ctmjbowes@sbcglobal.net

Jeremy Bruce? I winced when he had the ball in his hands for the Zippers. Every play turned into some sort of Jeremy drama, with either a crazy risky ball-bobbling play, a fumble, or 40 yards run toward the sidelines before being tackled for a 2 yard loss. And then he'd be on the field injured. And then someone would use the Magic Soccer Spray on him and he'd bounce up and slam his helmet, indicating his love for football. Can't imagine he'll get much of a shot in the NFL.

I want kids who are winners and who will commit to UA. The last thing we need is some dopey kid in the locker room, or on campus, biding his time until he can "go big time." I hope the next staff doesn't waste time and energy on kids like this.

Is it OK to be a little bitter about this one and hope that he gets buried on their depth chart, when he could have attended UA and seen the field early in his career? I stick to my earlier comments, that if some dopey kid was THAT impressed by a coach who couldn't win a game to save his life, instead of being focused on winning and on the potential here (facilities for training PLUS the new stadium) then maybe, just maybe that kid had their head screwed on wrong.Hoobler, if you read these boards, bad call. Same goes for your coach.

The one that catches my eye is the Temple versus UCLA, if they get this game. I must confess I know nothing about Troy this year, but just going from my first impression I'm disappointed that CMU didn't get a "name" program. I'd like to see how the class of the MAC (such that it is) matches up. I'm a little biased in that I think that a win over a "name" team in a bowl, even if that team is actually not good, is better than the alternatives.

Article in the BJ noted 4,300 fans at the Tulsa game. This is a very, very exciting time for UA soccer and UA sports in general. GO ZIPPERS!

To play Devil's Advocate, Brian Kelly certainly made the jump from D-II to the big time. Just look at how Cincy played today.Personally, I think that Akron needs to be very careful with this move. There are a lot of good things going for the Zips right now. A bad hire here could put UA back for years. My case in point, Notre Dame.Kelly was in a situation at GVS where he had to manage scholarships and go get talent. Kehres just shows up for work and talent falls in his lap.Akron needs to hire a good coach because they need to win. Akron can win in the MAC next year. Notre Dame isn't losing because they haven't hired the right coaches. ND loses because they put so many barriers up between them and winning that they don't win. ND is just another midwest school that kids no longer want to go to. Look at the best teams in college football, they are all in warm weather states. Save me the Cincy argument, they would not win another BCS conference other than the BE. ND is a relic of the past and unless it changes it will continue to be that forever.And that's why 11 of the current top 25 BCS teams are in....drumroll....NON WARM WEATHER LOCALES. GP1, is it possible for you to post anything without pointing out your love of all things non-Midwest? You do realize that many of the posters here have visited and/or lived all over the US right? It's not as if we are all trapped here in Akron, Ohio and you ventured all alone to the Shangra La that is....the freaking swamp-hot-hick podunk Carolinas? You need to get around more, because if you think the deep south is nice you have not seen much of the US. You also managed to do what you frequently do in your posts by contradicting yourself from one sentence to the next. You argue ND loses because they put too many barriers between them and winning. Next sentence you say ND is just another cold-weather school that kids don't want to go to. So which is it? Last time I checked ND is one of the finest universities in the country. Plenty of kids, and plenty of blue chip recruits want to go to ND. Lastly, your argument about Cinci is lame. Cinci is a great team and has been building toward greatness for years now. Take a look at the college polls before you post such drivel please.

Man I guess you REALLY would have been disappointed in 2005 if you had been one of us at the UA-NIU championship game when the reported attendance was only 12,051 (Wiki link) and the actual attendance seemed closer to 5 or 6 thousand.2005 MAC Champ Wiki LinkYou're right. I would. Of course, that was 2005 and all of the facilities and momentum that we hope to build upon were in their infancy. For Akron to get any positive exposure of any kind was great in 2005. Not anymore. It's not good enough for where we want to be. UA has begun to chart a course that will begin with the resurrection of the football team, increased visibility and community support, building to something far better than the MAC. I know that's a long way from where we are now, but if UA can't make it happen at some point in the foreseeable future then I would rather drop back down in competition level. Being the worst at the D-1 level just isn't worth it. I would much rather be cheering on a Mount Union-type team than one that stays mired in the dregs. If it turns out at some point that the mix of factors present in Akron just simply will not support a team that would, say, compete in C-USA at least, then I'd hope that UA would become a FCS team again.

