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I'm a little scared that OUs offense seemed to hit a high gear last weekend. But for whatever it's worth, I really think this will be the game where we find out if our somewhat-improved tackling this year is for real. For the most part, I expect OU to be a straight-at-you, physical offense. If we do well in that dept., I can be encouraged that at least one aspect of our team (run defense) seems a little better than it's been in the recent past. A victory? We seem so far away from a team that can win a game right now. But it's the MAC. We're gonna win a game eventually.

Based on what I have read, and what I've heard here, when Coach I states that he believes the play in the end zone was indeed a fumble, does anyone else get the impression that he is commenting on the original fumble, and not the subsequent recovery/shovel that occurs later in the play after PN is laying on the ground?

I started to mention this in another thread, but two things are really starting to bother me about the remarks. 1) The "big plays" statements. A former Akron coach used to bring this up too, and it nauseated me. Big plays are a part of the game. And you could probably point to a number of big plays in ANY game and make the point that if they did not happen, the game could have turned out differently. It doesn't tell me anything. 2) The "We need to get better". The truth is, EVERY team tries to improve during the course of a season. They analyze film, work on plays, etc., continually during the course of a season to try to get better. So, to hear that we need to get better is pretty obvious, and it's part of a coaches job, and again, it doesn't tell me anything.

Sorry, he did - "I thought this was our best performance because we didn't make very many mental mistakes, we did give up four big plays for over 100 yards, which is too much." I like that one about as much as..... "we need to get better"

And it looks like they've done it before with much success......via the same Junior College.

I have thought the exact same thing, Skip. Make the defense wonder if we are running or passing out of the Wildcat if we put Rodgers in there. That would be a little "test" that would cost you nothing. Perhaps RI is afraid of a QB controversy? Doesn't make sense. I'm guessing he'd welcome a QB controversy over the situation he has now, which is that he continues to put the same QB on the field every week who is performing poorly.

Do I have to keep reminding people that our record in 2005 was NOT our best year in D-1A? I completely understand your frustration, but I don't understand how you can point out that we can't succeed in D-1A when many non-BCS teams have gotten ranked, and some non-BCS teams have even been in national championship contention at the end of recent seasons. I don't like that the "cards are stacked against us" either. But others are doing it. So, the problem is not the system. The problem is We Stink.

He was laying on his stomach, and reached out and pulled the ball against his chest with two hands. I can't even guess right now how long he held it there, or how long he would have had to hold it there for play to be whistled. Not sure if it was a challengable call. But if it was, I think its a major mistake not to challenge it, with the game essentially being over if the touchdown counts.

It unfortunately is. Theres no getting around that. I agree the D played well enough to get us the win. Hell, the special teams didn't do that badly either. Remove the costly penalties, sacks, and turnovers our offense produced, and there's a real good chance we're singing a different tune today. Unfortunately, the wheels have fallen off this season and we're stuck watching the rest of the season wondering which of the remaining teams on the schedule will happen to play worse than us and land us a lucky victory. Remove our own penalties? Heck, Ken+ far exceeded our penatlies, and we could barely do anything with that!!! Our only TD in the last 3-1/2 quarters of that game was because Ken+ bailed us out with a Personal Foul on a 3rd and 27 that we didn't convert. And then we still needed a fake field goal on top of that! Again I ask myself......can we really be THIS bad?

When Nicely dropped the ball trying to throw on the free-flicker play, it instantly reminded me of the Yepremian play. And I also wouldn't be surprised if Ken+ sees the "genius" in Martin, and will keep him around a while longer to continue to add to Ken+'s longstanding football misery I'm wonder if our defense's effectiveness I witnesses could have been partly because Ken+ was scoring points with their defense, and limited the number of times their offense had to take the field. Because of that, we seemed to have a pretty fresh defense all day. And their running game just isn't anything with Jarvis out, and Terry hobbled. But, I am convinced that we tackle a little better than we did last year. I just keep asking myself......is this all really as bad as it seems? And I am afraid to answer my own question.

Again....I think the biggest factor in putting Matt in there now is that he only has 18 games of eligibility left. In a wasted season, we need to get a good chance to evaluate him (he's only played 2 full games for us) and see if he can get us over the hump until we can get a capable QB in here via recruiting by 2012. I am also hopeful for an offensive spark since Matt helped us put 42 points on the board last year in his only two full games, against good teams, with only one day to prepare. And he ads a dimension to our offense that we don't have right now. Which also makes me wonder why he hasn't been sent out there yet when we've been running those Wildcat formations!!! I can't see how we have anything to gain by waiting any longer. I don't think PN is having a problem "seeing the field" as much as he's just continually struggling to throw a catchable ball consistently enough to be effective.

if you are talking for the season, you are probably right because soccer has more games. if you are talking average per game, that won't happen. However, point still made and taken. It won't happen for the season either, even with more games. But I have to admit. I had to think about it for a second. I'm counting 8 home soccer games. It looks like we're averaging about 3.6K up to this point. But, I'm sure that's even scewed very high since one of those games was against the #2 team in the country on a Friday night in perfect weather. And another was a season opener on a Friday night. The other two games drew considerably less. And we have more games coming up during the middle of the week, which will draw lower numbers. But either way, even if we can hold a 3.6K average through the season, we'd have approx. 28,000 soccer fans for the ENTIRE season. And football has already drawn 38,000 through only 1/2 the season. It won't even be remotely close. Even if football only gets 5,000 a game through the rest of the season, they'll still double soccer's season attendance, even with several less games. But I must say that even though I don't like Soccer, I'm probably just as interested in seeing Zips Soccer as Zips Football right now.

