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Students count as "Paid" attendance, either way. Whether their cost is covered by student fees, or they have to buy tickets. But if you are anywhere remotely close to getting those numbers "in the seats", I think that's very impressive for a Sun Belt school that's right in the shadows of Baton Rouge. It's tough up here. We have 8 D-1A schools in this state, and several more just outside of Ohio.

SportsJunkie.....If we are going to start quoting lines from the movie STRIPES, this post could get really long. But I have to be honest. When I think about something like a bunch of college kids forming a Corp of Cadets, I think about that movie as a possible outcome.

Ok, lets be honest here. If you ask the players, do you think they have a problem with playing UCSB 3 days after Wake Forest, and then having another 5 days until they play Penn State? These are 18-21 year old kids who love to play Soccer. I realize there's a 3-4 hr. flight involved, but that's 2 games in 8 days.

Louisiana Saint: I have to question your guess that you have 25-30 thousand "butts in the seats". Your ticket SALES for every game over the last two seasons is only ranging somewhere between about 20k and 26k. Does another 5-10 thousand people get in free? The season opener this year was the only game that was higher than 26k (did you have some special promotion that night?). For those discussing over-buying tickets: In addition to the 8k per game that were "purchased" for recent graduates that are not being used, there are also plenty of corporate tickets that are given as part of sponsorships, etc., and are never used, but can be counted. And I can tell you that among my Tailgate group, we probably have 20-30 tickets between all of us, and probably half of them are ever used for any given game....unless we use extras to go to the parking lot at halftime, as I've discussed previously. The, of course, you have no-shows. So, to the poster who thinks people are crazy to "buy" tickets and not use them, that's definitely a reality. Just look at both sides of the lower bowl of the JAR during 3/4 of our home basketball games, and you'll see how often it happens. Nearly ALL of those tickets are "sold" for every game.

I'll give my vote for Jabari Arthur as the best QB to WR conversion. For those who don't know, he's won a Grey Cup, and is still playing in the CFL today.

zipsoutsider, please note that I said that the penalties made the difference between the two teams in both year's games "EVEN GREATER". I think you got that, but apparently UA1987 did not. You think the penalties made a difference on the first Pitt scoring drive? How about the last drive where we had two personal fouls and a pass interference, when they added their game-sealing TD?

1) I didn't like losing to a Sun Belt team at home. Any Sun Belt team. Even with the recent history of teams like Arkansas State knocking off good MAC teams in bowl games. 2) Secondly, It happened the week after we played that stellar game at Michigan. Despite all of that, they could be pretty darn good. They went toe-to-toe with Kentucky, and Kentucky has had close games with South Carolina and Florida, which looks to make them a fairly competitive SEC East team. This would be a quality win for us. I don't want to see us go 1-3 with only a win over a really bad I-AA team as our only victory. But, that's looking like the way we'll start, unless the offense has really gained some much-needed "quality practice" from the performance on Saturday. This is a conference superiority battle shaping up in recent years with the bottom two leagues, and I really hate to see us contributing negatively to the outcome.

Let me comment as someone else who was at the Pitt game both years.,,,, We played a great game last year, got some turnovers at great times, and sprung a few big offensive plays from Bennett and Hundley. HOWEVER, they were a more talented team than us, and we would have especially needed a shut-down-whenever-we-needed-it defensive effort to do it again. The untimely penalties and mistakes made the difference between the two games even greater. On the QB situation..... I felt like this Savannah State game was an opportunity for Tommy to show a little of what he did last year, and show some growth. Honestly, I felt like Bowden could have easily ended his day when he threw into triple coverage at the goal line early in the game. The unique thing I've never seen before is that we have THREE possible QBs, and none that have separated themselves too much from the others, and one really good overall performance that has to be tempered a bit considering the opponent. I say...Good Luck to Terry to sort out that situation.

About the possible Safety. I see in these pictures what I thought I saw on the field. It looks like his knee touched the ground while the ball is in the end zone. During live action, it appeared that they allowed his knee to touch the ground and then lunge the ball out across the goal line. Should have been a Safety. Dammit. I want those 2 points.

Those are the kinds of posts I read on here that remind me again that sharing information with each other can be so much more valuable to us as a fan base, as opposed to people coming on here to impose their "I am the all-knowing expert on the Zips....and you are wrong" persona on everyone.

3pm would be great. Lets hope it stays that way. No earlier.

Hey Dave, The story IS negative, and should be. It's a significant drop in enrollment. If you read the article, the people at Ken+ tried to paint the same silver lining on their drop as well, but .5% drop vs. 2.7% drop is quite a difference. Actually, I only pointed to the article because you copied the University's "rosy" data earlier in this thread, which completely ignored anything that may not have looked good in enrollment data. So, please don't accuse me of only mentioning the bad parts of the story. I'm merely making you aware of the rest of what they didn't want to tell everyone

Dave, I've been watching that forecasts all week, and everyone has been pretty consistent about rain on Saturday. I hope it doesn't hold up.

