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And so what? What if it is true and it isn't a negative. Stanford is big and slow. Oregon is small and fast. Big and slow won. Again, Big Ten fans need to drop the paranoia and embrace the league for what it is.

That is not the national perception of the the MAC or even close to the national perception. It's the perception of those who want the world to revolve around whatever large regional conference they live around. I'm sure there are some in Alabama (SEC fans) who believe it is important for the Sun Belt if the SEC is good. It's all fantasy. The perception from where I live, the souteast, is the mac is a good nonBCS conference that falls below the BCS level. That perception is true in fact and reality. It has nothing to do with the Big Ten or ND. It is important for members of the Big Ten if the Big Ten is good. It is important for ND for ND to be good. It is important for the MAC that the MAC is good. The MAC is pulling its weight. The Big Ten and ND are not. We have no control over them and it makes no difference whatsoever to the mac how well those other two are playing. It doesn't hurt the Big Ten when the MAC is bad. Why would it help the MAC if the Big Ten was better? The makes no sense and is an effort to try and connect nonexistent dots. Believe me, the fantasy land the SEC fans have created for themselves is just an grandiose as the one Big Ten fans have created for themselves without all of the desperate to be liked and taken seriously paranoia. That's why I go to ACC games. Nobody is pretending it is anything other than what it is.

This is good feedback. I don't know of Bowen's players like him or not, but they seem to respect him without being afraid. That's the wheelhouse for a coach. Bowden strikes me as a coach who is completely honest with players, whether they want to hear it or not. Actually, I think Bowdent and KD are pretty similar in style. Kids don't want a best friend, they want a good coach. Here is a story about a coach who everyone thinks is a "players coach" in a negative way, but in reality, he had an enormous amount of respect from his players because he won and was a good coach. I have a relative who coached high school football in central Ohio at a wealthy suburb. A few years ago now when usc played tosu, usc practiced at their school. It was totally top secret and only a handful of people knew it was going to happen because they didn't want a crowd or media. A lot of the players were goofing around before practice, which is normal. The second Pete walked on the field and blew the whistle to start practice, every single player snapped to attention and became immediately focused. There was no goofing off during practice. As soon as practice was over, they started to have fun again. That's what a "players coach" really is. I would bet UofA practices are very focused that way.

I'm not surprised by this at all. Since I've moved away, I've noticed how much more pleasant people can be. Not only that, I'm surprised by how respectful children are to adults outside of Ohio. Swearing can be a sign of a lack of education. Ohio is a pretty well educated state so I don't see that as the problem. Over the past couple of weeks I'm sure a lot of you have seen one of the main signs of vulgar discourse that for whatever reason, everyone has to look at year around now. Regardless of what fans think about one school or another, it is a vulgarity to walk around with a shirt that says "F Michigan" or the opposite for those from Michigan. Not only is this behavior accepted, it is encouraged. The people who wear those shirts think they are being a super fan. In fact, they are being vulgar boobs and forcing others to look at their vulgar stupidity. There is no place for it regardless of the circumstances and those people should be shunned, not encouraged.

I think you could do it equally. What did he do that you couldn't do? Poorly evaluate talent? Run off a base of decent talent? Hire some coaches on the fringe of the profession and lost 11 games a season with them? The list could go on. Don't see yourself short. You could easily run a program into the ground just as good as he did.

Respectfully, this is not very good evidence for why the league is no longer a laughing stock. The MAC set NIU up for success this year and they should have gone undefeated. 7 bowl eligible teams is not that significant considering almost anyone who can breathe makes a bowl. There is a case to be made for the MAC being a better league and here it is. First, the top of the league has always been entertaining. The middle of the pack and the bottom always were vomit inducing. The bottom of the league, which we are no longer part of, is still vomit inducing. The bottom of every league is vomit inducing. However, a weakness has become a strength for the league and that is the middle of the pack. The middle of the road teams, which we are now part of, don't make me want to vomit when I watch them. In fact, they are playing some entertaining football. How much statistical evidence do I have to make this case some might ask? I have zero statistical evidence other than my ability to watch a game without wanting to grab for the remote as quickly as possible. Hardly a giant sample size, but I'm sure a lot of football fans around the country who watch it on TV and who attend MAC games feel a similar way. If anyone has been paying attention, I haven't referred to the MAC as Dollar General in a couple of years now. Three years ago, it deserved that tag and today it doesn't. Who is ranked? Who goes to bowl games and what bowl game? Etc. These are all secondary reasons for determining the quality of the MAC. The best determination is what you see with your eyes. The MAC is a much better product than in previous years because the quality of football is much better.

