MaxZIP

You must not remember the end of the Faust years.You think that was bad? His successor losing 21 more games than he won over the next 9 years just about drove me away forever. However, I thought Gardner Webb was really the all time low. And it could only get better from there. But, the disappointing thing right now that I'm seeing only minor indications here and there that we are moving in a better direction. It seems like an endless cycle of 2 good plays followed by 3 bad plays. I see some effort out here, and some fight in these guys. But, not enough people are doing enough right to make it all come together with the level of consistency needed to have some success.What indicators have you seen. Serious question. What is going better?

no, I think they played even worse tonight. More flags at bad times, dropped passes and general crap play. Clayton never looks off and seems to see rushers even when they are coming at him directyl in his line of sight. He also holds the ball to long. Temple could have scored 60 but took the air out of the ball early. The D couldn't tackle and out DB's are no better than last year.

Honestly, more flags and mistakes in year two. 41-3 to a MAC team. Dropped passes all over the field and an unmotivated team on the sidelines.

ICoach is laying the foundation "just right with no cracks"

I hope you are right. I'll be there in section 208 as always.

The last time we played OSU, with a Spread, we also were shut out on offense. Should have been plenty of mismatches right? Also there are never less than 3 receivers running a route on a pass play. You would have to watch game film to see that, but I guarantee you no school has a 1 receiver play that isn't a trick play. You create mismatches when a player on your team is faster or stronger than the player on the opposing team. OSU's linebackers are fast enough to cover every receiver we have. Their DB's are stronger or as strong as any of our TE's. So you see the problem. Style doesn't change that. Spreading out OSU when you aren't faster than them, makes it even more difficult to block a D-Line that is likely more athletic than your O-Line. I'm not opposed to the spread, it has its merits, but it is a not a cure all, and there are as many losing teams using it as winning teams. As to Dr. Z yes, they could run crossing routes, and at times they did, but if you are getting pushed out of the pocket your read moves to the sideline receiver and the outlet receiver. A crossing route takes more time to get into open space unless the safeties are in a cover two or the Mike LB is blitzing. Mismatches are there to be had in MAC games. We lose to osu 999 out of 1000 times. Forget about OSU.

Get over the "style of offense" for a moment. My point was the players Brookhart recruited were not very athletic. In fact other than Wagner name one Brookhart recruit that you are ven excited about right now? Pro style isn't about size, and if you people would read up on the "style" of offense you will see that we run a multiple pro style. What that means is that the team learns 5-6 key formations for the various situation they face. So yes we can run I, but we can also run, Pro, Shotgun, Spread, One Back, and pretty much anything else. My point was it doesn't matter what coach came in, or what style of offense we ran, we were going to have to blow this thing up. Our APR sucks, our talent was not up to par with the rest of the MAC. Change hurts, but no matter who we hired the change had to occur. Its very similar to Temple. And for the record it took 4 seasons for Golden to see results 1-11, 4-8, 5-7, 9-4 (9-3 regular season), 8-4. You guys are giving up before we even know what this staff is capable of accomplishing. Maybe Ianello wasn't right, but the staff he brought in has a lot of knowledge and coached up a lot of great players. To me, that shows he isn't "conceded" as a lot of people say. It shows great humility to find people you feel are far better than you and learn from them. And there is no "style" that works by the way. Alabama pro, Oregon spread, OSU multiple (like us), LSU multiple, Texas Tech spread, Texas multiple (spread). The idea of our offense is you recruit the best talent and mold the plays to the talent. And what did you expect from a team that is mostly freshmen and sophomores. What I expect is wins starting in Week 4. I think style matters. Akron currently sends 1-3 pass routes and the receivers are not able to get open due to matching up with the other teams #1-3 DB's. Our line is overwhelmed/overpowered and the running game is stifled by lack of balance. Basically no mismatches are created. A "spread" offense would help to create favorable matchups. Am I way off base?

