GP1

It's a long, boring drive and HH isn't worth the time. Its where northerners who don't know any better go. With kids, you'd be better off going to Myrtle Beach for a day.

This is my number one worry JZ84. I thought I was the only one who believes the light at the end of the tunnel might in fact be a train coming towards us. Earlier this year when Pohl went down, I mentioned it would be hard for the Zips to go 3-3 after his injury. I was anticipating one game, not to mention the second game in which he was injured even though he said he wasn't injured...people can believe what they want about that. It looks like we could easily go 0-6 in the remaining six games. Not only that, I mentioned I watched Wake go 5-7 after bad coaching decisions Skinner's senior year by Jim Grobe and how it resulted in the collapse of the Grobe years and that we could be watching the beginning of the end of the Bowden years. I believe that more than ever right now. The next two weeks are critical. Going 5-7 again is easy to sell against if you are a competing school for a recruit. How many losing seasons in a row would that make? Going 4-7 after going 5-7 the year before is a disaster for recruiting at a school that hasn't posted too many winning seasons. Why is this the case? I've mentioned the last two weeks that the program is "fragile". Most schools that don't win find ways to lose unless they can convince themselves they are better than they really are (confidence and momentum). It doesn't take much to break that illusion of being better than you really are. When that happens, all the reminders of failure come rushing back and ways to lose become implemented. More than most sports, football is a game where lesser teams can use emotion to produce better results than their talent should allow them to produce. If the other team can just squash the emotion, it spells trouble. Back to recruiting. Watching the game last night, it was clear that there was a personnel gap between the schools. The gap isn't there when the Zips emotions are riding high, but strip away the emotions and the gap is there. Buffalo is not the best team in the world, but they had bigger/stronger players and were able to push us around the field on both sides of the ball. There are a lot of complaints on this board about play calling. I don't like our play calling either, but I don't think it is the difference in us winning and losing right now. We all know the old saying, "You don't win with Xs and Os. You win with Jimmies and Joes". ......"But GP1, we beat Pitt so we have to be good!"....Attention Zips fans, Pitt is a terrible program with a coach who is coaching a 1980s offense. They only have one win against a team with a pulse and as it turns out, VA Tech's pulse was not that strong to begin with. It doesn't matter what plays we call out of what formations right now because without better talent none of them are going to work in 2014 when teams run 65-80 plays a game. Buffalo just wasn't a couple of plays better than us last night, they were four quarters better than us. I don't feel like I am sounding the alarm about not just this season, but the next few years because if you aren't alarmed at this point, you aren't paying attention, or you choose to see something that doesn't exist. Waiting until the off season to make changes will be too late and it's too late to make any changes this season. This program is in a horrible position right now. Going 1-1 in the next 2 isn't good enough. They need to get to 6-6 for the program to have any real positive momentum going forward. Going 2-0 in the next 2 is critical.

I'm going.

Buffalo outscored both Toledo and Northern combined last night. Three teams in the MAC had something to play for last night. Two played hard. One didn't. Toledo fought and lost. No shame in that. We didn't fight. They should be ashamed today.

Well, the Zips scored more points than I thought they would.

Aaaaaand good night friends.

On the bright side, Brown will have the entire second half to study for his physics exam.

Please throw passes over the middle. Too many deflections because plays predictable.

The players execute.

Play calling has been fine. Execution terrible.

We are such a fragile program.

Name a college they have better than what we have in the following areas. I'm not talking about outside perception. I'm talking actual faculty, research and quality of graduates. Engineering (I've actually never met anyone with an engineering degree from Can't. Do they even have an engineering school? We have an entire glass tower for one type of engineering.) Education Nursing (ask any doctor around NE Ohio and they will tell you how good the nursing program at Akron is) Business (Can someone point out all of the great business leaders around NE Ohio that went to Can't or got an MBA from Can't. NE Ohio is full of business leaders from UofA.) Arts and Sciences (They don't have anything resembling the Bliss Institute) How is their law school doing? The day we combine athletic programs with Can't will be the day I completely tune out. If they want to combine non research, education, admissions and athletics, then fine. Lots of states have co-op buying programs...Texas and Michigan have them and they work pretty good.

Hats off to this professor for finally bringing to light the incompetency of the leadership within the MAC. Many of us already knew it, but it brings it to light for the general public.

