GP1

Article I recommend his book as well cited at the bottom of the article.

Are you saying unpredictable is the only predictable?

Photo 1 makes me feel old.

I was watching ESPNU yesterday and they did a breakdown on trends in college football play calling in the spread offense and I found it fascinating. Basically, team are running two different plays at the same time in different areas of the field. The QB decides after the ball is snapped which to run. Watch for this the next time you are at a game. Example 1: A team snaps the ball to the QB. He looks left at two receivers running standard drop back pass patterns. Seeing they are covered and with the running back sneaking out of the backfield to the right where the two WRs on the right are running roll out pass patterns. The QB rolls that way and completes a pass. Example 2: Trips left and the receivers run the bubble screen. The play isn't there so the QB hold the ball and gives it to the RB next to him. The OLine is blocking for a run play and the team gets good yards with the play. The modern spread offense gets better and better with time. Every time defenses catch up a little, wrinkles like this are introduced. I'm totally fascinated with it and Saturday at 4 PM you can watch Oregon, a team that has mastered it, run it. I wouldn't want to be a defensive coordinator right now. How do you stop two plays being run at once? It's a nightmare. So much has to go right.

Look, I don't want it to seem like I'm passing judgement on guys who find it homoerotic to watch MMA. If they enjoy it and get an emotional response from it, then I say live and let live. You say tight shorts. Some might call them tights. Others might call it . Edit: Don't shoot the messenger. When I read about it not being homoerotic because men have wrestled together in the nude since the first Greek Olympics, I think of a joke a friend of mine down here in Charlotte, from Norton and a Greek, tells. Question: How do you pull two Greek men apart? Answer: A crowbar.

The NFLPA turned its back on former players years ago. Mike Ditka once gave unusually cogent testimony in front of Congress about it.

Or, there is a large part of the population that simply doesn't care if someone gets killed playing football as long as it isn't someone in their immediate family. We live in a country where MMA is a huge sport now. I would contend it is human cockfighting that caters to a society where pornographic images (not nude photos, but the true definition of pornography which is an image designed to provoke a strong emotional response) are common to the point most people are numb to it. Quite frankly, I think MMA satisfies homoerotic feelings some men may have. Some men fantasize about two women in their underwear hitting each other with pillows. Some men fantasize about two men in their underwear rolling around in a cage punching/kicking at each other until one is knocked unconscious or is hurt to the point he has to quit. I'm not a judgmental guy, so if either fantasy makes someone happy, so be it. The former makes me happy. Many Americans have bought in to the notion that football is a "violent" game and the want to see images like James Harrison taking cheap shots with his head. They watch to see it. Therefore, since it is violent, some level of death and permanent injury should be expected and disregarded. The NFL created this idea of football, now they are having to change their ways.

I would also like to add that it is bad for the game. Weight gain, along with rule changes, have made it impractical to run the ball. The line is so big now there is nowhere to run when the back gets the ball. In a 16 game season, a running back still getting 1,000 yards in a season is a big achievement. It's only 63 yards per game. If they aren't going to adopt weight policies, I would like them to adopt a rule the CFL has. The d-line must play one yard off the ball. Doesn't seem like much, but it forces linemen on both sides of the ball to be more nimble. Therefore, they don't have all the fat guys across the line and even though they only have three downs, team can still run because there are holes created.

I agree with this Dave. Force = Mass x Acceleration. If the people are getting bigger and faster, the force must be greater. It's physics. I would be a proponent of weight limits per position starting as early as high school. There is no need for someone to weigh 360 pounds.

How to solve this problem? Play the guy and limit the exposure. What have we learned about the ncaa in recent years? Schools can screw up all day long and as long as they turn themselves in and show they are somehow changing themselves to avoid it in the future, nothing happens to them. Am I the only one that sees this obvious solution?