TennZip...I've read the Beacon. Of course, I'm pi$$ed that it appears to report it as if it was two local high school teams playing each other, as if there wasn't a "home team". Even the headline just says "Battle Ends in Draw", with a subtitle "Zips, Buckeyes soccer players go to overtime....". And I didn't see any mention at all of the undefeated streak against the Suckeyes reaching 11 games.

I have to mention this. Has anyone seen the front page of the Beacon today? We had an enrollment drop of 2.7% this semester. Apparently that was "missed" by the University in the midst of bragging about their freshman enrollment figures and trying to associate it with their new "rebranding". If the freshman numbers were reported as being so good, and overall enrollment dropped significantly, isn't it a pretty safe conclusion that quite a few students in the upper classes left the University between May and August? Again, this is all far from completely playing itself out. But, that's pretty disturbing.

A little "sloppy" would be how I defined the offense. A tendency to downright "collapse" is how I would describe the defense. I see that some feel that we had plenty of chances to win, but we also had plenty of chances to lose. I feel fortunate with the tie. At least it leaves the "11 in a row without a loss" streak intact. Good thing we had a little more overall talent, which saved us from a possibly embarrassing home loss in front of what will be the season's largest crowd.

Listen and read how often any current advertising says The University of Akron along with Ohio's Polytechnic University and you'll get the picture that this is not something of little importance. It's nearly become a part of the University's name. That's a big deal. It's not just a meaningless word. I'll definitely call it "a mountain".

Hey Dave. Just pointing out a well-recognized standard in writing advertising copy, so that it's easily understood. It's not "dumbing down". And I did point out that I don't necessarily agree that it needs to be that low. But, it's clear that throwing a word like Polytechnic out there could easily lose an audience. Remember that you're talking about high school kids and their parents, who also may or may not have much education themselves. It's a bad assumption to think that you can speak to either of them at a high scholarly level. And just for the record, I'm in my 50s, college educated, and have a long sales and marketing career under my belt, and had NO IDEA what Polytechnic really meant. Although, most people who know me would also point out that Scholastic Achievement was not my strong suit.

Keener....Maybe he's trying to keep the tickets because he thinks that he can Scalp them and make some money? That would show that he REALLY has never been to an Akron football game. Guys...I didn't know about the high school bands. Since that is the case, I will have to raise my max optimistic attendance prediction to 11k.

I must say that I don't know any fellow colleagues who work in marketing and advertising as a profession who would say that it was a good idea to use a phrase or word in your marketing material that your audience would not easily understand. In fact, many people still subscribe to the old "talk to your audience on a 3rd grade level". I don't necessarily agree with that, but it's quite clear that POLYTECHNIC is still far beyond 3rd grade communication. This is why I cringe when I see POLYTECHNIC being defined in an advertising piece. And it's not the only problem I have with this campaign. But it is a deficiency that needs to be pointed out.

Your last sentence in the first paragraph (increasing the quality of students) is the right train of thought. I don't recall ever being critical of the new programs you mention. If so, please remind me about the reason that I may not have liked the ideas of any of those programs. But please know that I was specifically referencing the greatness of our Academic programs, and the quality of those degrees obtained.

I mostly only criticized the impact of the "tagline" because Dave brought it up along with current, public enrollment data when the "rebranding" (or whatever they want to call it) has just been launched, is vastly not comprehended, and is likely being credited by the University in some way for a freshman student population that was surely predominantly in place long before the word "Polytechnic" ever surfaced. One could just as easily make the point that all of the negative energy associated with the "change" has surely had a negative impact, at this point. I wish I could pat myself on the back and take credit every time I do work for a client, and their sales are higher the next week or month. But, I know that these kinds of things don't work like that. And those are sometimes the kinds of sales that can happen instantly, much unlike all of the things that someone needs to have in place to make a college decision.

Keener, That's strange. I have a package of 12 tickets marked GA. Two for each game. I don/t know how or why they'd be able to deactivate all of the rest of the tickets after any of them are used. Can you imagine someone walking up to the gate with one of those tickets, and the attendant tells them that It's not a good ticket? Talk about a nightmare PR problem !! By the way, I never got to use them anyway. I stood in the concourse for the entire halftime. NO way was I going to venture back out to the parking lot in that downpour.

Keener....Good Question. Since last week's attendance was reported as 23k, I am guessing that the 8,000 new grad tickets will be counted in the announced attendance from here on out?

How long do you wait? For a marketing campaign, a long time. But at least long enough where you won't be conveniently counting the "customers" who would have predominantly already made a "buying decision" before the campaign was even launched. I'd like to take a survey of all of the incoming freshman, and see if any of them say, "I changed my mind to Akron at the last minute because I wanted to attend a Polytechnic University". Then we can take another poll and find out if any pulled out at the last minute because they did not want to go to a Polytechnic University. Those are the only things that could have happened that are measurable, considering the short time since the campaign has been in place. The FDR clip was funny though.