Of course there are no sure things, but the main dividing point at the time of the hire was whether you were in the "FBS assistant camp" or the "FCS/D2 head coach camp". I still think hiring an FCS/D2 head coach would have been less of a risk. at least hire an assistant from a winning FBS school. I'd take Boise State's special teams coach before Ianello. We needed someone with winning philosophies to help us learn the way. Instead we're stuck with someone from a losing program that is spreading his losing philosophies on us. A coach from a winning program would have been a lot less riskier. If you want someone because they can recruit, you don't hire someone that's good at recruiting at a top level program, you take someone that's good at recruiting at the non-bcs level. That shows your ignorance. Ianello has been associated with nothing but winning programs. In fact that is why Weiss hired him at Notre Dame. Was Notre Dame a failure? From a Notre Dame perspective yes. Would we have wanted seasons like what Notre Dame had while Ianello was involved? Yes. Weiss was 35-27 his seasons went like this 9-3, 10-2, 3-9, 6-6, 6-6. Notre Dame expects its programs to compete for BCS bowls and National Championships. If we had 5 seasons in a row like that we would be happy. What happened with Notre Dame is that they couldn't recruit offensive and defensive line players. And before you do the "Ianello was their recruiter". He was in charge of recruiting, he did the coordinating of all the coaches. His specific recruiting positions were the skill positions, and Notre Dame has not lacked skill players. Was I happy with the hire? No, I sat in Wistrcill's office talking about the need to go after a coach like Charlie Strong, Mike London, or speaking with AD's from ECU and Boise State about their hiring philophies. The truth is, it didn't matter who we were going to bring in we were going to struggle. Look at how we competed with what we had under Brookhart. He won two seasons in a row with Owens players, then relied too heavily on special case athletes (Harvey etc.) Also the handling of the Getsy replacement was awful, he expected to leave after a third successful season and when the team crapped out on him after the NC State game he was stuck here for the next three seasons with no talent. Wistrcill's intentions on the hire was to build a solid foundation like what Soccer has or what Dambrot has done with basketball (or what K.E.N.T. has done with their BB program). The goal was the rip everything away and rebuild into a program where it didn't matter who coached it, or what players came and went, it would be consistantly competitive. Why? Because its what the fans want and it is what is best for the program. Will Ianello get us there? I don't know, but his general philosphy is the same that Golden used at Temple. And he brought the "pro-style" despite the fact that Akron had o-line issues and poor skill position players (undersized to boot). So we are doomed to fail until the program becomes better so we can get higher quality recruits....doesn't make any sense. You come in and blow up a team for nothing. We get the same recruits now as before. They are undersized and incapable of running the style of offense Ianello runs. Add in his struggles with the basics of game day coaching and you have a recipe for continued disaster. Personal attacks aside he is not a good coach at this point. He lacks the basic skills to be a DIV-1A coach. Doesn't make him a bad person but how many of us would get years to prove ourselves at work? As a manager you play with the hand you are dealt in the short term and build your team over time. Why did we not find a coach with the ability to get the most from any player with the vision to shape long-term improvement?

True, you look at what basketball, soccer, and even track and field has accomplished and then your most visible team goes out there every week and just humiliates the University. ICoach takes a lot of heat, but TW is the guy who needs to be held accountable for this mess. This was his most important hire, and he obviously did not do his homework. All of those coaches were here prior to TW. What makes you think he would select a winner next time.

You made me laugh when I saw this because I said something similar about ECU's back-up players. It was hot as heck last night and when ECU had to sub, their guys looked like starters for Akron. There was a huge drop off in talent and USC would take advantage of it. They looked like players who weren't ready to start and may never start because they could bring in someone better than them at the drop of a hat. I thought Icoach made it clear that the guys were getting stronger this year? A new strength coach and renewed emphasis on lifting has really paid off. To be honest, the zips were melting away under JD as well. You can't win games at this level if your players are not in proper game shape.

I would take that stat line! Chisholm looked good with solid speed and agility. He should have some success this year if the o-line plays like they did in the first quarter/half. I bet Moore would be a great QB in the spread :-)... Suel made a great catch and managed to get open a few times. The FG kicking can't get any worse than last year. At least the FG unit linemen can turn-in their ass protecting plates.

I don't care what the "count" shows... the number is predetermined and still won't meet the 90,000 mark we need to not be in hot water.

Does Zips Live offer a Q&A segment? I would love to ask Icoach about how his bs foundation building is going. He made it clear on the STO MAC Preview that he was building a foundation free of cracks and that takes time...

