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He needs out of there. The Pirates are hitting .220 as a team and are almost last in run support. His ERA is right at the MLB average. Good K/BB ratio. At 28, this is where pitchers usually peak. #WeWillSee

Think small Be small

It got my blood pumpin'. I can't remember the last time I couldn't wait for a college football season.

So this is really happening??? I have a tear in my eye...

Zips in the Pros update Chris Bassitt is 7-7 3.83 with 98 hits and 117 K's for the Mets JT is 2-9 4.40 with 113 hits and 105 K's for the Pirates The Mets are five games ahead in their division. The Pirates, not so much.

We’ve spent a lot of time at the CCC. Both as a customer back in the Canton Invaders days (great times, won a lot of titles) and recently covering medical there, watched lots of Canton Charge games (several are on the Cavs now). Arena football. Harlem Globetrotters. Concerts. High school games. Then you look around and see Erie, Youngstown, Wheeling, Toledo, Ft. Wayne, even Huntington, Steubenville, Wooster, and Marion having arenas, it doesn’t make sense. Is Akron the largest city/market without one? Where can you see a concert in Akron? I guess you can count Blossom if you want. It’s kind of a “tweener” between Summit, Cuyahoga, and Medina counties, and isn’t convenient for anyone. Now if the University builds an arena, look at what they could use it for, between games. Look at the Wolstein Center. They of course have the Vikings basketball, even though they curtain off most of it because they can’t draw flies. CSU hosted the Crunch indoor soccer team and broke league attendance records and won championships. They now have the Cavs minor league team. It’s revenue for the university. Heck if Wooster can have a hockey team for 16 years and counting, Akron can support an arena.

There's been a JT Brubaker sighting. He made the SportsCenter Top Ten Plays, sort of. OK it was an outfielder making a great catch, but when you play for the Pirates, you take what you can get...

Hoooooooly Mackeral, Andy!!! (I hope there are other Hoolihan and Big Chuck fans here?) Coach Beals has a 568-460-1 record, 325-258-1 with tOSU (133-125 in B10 with 2 conference champs). He has experience building college baseball programs in the snow belt and has connections. Charles Guthrie means business. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

Now we just need a couple thousand fans to join us.

I thought that for a long time. But there are vastly different dynamics between college basketball and college football. In basketball you can catch lightening in a bottle, develop a couple players into stars, and make a run. See also Cleveland State. In football you need 20-30 talented gifted kids to smell a big bowl game, let alone make a playoff run. Thats why the highly ranked football schools should break off into their own division. Or jettison the NCAA altogether and go rogue. The networks would be fighting each other for the new league, fat contracts in hand. My question is how long will the B10’s hold onto the Indianas and Minnesotas in their new world? Programs not in media markets and no real legacy of doing anything the past, oh, 50 years? How long before they get left behind? I’d prefer they put the top 32 programs into a super league for schools with a ghost of a chance of winning, the biggest budget big NIL programs, and let the semi-pros eat. Then the rest can put together a real playoff, using the bowl games along the way, and let college football be college football.

We’ll so much for that idea… 😐

Same reason they do now. Content. Football. Advertisers.

Euro soccer and the promotion/relegation system sounds interesting at first, but if you go back it seems like the same clubs flip flopping every season. So, your club moves up from Series B to Serie A. They have about as much a chance of progressing into the upper half of the top division as I have owning an NFL team. Teams move up, get curb stomped, hang around the bottom 4 or 5, and get relegated again. Manager fired, another rebuild starts. Wash, rinse, repeat. See also: Premier League. Does anybody want to see NIU promoted to the B10, and Indiana drop to the MAC? Then switch back next year? Does B10 wants to see Rutgers get relegated, and they lose that major media market?

More a hunch, first game out, I thought NIU was better than their MAC record and SF kept it within 3 TD's against them. Probably overthinking it, but we're not putting money on it.

Year one with a limited recruiting season? #1 BEAT KENT. Liberty, Bowling Green, Ohio, Buffalo should be wins St. Francis, EMU could be trouble Central, Miami, NIU not yet... Michigan State, Tennessee, just get out healthy and <35+ point spreads IMO 5-7 is a nice four game improvement over Arth & Co.

The longer the coaching search goes, the more off-season recruiting we miss. Patience...

True, he had a relationship with the players, and apparently Sabo didn’t. He saw how things were going to go. He wasn’t getting his point across and how things were going to go and took Oakland up. And why leave these guys you’ve been working with and the don’t want to be there either. I can soften my stance on that episode. I can see him pointing this out to the AD and getting “But he’s Chris Sabo!!!”

Someone should have moderator privileges, and can move individual posts to. A New thread. “Zips baseball in the pros”. Maybe eventually baseballs own section 🥸

Found another resource, Zips in the MLB draft

I had one for the season and everyone migrated back here...

JT has gotten out of his slump, taking W's against the Brewers and Cubs to go 2-7 4.28 with 82 K's. Not a bad record considering the Pirates are 28th in runs scored. C Bass is 6-5 4.01 with a 1.15 WHIP.

...but here in the REAL world, conferences are selling their souls to TV network dollars by the millions. Even MLB, the most traditional of all sports leagues has bastardized itself with pitch clocks, universal DH, banning the shift (eventually), enlarged bases, ridiculous extra inning rules. What's next, 4 strikes for a K? Underhand slow pitch? If the networks ask for it...

Just wait until the Women's Lacrosse takes that first 40 hour bus trip to Stanford. Then off to Washington the following week. Parents could car pool together. What could go wrong?

^Very interesting names. Experience at the college level, either Andy Cannizaro or Greg Beals would be a huge upgrade. Beals was 296-105 coaching i the B10 pre-COVID. Canizaro went 40-30 in the SEC but couldn't keep it in his pants. In one+ season there it doesn't really show how he does at recruiting. Mee? Agreed, a 4-21 record in the MAC 16 years in. Heck Sabo went 11-29... Oh darn, Banfield won't come back and poach our roster again. I guess we'll manage. 🙄