you lose some." The name indeed comes from UA legend "ZipsWin!" (an abbreviated nickname for Shuttlebobberzipswin, given to him by none other than Heisman himself in 1893). And now you know....the rest of the story. Sir Horatio Shuttlebobberzipswin...one of the great pioneers of University of Akron Football. Oh.My.GAWD. OK I give up. Clearly it was ZipsWin! who coined the phrase. On another (but related) note, I think that this is the time for Zips football fans to embrace this team the way Cubs fans have come to love their crappy Cubbies. I am prepared to love my lovable little "Zips that couldn't" and revel in their ineptitude, drinking heavily and tailgating the pain away during home games. Why gnash teeth when we could become Akron-Wrigleyville East?

Nicely is the least of our problems. He's a better QB than Rodgers. But the guy has no OL, and no WR's. Because he's apt to run, Rodgers may be a better QB for our present situation. I'd like to have seen him get a shot. But I'm under no illusions that changing a QB is anything but, to quote ZipsWin!, "rearranging chairs on the Titanic." I like this quote. ZipsWin, with your permission, can I use this in my personal and professional life? Seriously though, to me this is no longer an issue of which QB might be better. Although, I can't deny that PN has underperformed even my own low expecations for him. But, the much bigger issue is what's in the best interest of Akron football? And the reality is, Matt gets closer and closer to the end of his career as the weeks roll along. And if we leave him sit much longer, we will have boxed ourselves into a corner with only one option. And I don't want to see us put all of our eggs in one basket. Especially when that basket has a lot of holes in the bottom. We've seen Matt play very little in his career (2 full games), and he was productive against good teams in both of those games. I'd like to see if his abilities can help us. If he fails, PN is still an experienced 2nd option. But If we go much longer with PN, we won't have a 2nd option. Not a huge thing, but the quip "rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic" has been used countless times, by countless people, for many many years. You surely don't need the approval of any posters here to use it, as none of the posters here came up with it to begin with.

Honestly, I think I would like to see us win and start to play well. That's just me though. If your sole purpose to Akron football is to wait for a coach to be fired that we just hired, stop back in three years. Haha, no that's not my sole purpose. My sole purpose is to win, but what's the point? We are just that bad, and I'm facing it. I mean I want a win, but its not like we're gonna win the MAC east or anything. I just want our coach gone. The sooner that happens, the sooner we get this turned around. I'm not QUITE there with you yet, but I'm not too far away either. It's hard to imagine this one coming out close. OU's 2-headed monster at QB will likely have a lot of success. Although not a great passer, Bates is as good a runner as Spahn. And Boo Jackson will have one more shot at rubbing in the fact that he chose OU over Akron OU 41 Zips 20 That avatar is quite the stinging rebuke, JZ84. Well done. Edgy without having to say a word. I like it.

True THAT JZ 84. GO BB, GO SOCCER, GO TRACK! Oh and yeah go football.

You're already training your 11 year old to be a glutton for punishment?

I'm just going to say it like it is. Hack away at me if you'd like. This program has failed to gain any semblance of relevance in D1-A (FBS) football, twenty years in from the days of Faust. No matter the attractiveness of the new facilities, which were much needed as part of the larger growth of the campus anyway, it is high time for the university to admit their failure and look for ways out of this level of football. I'll continue to go to the games for the tailgating and because I enjoy having football so close to where I live, but I would do that whether this program were FBS or FCS. In fact, I would do it with much more excitement if the program competed and had a tradition of winning, no matter the level. How many actual UA football fans would really stop attending games if the Zips were FCS instead of being a TERRIBLE FBS program? Certainly nobody who takes the time to post on these boards would walk away if we were a winning FCS program and you all know it. Akron has not competed successfully at the FBS level and will never compete because the cards are completely and utterly stacked against programs like ours. It's simply a mockery to continue on this path. Programs like ours exist simply to be toyed with and mocked, plain and simple. We provide the doormat games for large FBS teams in their early season OOC schedules, and help to fill out lists like ESPN's Bottom Ten. Ha ha ha boys and girls, here come the "compass directionals", the Hilltoppers, the Flushes, the Zips. Ha ha ha. What exactly does the university get out of continuing down this road? What do we get out of watching this team get obliterated by better teams, year in and year out? How many times will we have to watch nail-biters against actual FCS teams, losing too many of them along the way? How is it acceptable to anyone that in twenty years of attempting to play at this level we have had ONE arguably good year with a Bowl berth? I cannot understand why schools like Akron, EMU, Can't and WKU trot out these terrible, terrible teams to be mocked and destroyed year after year. The Northwesterns and Indianas I can understand; these are teams that are part of historically great conferences, and suck or not they can draw fans and be a part of something bigger. The Zips suck, have never dominated the conference, AND it's the MAC, one of the two worst conferences full or doormats in the entire country. There are no redeeming features to be found in the football situation in which UA finds itself in 2010. There HAS to be a better way.

I'll be very pleasantly surprised if this team wins a game this season.

Your emoticon use makes no sense whatsoever here Z.I.P. WTF over?