When I was in graduate school, I knew two guys who applied for an NSA positions and got them. As part of the process, the candidates put in names of people to be interviewed by the FBI as a background check and I was a referral for both of them. One day, a knock on my apartment door happened and I opened it up to see the hottest, youngest, female FBI agent I could imagine... Complete with a gun under her coat and a badge. It was great interview and she was really funny. Didn't take herself too seriously and flirted a little. I considered trying to turn it into a Penthouse Forum moment, but I was a little concerned about pulling the trigger on something like that with a woman who had a device under her coat with a trigger. True story....

Just saw this post after reading about the new Yosef. Maybe BurlingtonApp is smoking the same thing Yosef is. Whatever it is, save some for me when the Zips play in Boone. When a coach retires after going 8-4 and the new coach goes 4-8, there is a problem. It's called breaking down, not breaking in. This should never happen to a program that is ready to make a jump unless they truly don't understand what they are getting in to. In this way, it reminds me of Akron making the move in 1987. In fact, a program ready to make a jump should never hire a coach with only three years of experience of any kind at the D1A level. App State didn't hire a fresh face, they hired a continuation of the previous program as 14 of his 17 years of coaching were spent at App. and he went 4-8 in year one. Please do yourself a favor and look at the bios of his coaching staff. They are a collection of guys with extremely limited experience in D1A football and the App State good old boy club. By the time our games against them roll around, this guy will have App State squarely in the toilet. Akron has forward momentum right now and App State has more of the same that brought them 4-8. I'm really looking forward to the Zips winning both games. Link If by 30 points ahead of Akron in recruiting, that is App. State for no ranking at all, he wins this argument.

They may get tired of the losing, but they will never get tired of the money. The money matters more than the losing.

If this happened to me walking into a bar, I would respond by saying, "Why, yes I am. I'm the head coach of the Varsity Quarters Team and the head coach of the Junior Varsity Beer Pong team. Just spending some time looking for talent."

It more than devalues it. It is literally taking money from Akron and giving it elsewhere. Akron gets a percent of all of the sales. I was in the team shop for the first time Friday. If you live in the cold of NE Ohio, the selection is very good. Although I think there should be a law against hooded sweatshirts, they seem to be popular. Shame on a graduate who can't find anything to wear in there. They have good merchandise. I couldn't have been any more pleased with my trip to The Bid Dialer.

They had two chances last year. FSU handled them easily and the game was worse than the score. They lost to a horrid Iowa team.

Indiana and Vandy won't care. They already don't care. Soon enough, they will need more money to sustain what they have "built" and will be more than happy to feed at the bottom of a super division. Since they only consider money, it is only logical that the split will benefit all of them. I'm not certain it is a matter of whether or not they want to, I think they will have to. I'm not interested in being a part of that any longer. I think we can do better.

Dropping down would be the wrong thing to do and short sighted. Making our own division with other maclike conferences and playing in the fall is the wrong thing to do because it forces us into a sword fight with Goliath. Making our own division with other maclike conferences and playing in the spring is the right thing to do because it allows us to slingshot ourselves forward. It would balance out our level of football so that the great game that was played at The Big Dialer on Friday could be a weekly event. There would be an opportunity for relatively equal teams playing each week. That's my idea of competition. I don't think there is much competition in maclike conference teams beating up on IAA teams or BCS handing out payday games to maclike schools. Those games degrade competition. For the most part, they are meaningless games. Sure, teams make a lot of money, but everything else is devalued. When a school like tosu plays Florida A&A, they are devaluing their fans and taking a dump on them and their hard earned money. It's no wonder college sports fans are so jaded....25 to 30 percent of the games are designed to be complete garbage and that's putting it mildly. It seems to me that the defenders of the norm look at the UofA vs Michigan game and believe there is something better there than the UofA vs Toledo game. Both were great college football games regardless of where they were played, how many people were at the game or what TV network they were televised. Americans love football and if they saw that weekly, they would have an appreciation for it. Give them what they want.

I don't think any bashing is going on. Since I had not been to a game in a while, I couldn't remember what the size of the band used to look like so I asked if it was smaller. It appeared to be smaller.

Why rock the boat? For the best reason possible, because we can do better. MAC schools are like beaten down housewives who are scared to leave their crappy husbands because they are afraid they can't make it on their own. Worse yet, they think the a-hole they are married to is going to one day wake up and decide to treat her better. I'm convinced that there is actually more money to be made in the spring for us than in the fall. I'm also convinced the BCS schools could make more money if they would stop playing non BCS schools, charge more for tickets and also for television. In 1986, that's over 25 years ago, ABC sports offered the USFL $175 million over a four year period to televise their league in the spring. If they offered $175 million in 1986, what would they offer in 2013? To give an indication of the market, FOX is currently paying MLB $500 million per year to televise games and the ratings for baseball are terrible compared to the past. I don't think we would get $500 million per year, but we could do pretty well. FOX is great at televising football and making anything entertaining. A 16 team playoff with the opportunity for a non BCS level school to lose a first round game and soon be forgotten? No thanks. I'm tired of playing their game. The BCS teams can have their 16 team playoff and we should have our own. Good luck and good riddance to them.