To an Akron or Cincinnati and then out after a year? No thanks, superstar. If you decide to attend UA and play at UA, commit yourself. Otherwise don't waste our time.

The attendance tells you much of what you need to know about the MAC anymore. There were 23,000 fans at the game. On TV it looked like there were no bodies in the stands. The MAC is horrible. If you draw 23-25K to a lower division league championship that would probably be respectable, but no wonder it's such a tough sell getting generic football fans interested in the MAC. MAC fans aren't interested in the MAC. The MAC must find a way to step it up in all dimensions when it comes to football, or should just become a lower division entity.How excited are (NOT) the bowl administrators who watched last night, who now have to invite MAC teams to their bowl games? If CMU and OU can't put butts in the seats, that close to home on a decent weather evening, for the league championship, what hope is there that more than a handful of fans will travel to bowl games. Anemic, apathetic, small-time. Man I hope Luis and Tom and the board secretly plan to grow the program and get us the hell out of the MAC. Congrats to CMU and their QB. It'll be very interesting to see where he figures in the NFL and at what position.

BAIN won't see the field aGAIN.

equins, you masterfully ride that fine line between collegial other-college buddy who collaboratively compares notes with fans from other teams, and gadfly troll who exists only to annoy the fans on the board you're visiting. I really and truly can't figure out whether you mean well when you come to the Nation, or whether you're tweaking us. Or whether you know that YSU is lower-level football and want to collaborate with Zips fans because it somehow puts you at the same level with UA. Isn't there a YSU board where you can talk Penguin football? I'd really like to know your intentions because I'm itching to blast you lately but don't want to if I'm misunderstanding you here.STZ

No, this is the best time of year on the Carolina Coast because it's not boiling hot with 98% humidity every day. Congrats Hunter, but you're simply swapping our crappy winters for their horrible, never-ending muggy, buggy summers. Ughhh.

That makes one of us.

Thanks Sarge for the fix.

http://www.ohio.com/news/break_news/78365172.html

How funny would it be if the next YouTube video is Tom Wistrcill, wearing a hoody and a whistle, announcing that his extensive coaching search led him to.........him?It'd be Dick Cheney all over again!

Good. He may be the most amazing football strength and conditioning coach, but my only experience with him has been from the stand point that I am a lowly and unimportant athlete from one of those "non-revenue" sports and I should feel privileged that I was even allowed to set foot in his weight room. His staff did more harm than good to me.Well... you were privileged to be using that facility. Believe me those who donated to get that thing built didn't do it for the rifle team. The bottom line is the strength and conditioning staff's primary responsibilities are to the football, basketball, baseball and softball, Track and Field, and soccer teams. When I was at Akron, Dan Bailey handled the football and baseball teams and another coach was responsible for basketball with Bailey overseeing it. If you can find ONE football player who has trained under Bailey that didn't think he did an outstanding job, any of you might have a point. I guarantee you Dan Bailey was not the problem this year. One thing I heard from some of my teammates who were still around for the early Brookhart years was that JD came in and made Bailey change a lot of what he was doing, and the result was not positive. Guys in the Brookhart era were smaller and more easily injured, and that was a direct result of changes JD ordered. The Owens years might not have had the most talented guys, but do you remember those offensive lines we used to have that would absolutely MAUL you? Guys like Piccirillo, Jud Cummins, Mike Brake, and the like? Those were a direct result of Dan Bailey Stength Conditioning back when he was allowed to do it his way. Walk-ons like Ryan Myers were developed into NFL players. Guys like Chase Blackburn came into the program at 200 pounds and left looking like the incredible hulk, and they would all credit that to Dan Bailey. We never saw guys develop like that under JD, and its because he made Bailey tone down a lot of what he was doing and changed a lot of the summer program and schedules, which really put a clamp on what Bailey could do. He's as much a victim of JD's incompetence as his players were.The weight room is the varsity weight room, not the football-basketball-baseball-softball-track-soccer weight room. The fact that you share such a narrow view of which teams should benefit from which school resources only proves my point. I mean, the only team who's brought home more national titles than the rifle team is track... yet let's just piss all over the little guys. Besides, I'm not just campaigning for rifle, but golf, tennis, swimming, and even volleyball. Every team should have access to good trainers and be given a workout program tailored for the necessities of their sport.Good points rifle. I agree, and if Bailey was setting an ugly tone for other-than football and basketball players, then shame on him and good riddance.