I'm sure there's some of that going on. But I think for the most part (similar to the situation with the leader of our country) it's just that when you see someone failing, you'd rather see them replaced sooner rather than later. Akron is a D-1A program. We should NOT be a training camp for head coaches.

What are you talking about? Of the remaining six games, only one is against a team that is over .500. Ohio U, WMU, and Ball State are all awful as well. Sure the Zips are probably worse than all six teams but the schedule isn't going to be what does them in, it'll be themselves. One of these games is going to be handed to the Zips and they will get that win, you'll see. OU just detroyed BGSU Western Michigan just destroyed Ball State There's a few winnable games left, but based on recent performances, I don't know how you call our next two opponents, OU and WMU, "awful".

Here's where the QB situation get so tough if we just keep waiting for Nicely's "development", which hasn't happened in the season and a half that he's been playing..... Rodgers only has 18 games left in his Akron career. If he is going to be the best solution, he needs to get in there NOW, or you're simply running out of time to get him going as an option for next year. If that doesn't happen, I'm afraid the other two solutions are going to take a lot longer to materialize: 1) Get one of the other bench QBs in there, and start the process of developing someone young all over again. Not really what I want to hear. 2) We better have a really good JUCO or HS Senior option that we're working on right now. Something needs to happen at this point. Our QBs play is beyond unacceptable, and it might even be regressing. Even with everything I was told about him coming out of HS, I still didn't expect this disaster.

Of course, I wanted NIU to win so it made us look better. Not that it matters after what happened to us Saturday. But, did you watch the end of that game? Temple's QB tried to scramble to get a first down on 4th and 10+ yards in the 4th quarter, when he appeared to think it was only 3rd down. He also couldn't convert a 4th and short with a QB sneak in another 4th Q drive. Temple blew chances to make this a much closer game.

Umm..You may have forgotten about Auburn.

Totally boneheaded. We are only down 6 if we take the safety. Even if he gets it out of the end zone, Ken+ would have had first and goal at the 1 or 2 yard line. Take the safety!! And I don't know why Coach I didn't challenge that Nicely recovered the fumble and was down. If it's challengable, we would have still had a remote chance to win.

Maybe worse. At least in the 80s, and part of the 90s, we could beat most I-AA teams and were competitive with just about everyone in the MAC. We can only get better from here, I guess.

Yep. As I've said many times before in regards to basketball, when you start looking at new incoming and inexperience players as the guys who need to pick up the slack, it's not normally a good sign.

Any way you slice it, this is just horrible news when you are talking about possibly your best player. Typically, I think the best you can hope for in a situation like this is that he'll be able to catch up in only a few weeks or so.

Then was it 2000 and 2001 that MTSU won the Sun Belt? I know they had a near undefeated season in 2006 too, and went to a bowl game again. I knew they were possibly down a bit when they played us those two years. I'd love to see us play more Sun Belt teams also. And it would indeed give a 1-A legitimacy to those victories. But, it's a total guess where those teams are in any given year. I think it would be dangerous if you played any of the better programs during a good year for sure. I'm not sure, unfortunately, that we can put too much separation between the MAC and the Sun Belt in any year really. However, I think playing some of the more higher profile teams like Troy, Arkansas State, or the Louisiana Lafayette Rajun Cajuns (love the name) would draw a heck of a lot more interest from fans that playing a 1-AA like Garnder Webb.

Yes.....The Townhouse. I'm sure a lot of us older guys frequented that place. That was the hottest bar on the campus back in the early 80s. You used to see a lot of the athletes in there. People would line up down the street to get in that place, even in the middle of winter. You couldn't move in there on a Friday or Saturday night. But, the drinking age was 18 back then too. I remember 25 cent draft beers on one of the weeknights. Made me miss a lot of classes the next morning. Ah..the memories. I lived in a house that was between the Townhouse and their primary parking lot. A lot of people used to pee in our bushes on the way back to their car. The Townhouse and Plasma Alliance shared that building. It was quite the upscale neighborhood. I would have thought that maybe since the bar badly needed more room, the plasma would have gotten moved elsewhere in favor of a larger nightclub. But it happened the other way around. Still to this day, I miss seeing those huge crowds on that corner on a weekend.

You have to remember the time period. Penn State sucked in 2004, and was coming off bad year in 2003. I believe they won 3 more games in 2004, so I think they're a fair comparison to Syracuse 2010. Virginia was better than Kentucky this year, but not by much. MTSU has had success since 2004, but that year they were just recently turned 1-A and didn't do much that year or the next. It was certainly looked at as an easy win when it was scheduled, much like GW. No doubt there were some similarities. But remember, Indiana was thrown in this time, which I think is by far the weakest of all of the BCS teams we played in either of those two years. I'm actually quite surprised if we scheduled MTSU as some sort of "practice" game. You might want to check your info. on them. I think they were already a 1-A team for about 5 years by that point, and had already won at least a couple of Sun Belt titles. They possibly weren't top notch that year, but they'd still have to be classified as infinitely better than an average 1-AA team. I see the pattern though. It would be beyond my wildest dreams if we can turn this team into a late-season MAC title contender, like the 2004 team. But, you just never know for sure. Things certainly would have to miraculously change starting this week.

Yes.....The Townhouse. I'm sure a lot of us older guys frequented that place. That was the hottest bar on the campus back in the early 80s. You used to see a lot of the athletes in there. People would line up down the street to get in that place, even in the middle of winter. You couldn't move in there on a Friday or Saturday night. But, the drinking age was 18 back then too. I remember 25 cent draft beers on one of the weeknights. Made me miss a lot of classes the next morning. Ah..the memories.