It's killing me watching Nicely's play as compared to Keith. JFC, it's not even close.

I may get slaughtered for this but I completely disagree with you guys about the relative merits of the MAC compared to the other bottom-shelf conferences. For years now, there have typically been a couple of programs each season in the MAC who either win early season games against "name" programs and/or show well on behalf of the MAC. However, the rest of the MAC is terrible, year in and year out. Our team happens to reside at the bottom of this bottom-level conference this year and has been really bad for several years now. So, excuse me if I'm unconvinced about favorable comparisons of the MAC with the Sun Belt or C-USA, or between Akron and, well, anyone. We have only one thing going for us: facilities, and that's it. If we were dropped to FCS right this minute, I'm not sure we'd go even .500 the rest of the way. I don't know what the hell happened or how exactly we find ourselves right where we were all those years ago when Faust came in to lead the charge to 1-A, but that's exactly where we are again. Proenza has done great things for the university and especially its physical foot print, but if his legacy is to include the development of the football program, that legacy is diminished by the failure of football at UA.

Parameters that form the basis for the questions below: 1) The team loses the rest of the way by large margins each week. 2) We see no growth in any units on the team. 3) We see no emerging players (stars) as the season marches on. 4) Attendance continues to dwindle as it gets cold. There is no reason to assume that all four of the above will not come to pass this year. Assuming, for the sake of conversation, that they all do: Is this rock bottom for a D-1 team? What happens to a program that hits rock bottom? How do you find players to come to a rock-bottom program? How do you keep the players who are here? Do you care if those players stay? How do you sell tickets, when you already can't sell tickets? How do you keep a coaching staff that allows a program to fall from barely mediocre to completely broken in one year? I hate to admit that I can't see a way out of this hole for this program. I don't understand how you build something good out of this, given that the entire college football system is stacked against the little guys. Does anyone at UA have a plan for this program? It surely looks like the answer is Hell No.

All I know at this point is that as the rain came down and the wife and I decided to leave at half time, I didn't second-guess the decision even after hearing Allen's 74-yard run on the radio on the way home. I had absolutely no doubt that the team was going to lose, and lose badly. I'm no expert so will not try to diagnose the team's ills. What I do know is that this team is dead AND just no fun at all to watch. I look forward to the tailgating for these home games and would really rather just stay out in the lot and eat and drink than watch the games the rest of the way. On our way out there were a few guys in lot 9 under cover doing just that and I thought they were the smartest fans at the game. How can it be that this team is not even good enough for the MAC, arguably the worst and most moribund division in FBS football? I have always fancied Luis Proenza as something of a genius and a winner. When it comes to this program and the facilities standing behind it, the overall planning and execution that have brought us to this point, his legacy is substantially dimmed in my eyes. This program is on death's door.

Watched the game on ESPN3.com and LaFrance is the Mo Williams of this receiving corps. Well, actually that's giving him too much credit. Mo Williams shrinks in the playoffs but typically plays well during the regular season. LaFrance doesn't play well in D-1 college football games. I still have not forgotten last year when the team was getting killed week after week LaFrance could often be seen prancing around having a great time on the sideline. I don't know whether he is taking his role more seriously this year but he shrinks every time he has the chance to shine. He has yet to convince me that he is a genuine D-1 player.

I hate to say I was very happy last year when Nicely got his chance to play, even at the expense of a Rogers injury. However, I have also been unimpressed in Nicely's inability to throw with accuracy so far. I also think he holds onto the ball too long. Maybe he'll develop into a quality D-1 quarterback but his progress has been nil so far. I wouldn't mind seeing some Rogers in upcoming games, even knowing that as a starter last year he was also not good. One thing about the two that I wonder about: I've noticed that Nicely appears pretty aloof on the sideline. He checks in with one of the coaches after series and then usually stays to himself until it's time for the offensive unit to take the field. Rogers seems to interact a lot more with other offensive players between series and seems more involved to me somehow. I almost wonder if Nicely has allowed the pressure of being the starter to either go to his head or just isn't dealing well with the situation somehow. I like the interaction I see from Rogers on the sideline. Could be pointless observations, but that's the beauty of being in the new stadium with less than 10,000 fans! It's not hard to key in on the little stuff. STZ

Prediction: U.g.l.y. And no, we ain't got no alibi.

I'll beg to disagree on the kicking game. For well more than two years now we've watched kickers who can't seem to kick. Igor seems to be a nice kid but is not performing the duties of a D-1 kicker. When PATs are nail biters, your kickers aren't up to the task. Also, think about the field position game. We tend to overlook it but UA has handicapped itself in that phase as well for well more than two years. First it was the rotating kickers on JDs' whim, along with the (vomitous) rugby-style kicking, the 25 yard punts. It seems like we have been working with long fields while giving the opposition short fields for a long, long time now. I don't mean to be facetious, but is it really that difficult to find kickers in D-1? The punting has been better so far this year, but I still shudder a little whenever I see special teams trotting onto the field. Will the great recruiter recruit a kid who can reliably kick, at least from 30 yards and in?