Come on Zip37, it's completely unfair to hold Wistrcill accountable for a past that he had nothing to do with. Those of you who are skeptical at best, or expecting some coaching calamity, what will that look like to you? No D-1 wins in entire calendar years instead of one?

Rumplebreathmintz is so angry about the whole JDB changeout that my new theory is that Rumplebreathmintz is either:1) JDB himself2) Family of JDB3) JDB's lover4) JDB's Golden Retriever (who has learned to speak English kinda AND can type)5) Player/coach/somehow connected to JDB on such a personal level that it didn't bother him that JDB couldn't win games to save his life

Sorry fellas, but I have seen basically nothing to be excited about in the UA football program for a while now, except for the few shining beacons (Nicely, Wagner, Lemon, maybe a couple others) and have no problem with the ENTIRE staff being shown the door. They were all responsible at some level for the results on the field. If Bailey was victimized by JDB, that's too bad. I find it interesting though that there have been several supposed insiders who have dropped bombs on ZN only AFTER the entire program had to be blown up by Luis and Tom. That either means you guys were sandbagging for the last several years, in which case thanks for NOTHING here, or you don't really know what the hell you're talking about. In the end, as a fan, I know what I've seen on the field and it sucked. It was time to drop the A-bomb on the whole thing.

Well then, it's settled. We can stop the conversation!

I suppose it makes sense for kids to check out as many options as they can. If I were a parent I would encourage that. However, if this Hoobler kid had enough interest in UA to make a verbal commitment as early as he did, I certainly believe (and hope) that it was not contingent upon only JDB's cult of personality. You'd like to think that maybe Hoobler saw the facilities, the field, spent time on campus, etc. Hopefully he and the other recruits would have paid attention to the TERRIBLE team that UA fielded this last year. If they did, I for one would think that JD's departure, while maybe a bummer from a personal "I thought he was a great guy" standpoint, would excite these kids, that they see UA's commitment to winning and want to be a part of that. Kids like Hoobler have the somewhat unique opportunity to come to UA at this point in time and build an entirely new football culture, you know, one that WINS GAMES. I'll say again what I've said in three or four other threads here:JD's recruits, with a few exceptions, never did much on the field when it came to actually producing impact plays leading to wins. So much excitement every year for so many players who....never....did...much.Any kid who was recruited by JD and was personally committed to JD to the point that they were excited to come to UA in spite of the terrible team and the horrible losing, and are now NOT excited to be coming when UA is making such a strong commitment to fielding a winning team, well I question whether they are the right recruits for this team anyway. Winners and leaders should want to come to UA, MORE than they might have a week or two ago. I'm just not that worried about whether a couple of high school kids don't want to play for UA now that JD is gone. The ones who analyze the situation clearly and have their hearts in the right place will realize what a great opportunity that have playing for the Zips at this point in history.

I'm not sure what small college coaches make these days. I also don't know what UA's plans really are for this program. I have been voicing my hopes about their plans, but none of us knows where they see this program 5 and 10 years from now. If I'm in my own little slice of college football heaven the way Kehres is, I would surely want to know the answers to those questions before I'd commit to any MAC program. Is UA going to continue to be a low-rent low-budget program where coaches "take a shot" at success and much bigger paydays as soon as they can bust out? Or will UA become a place where a winner can be well-compensated and settle in for the long term as UA grows into bigger and better?

Boy is Walt going downhill. He is rumored to be interested in the Valpo job ehh.. That's too bad. I'd love to see him become O.C. at YSU!Did you make yourself aware of UA's offensive performance this year eguins? If so why would you want Harris, almighty destroyer of all good offensive things, to run your offense? You know, perhaps he and Shane Montgomery could come in as a package deal.

OH HELL YES to the Polymer Building side pant panels. That is completely and utterly PIMPTASTIC in every way. I do sorta kinda wish that UA had players' names on their jerseys. I know why they don't, but in a thread about uni wishes, that's mine.