Scoring Summary Scoring Summary (Final) 2010 University of Akron Football Buffalo vs Akron (11/26/10 at Akron, Ohio) Buffalo (2-10,1-7) vs. Akron (1-11,1-7) Date: 11/26/10 • Site: Akron, Ohio • Stadium: InfoCision Stadium • Attendance: 5216 Score by Quarters 1 2 3 4 Score Buffalo 0 0 7 7 14 Akron 0 12 7 3 22 I was so cold and bored during last year's Buffalo game that we tried to count all of the people in the stands. We hit about 350 and i still have the program with the tallys by section to prove it. Infact one guy was able to pass out free hot beverage coupons to all present in about 20 in. Bottom line is that their couldn't have been more than 2000 season ticket holders last year and they managed to inflate the records to unconscionable levels. The invisible people will be out in full force this year. Hell, they reported that 7600 people showed for the Miami game.

It ooked like the concession stand/restroom area and the ticket booth were not even close to completion at the time of the Cleveland State game. Any news on progress from those at the Women's game today?

WMU looked good before thery fell apart. They will move the ball well in the MAC season.

I can't believe I renewed my season tickets...idiot

You can't hurt recruitng because we are an option of last resort 95% of the time. Playing time or position must be promised to pull three star recruits. Most key players on MAC West teams are from Ohio. Watching the MAC preview show on STO was shocking. It will take years of success or an inspiring coach (A COACH WITH AN IDENTITY(ONE THAT WORKS) ) to build momentum. At least the team under JD had a identity beyond showing up.

I went to the ECU vs. South Carolina game yesterday. The score looks like ECU got killed, but they were actually winning by 17 in the first half until the old ball coach decided to put a real QB in the game. ECU is a CUSA team and has five guys who would easily be the best player at their position for Akron. Their QB, the two WRs #s 1 and 2 (their actual numbers), their RB #28 and a DB #26 would all be immediate starters for Akron. If any one of them played for Akron, he would be the best player on the team. What ECU does that Akron doesn't do, is get the ball into their best players hands in a spread offense. We are trying to run a "team system"...bull$#!+. Find a few good guys and get the ball to them. That's how average teams get to be good. As long as we run the offense we do, we can't win with it. I'll reserve judgement for the remainder of the season until next Sunday, but the scrimmage yesterday didn't make me look forwad to the season. The one thing I look for in a scrimmage game like we played yesteday is whether or not a team passes "the eyeball test". When ECU came out of the tunnel, I told my wife they passed the eyeball test (BTW, ECU sold 25,000 tickets to the game...at the rate Akron is going, they will be lucky to sell 25,000 tickets this season). They had some big guys who looked in great shape. They looked like the type of team that could hang with an SEC team for a while and they did. My problem with the Zips is they are a non-bcs team like ECU and nobody passes the eyeball test. Again, let's wait to see what happens next week. I agree that Akron has no players that pass the eyeball test. Gardner Webb had more players last year that looked like actuall football players and they were able to muscle akron up at the right time. You can be undersized or slow not both. Utah State looked like the real deal last night with some real size and speed. The Zips look like a JV team waiting for puberty to hit.

I am 5'11" and clayton was a solid 2-3 inches taller than me when we saw him at the IPF before practice one day this spring.

This is a great idea and will really add exposure to the rivalry. Congrats to ING and TW for getting this done.

Are all the gravel UA lots getting paved? Or just this one?More importantly, why are there still ANY gravel lots? A first class university should have all paved lots.I can't think of any that remain unpaved. That side of campus could use 200-300 extra paved spots. Btw grass tailgating lots would be a waste of space and a mess.

Looks like bowling green is still trying to buy a few games next year. Breaking the new house in with a good home showing.

Harsh. Pretty much everything was wrong last year. No bright spots. Pn7 is not the only zip at fault.

Dr. Proenza hired the janitors of football. He is at fault for the problem we now experience with football. I don't see any other way to slice it. Tw might not be the best for football he Is doing well in other areas. Dr. P takes risks and expects returns. I don't see any the way to slice it. Not a big tw fan but he has not been all bad. I coach on the other hand is failing plain and simple. He was a tw hire so Dr. P will probably have to pressure tw to fire I coach early. Accountability