johnnyzip84

I thought they were only available with an official Lot 9 food voucher?

It's hard to see Butler football being anywhere near competitive in the A-10.

Well if they do, won't that make you happy? I hear you've been jonesing for a Moscow road trip for years.

Zips vs. Wildcats Seriously, how many times are we going to face this school in post-season competition? Go Zips! You can do it, ladies!!!

C-USA to add 6 teams for 2013. Right or wrong, this move is all about potential and demographics. Many of us have been saying this for years, but despite the investments UA has committed to athletics places like Charlotte and the Tidewater region have far younger populations that have been steadily increasing. It's got NOTHING to do with wins or losses. Hey, things could be far worse. How would you like to be an Idaho Vandal or New Mexico State Aggie fan right about now?

Zips become 1st D-1 team to offer GlenOak QB Reid Worstell.

The Fedd speaks the truth (for now anyway). UNT, FIU and La Tech are also possible candidates for C-USA. If the alliance doesn't happen anytime soon, would C-USA be interested in UA, UT, or UB?

If anybody needed any more evidence that a school's TV market is the key ingredient to future expansion, it looks like 2012 FBS newcomer UTSA will be joining C-USA/"the alliance" after their one and only season in the WAC.

Many suspected the AQ status was on life support, so this is no surprise. This is exactly why I laughed at all of the maneuvering that took place between the Big East/Boise/SDSU etc recently. They were chasing a rabbit that jumped back in some magician's hat. Regarding Ball State's 2008 season, they actually lost their "Bull" game (MAC championship loss to U@B 42-24 with Hoke coaching) before losing their bowl game (Tulsa thrashed them 45-13 with Parrish coaching) to finish 12-2.

Both have come at home, so surely he's becoming a fan favorite!

Perhaps if they were handing them out at the Manchester High awards banquet last night

"Not so fast", says some dude from the Bleacher Report.

They had both posters and pockets schedules with the Bowden Ball logo I'm sure they have bunches left over. One thing I forgot to add is that I thought the meet-and-greet in Stiles Fieldhouse after the game was reasonably well attended (perhaps 1000?).

Nate was even a FIVE star and per either scout or rivals (forget which right now) the NUMBER ONE RATED DEFENSIVE LINEMEN IN THE ENTIRE COUNTRY!

I'm not sure this guy agrees with you --> Or perhaps you're just itching for a little jazz flute?

Well, I spent much of the game hopping around from seating area to seating area so I'm only good for a few random observations this year. Let's just say I enjoyed our unnofficial tour of the stadium 1) If Rossi played any FB, I don't think it was very often because they went almost exclusively with 4 and 5 wideout sets (with only tailbacks involved). 2) Rossi was a "2" on defense, as was Nico Caponi and Bre' Ford (so much for my all-MAC prediction ) The defensive 2's really struggled to stop the offensive 2's, so read what you want into that. 3) I thought Williams was the most effective QB, but his two big mistakes prevented him from creating any separation in the competition. 4) I know Coach Bowden made it clear that the special team situations were only run for the sake of the fans, but I'm concerned about the prospect of successfully installing ALL of the special teams schemes in August. I DO understand the decision to focus on offense and defense this spring however, given the rather significant departures from the previous staff. 5) I said this last spring: Stein gets the ball up in a hurry, and he has a stronger leg than Fox. AJ's going to have to step it up to keep his job. 6) Switching LT Smith to WR looks like it will pay big dividends. If QB play can stabilize and become more consistent, the other skill positions are in decent shape. I realize that's a big IF. 7) Lee Adams mentioned the quick passing approach actually being easier on the O-line and there is no question about that. In fact, this is by design and is one of the major advantages of the spread. Even though it's thin right now (enough so that I expect one of the big 3 true FR to get some time in the fall), I think the O-line will pass protect adequately but struggle to get any push in short yardage situations. They're just too small right now. Both Chisholm and Alexander are likely to gain a majority of their yards on runs of 10 or more yards. Their average yards per rush might be decent but the TYPICAL run will probably be in the 0 to 3 yards gained range. 8) If you're looking for a player who hasn't been mentioned a whole lot this spring who I thought played pretty well, I'll nominate James Price. He and the rest of the 1's on the D-line looked pretty good yesterday. As has been mentioned before, we don't really know what that means right now. The one thing I'd like for someone to ask the staff right now is which of the following best describes their current assessment of the program BEFORE they arrived: a - much better than they thought b - somewhat better than they thought c - right about what they thought d - somewhat worse than they thought e - much worse than they thought I have a feeling the answer is d.

Working around some other plans today so we're looking at a "tailgate light". My definition of this is bringing a small beer cooler, a few chairs and a couple of subs from Jimmy Johns or Penn Station. I expect to be there around 2:00.

You're right, I had momentarily forgotten about PMA (was always a little too close to PMS, IMHO ). IIRC (trying to set a jz84 record for most acronyms in a single post), PMA was the more public or general "mantra" for Dennison. I was pretty close to a few players in the early 80's and MTXE was definitely a buzz phrase of those teams. TTYL

I think GP1 makes some pretty good points regarding Dennison. In the OVC years, he was simply HANDLED by the likes of Boots Donnelly (MTSU) and Roy Kidd (EKU) in EVERY significant encounter. And I share in GP1's disgust if Dennison was indeed simply collecting a paycheck as AD. After all this is a coach whose mantra has always been MTXE (mental toughness extra effort). I'm also not buying that the MAC would have eventally come calling without some initiative (i.e. move to 1-A) on the part of UA. Let's ask YSU how the "waiting around for a phone call" strategy has worked for them. I'm not saying that mistakes weren't made during that time (Adams was a financially irresponsible AD for one). I just don't think the decision to go 1-A was one of them. BTW, Faust had THREE winning seasons at UA, including (as skip-zip fondly recalls from time to time) the finest Zips football season record at 7-3-1 in the inaugural MAC season in 1992).

Link Win or lose, I'm really looking forward to seeing a secondary that plays virtually all man-to-man defense. The passive strategy of the last 4-5 years was hard to watch. Of course if the pass rush and the run defense don't steadily improve, any improvement in the secondary might not have much of an overall effect on team performance.

The weather forecast is not so bad right now, but even so Coach Bowden says in the clip below that they'll move it indoors only if they absolutely must. The other key point is that the game will be played 1's against 1's and 2's against 2's. Looking forward to watching some fierce competition at the Info!

According to this article, we lost a linebacker by the name of Bobby Wagner. Does this mean Brian is still with the team?

Not that I have any personal affinity for the Browns, but I think this is another stellar marketing move by Coach Bowden.

This was a topic of discussion last Saturday. It looks like an actual spring game against another opponent is unlikely to be allowed any time soon, however.