Yes. In fact, we should get together with all of the nonBCS conferences and start out own division making it official. Then we can start working on our own spring league, but that's another topic...or not. This has nothing to do with what the ncaa will or will not allow and the ability of nonBCS teams to compete on a regular basis. NIU made a bcs game last year and were basically manhandled by an average FSU team. Game Summary If the same happens again this year, everyone will say, "See, the don't belong."....and they will be right. There are only about 10-15 teams in the country with football programs designed to win a national championship. 15 is probably being too generous. No non bcs team can compete at that level for many, many reasons. Can non-bcs teams compete against the rest of the bcs teams after the first 15 or so? Sometimes, but most of the time no because they are always trying to compete with the bcs schools at their game and it rarely works. I would recommend a book called David and Goliath by Malcolm Gladwell. MAClike conferences are always trying to pick up a sword and go head-to-head with Goliath (the bcs schools). It's a losing game yet they continue to do it because they never think differently or about how they can be successful. Instead of maclike fans/conferences sitting around endlessly bitching about the bcs schools only getting to play for a national championship, why don't we set up our own division in which we can compete for our own national championship with like talented schools and a great playoff system? Instead of maclike fans/conferences sitting around endlessly bitching about all of the TV revenue the bcs conferences get, why not play at a time when networks are starve for sports entertainment and will pay a lot for the national sport (football) to be televised? Instead of maclike fans/conferences sitting around endlessly bitching about nobody going to games because so many people stay home to watch BCS or the weather is unpleasant, why not play at a time when fans have little to do, they are starved for some live football and are eagerly looking forward to watching a sporting event in increasingly nice weather? Instead of maclike fans/conferences sitting around endlessly bitching about having to play on Tuesday or Wednesday nights, why not play during a time of year when fans want something to do outside on a Friday or Saturday and the best option is live college football? Instead of maclike fans/conferences sitting around endlessly bitching about no interest in their brand of football because the NFL and BCS suck up all the oxygen, play at a time when there is interest for live football and you are the only source of the product. To top that, become the only source of football gambling opportunity for all of the gambling degenerates in this country and watch the league explode. The nfl is made widely popular because of gambling. Maclike conferences provide great entertainment for fans. The problem is they don't put themselves in a position to succeed or allow others to see what a great product they have. They purposely go out of their way to make themselves look bad (see Tuesday and Wednesday games). Last Friday was as good of a college football game as anything else that was played that weekend. It was well played and well coached by both teams. It was the best college football game I went to this year. If you take every game that was played last weekend, play it in the middle of nowhere with only the teams dressed in black and white uniforms with no fans, the Akron-Toledo would match up against anything played. It was just as good of a game as osu vs michigan or alabama vs auburn. It just didn't have all of the glitter around it. The MAClike conferences can be so much more than they allow themselves to be. The real shame is they are doing it to themselves because they are firmly committed to participating in the definition of insanity...and we all know what that is.

I'm so glad I don't live in Ohio any longer and have to listen to tosu fans constantly defending their program. tosu knows the formula for success for teams in a bad conference and they are playing it well this year along with Florida State. Good team + bad conference + horrid ooc schedule = BCS Championship game. This year's BCS Championship game will probably be the two weakest teams on record.

Meyer wants LF gone along with the entire defensive staff. He has wanted it for two years. OSU is going to help LF get a job at another school during the off season, whether it is as a DC or head coach at a smaller school. Probably DC.

Question about something that struck me at the game Friday. Didn't our band used to be bigger?

Have you seen the ESPN college scoreboard show yet today?

I see this at Wake Forest games as well. Since they have been so bad recently, they get more noon games and very few students come. I wonder if this is a problem throughout college football.?.?

This is all the evidence I need. Toledo is an excellent offensive team both throwing and rushing. Giving up 29 points may seem like a lot, but Toledo averaged 33 points per game this year and one number driving down that average is only scoring 6 against Florida. Want to know what kind of company we keep with our defense against Toledo? Toledo was held to 29 or fewer points against five other teams this season. They were: Florida, Missouri, Ball State, Bowling Green and NIU. Fantastic job by the defense on Friday. Friday was a huge, huge, huge win for the Zips program. Toledo is a very good football team with a proud tradition. We went toe-to-toe with them and won.

You are over complicating the issue. More winning will increase attendance at games. Starting times are frequently determined by the television networks so we don't have much of a say in that. Besides, the networks now pile on good games at prime time because America wants to watch. If America wants to watch games at home or in a bar at prime time, don't compete against it. I love live football in the afternoon AND watching a game at home on prime time. We are the MAC. Our games should be starting no later than 3:30. Saturday night games are a guaranteed loser if attendance is important. Schedule bigger opponents? We play Pitt and PSU next year. Pitt will make a return trip to Akron. How many more big opponents do we need to schedule?