You're the only one freaking out.

I think MAC football and universities struggle for different reasons. Both involve resume building programs by university administrators, but that's about where it ends. MAC football "struggles" (not sure I would say it is struggling right now, but we can save that discussion for the football forum) because they want to be something other than what they are in a structure that is set up for them to always be behind bigger schools. Universities are struggling because leaders at those universities believed throwing up a bunch of play grounds for students, building stadiums, adding employees and generally making their system too big while disregarding basic statistics showing their efforts were pipe dreams. Additionally, they financed the building process through student fees that were being paid out of student loans that will be crippling a generation for decades to come. It was the key to their resume building, but not the key to success. Universities should have been downsizing crap degrees years ago in lieu of allowing things like Womens Studies programs to exist (those programs belong in Sociology Departments, not their own department). Akron can get its books in order, it will just take a lot of cutting of crap programs to do that. There are similarities between what has gone on at universities and the housing bubble. In the end, the taxpayers are going to have to bail out universities and students with crippling debt just like they did the banks. Akron is a better school than Can't, YSU and CSU. Combining those schools with Akron devalues my degree and I'm not interested. If you want a football analogy, it's like the Big Ten saying the league is better with the addition of Rutgers and Maryland. All the addition of those schools did was devalue an already declining conference.

It's all how you look at it. I look at it from the perspective of local bowl committees. It doesn't bother me one bit that a team with a better record would get left out in favor of the Zips because bowl games aren't real games except for the now playoff we have. Here is how I see it. Bowls are community events that use an exhibition football game to raise money for a local charity. Because of that it is in their best interest, and more importantly the interest of the local charity, that teams generating the most attendance would be preferable regardless of record. This is why I have a strong feeling that if the Zips can just get to 6 wins, they go to the bowl in Montgomery. Making a bowl would do wonders for the program and nobody would give a hoot that a team with one more win was left out. God knows I would have no sympathy while I was packing my bags for a couple of days in Montgomery and neither should anyone else on this board. Remember us not making a bowl game in 2004? Nobody was crying for us. Let's say one of the scenarios comes true....Akron vs. Arkansas State. Not many people in Alabama or Akron are going to be making the trip, so it puts the bowl committee in a bad situation in terms of revenue generation. Bring in Terry Bowden...Former UNA and Auburn coach...all of the sudden there is local interest and ticket sales go up. Even better, Akron vs. Univ. of South Alabama (Sunbelt Conference). Local school and the Bowden factor. Some bowls aren't about conference standings and this is one of those bowls. I would be surprised and extremely disappointed if we went 6-6 and didn't get an invite to this game.

Thank God!

This is a good point and something I think both teams should be taking a look at. It's too late in the season to experiment with anything new. When you struggle, you have to get back to what has worked earlier in the season. None of us can know if they drifted away because of choice or because situations dictated it. Either way, if it worked, find a way to make it work again. Just like a really good baseball pitcher uses the whole strike zone and changes speed, the Zips offense needs to be able to use the whole field and integrate all aspects of the offense so they work together. All of this can be accomplished out of simple formations as well as the complex.

I think I would take the Zips. While the Zips aren't playing well recently, Buffalo is playing worse. I look for the Zips defense to play better and the offense to play the same as it has all season. They will be just good enough to win tomorrow. Akron 20 Bulls 14

I cannot think of a case of that level of product development. I can think of many cases where like product manufacturers will use their trade association to influence International Building Code in favor of their existing manufacturing processes.

Do you work for the government?

We've been down this road already with Can't and we won the MAC East and went on to win the MACC. Playing them does not worry me.

Combining Treasury/Accounting services, IT and those types of services makes sense to me. Those are functions that with the technology available today should make it easy to combine. I don't like combining research because it is limiting to the thought process that universities are supposed to foster. Combining purchasing is OK if it is for things like buying paper, copier services, cafeteria food, lawn mowers, general facilities maintenance items, etc. Combining purchasing is not OK if it is for buying things central to research because research can be so different from school to school that it would make it difficult for the researchers to complete their projects effectively. Money needs to be cut....and lots of it. People are a huge expense and it makes sense that if they can eliminate redundant positions it could help to clean up the books.

How did you know goats were the official mascot of the croquet championship?

This just in. The World Croquet Championship will be played at UofA soccer court in 2015.