I would disagree completely that Faust and Brookhart were bad hires. Faust won seven games in a year and at one point had some really good talent on the team. He had a huge name at the time. Brookhart won the MAC and at one point was one of the hot coordinators in the country when he was at Pitt. The problem with Faust was holding on to him for nine years. The transition to Owens wasn't all that bad either, but holding on to him for nine years was a mistake as well...once a second place coach, always a second place coach. If we didn't have a QB that turned himself into a junkie, who knows what might have happened to Brookhart. Ianello...worst hire in all college football ever. If anyone can name one worse, I'll listen. Lack of tradition has made us a bad program. Teams that win tend to always win. Teams that are middling tend to always be middling. Teams that are good always tend to be good. Tradition leads to good recruiting. Good recruiting well leads to winning. You call it "dysfunctional administration". I call it clueless. Clueless going back to 1986 and believing a D-1A team can win playing in the Rubber Bowl. Not a big fan of the "building process", but we were so far away from the competition in 1986, I can't believe none of the adults around UofA couldn't see it. It took us over 20 years to build a new stadium and on campus practice area. 20 YEARS! Ever year that went by during those 20 years added more and more weight to the sled the program was pulling. We are still pulling that weight. Yet, we continue to employ one of the people who heaped one of the heaviest weights on the sled in TW. Did I mention the administration was clueless? I'm telling you guys, there is a book to be written about the UofA football program and bad decision making by a university. It would have to be a case study history book, because 25+ years of stupidity is hard to squeeze into a historical fiction book. It's one that other people would find amazing that it actually happened. For example, imagine you move to another part of the country and talk to someone about your school's football program. You tell them the story about how a coach like Ianello gets hired and fired in two years. They would understand that part of the story. Then the story would continue with the insanity part. They would look at you like you were lying when you told them that after two more years the guy who hired him is still employed in the same job and the football team only has two wins (zero agains I-A programs) since hiring the new coach. It's amazing to watch what goes on around UofA football from a distance. I think for a lot of Zips fans, it has become a normal part of being a fan. Like the saying, "The altered eye alters all."

Yes. It was almost as bad as the episode that was on at 8:00 talking about high school football: a player that dies of heat stroke, brain damage starting as early as high school for football players, high school coaches that will win at all costs and a mega church preacher in Arkansas who started his own football factory school and says they win because God wants them to win. I'm not sure that if I had a child old enough to play football...8th grade is old enough, no need for pee wee...I would allow him to play the game. The evidence is becoming pretty clear that football is a game that is going to cause permanent brain damage, on some level, to an unacceptable number of participants starting as early as they years their brains are developing. Want to solve the football problem in the US? Outlaw football for two years. People will be surprised at how free their weekends become and realize there are thousands of other things people can do other than watch football.

All good discussions on the change at center and the interest in seeing how that develops. If Pat brings more offense to the table and a little less defense, how do the Zips put him in a position to succeed and by connection, the entire team to succeed? So.... .....Here is something we have not touched upon as it relates to center and it is peeling the onion down to another layer. The mac really packs in defenses and forces teams to make shots from the outside. In order to open up the middle for better passes to the post and an inside/outside game, who is going to be the person on the Zips to force the defense away from the basket? I love watching basketball when teams have good movement with the ball in and out of the post and not just around the perimeter. Need to open up the middle to make that happen though. Here is something else to think about. The assumption is the graduation of Zeke is going to make the team less effective on defense and more effective on offense. It could be the case that the Zips just get better on defense in other areas making up for Zeke. Let's assume they don't and they give up on average 7 more points a game. Is the offensive improvement worth another 7 points a game, or are the Zips just going to have to close out tighter games? Lots to be revealed when the ball tips off.

Fantastic post all in all. I'm with you 100% on this issue. PG is the most important; however, I'm most interested in the adjustment of the team from having Zeke to not having him. He just wasn't good at shot blocking, he was great at it in a natural way that only someone who was born to do it did. It was rare to see someone with such a natural gift.

Because, that would make sense.

And you never will because teams are ready for him to run outside. "If you try to run outside, you'll never get there. If you run inside, you'll get outside." - Jerome Bettis advice to young NFL RBs.

Good post. On what planet were the Zips going to win any of the games in your first point? I can't ever remember us having a more difficult five game stretch. I think someone posted that our opponents are 21-7 or something like that. The only way I bench a player right now is if the player behind him is better. In the case of Hundley, I believe he is better because he can get much needed yards and keep the offense on schedule. Akron shouldn't bench players to "see what the young guys can do". That is what spring and fall practice is for. It's the kind of thing high school coaches do because they are gym teachers. If they could play, they would be in. Experimentation is over. The Zips badly need to get to four wins and I don't see how playing freshmen and sophomores who are not as good as the guys in front of them (God help us) give us anything other than a 2-3 win season...or worse, another 1 win season. The Zips need to try to win now and with the schedule easing after this week, there will be better opportunities. The Zips have three winnable games the rest of the year and they need to get winning. The young guys will have plenty of time to play in the future. The now is more important than next year. I've been reading the usual nonsense about people "quitting". That's the sort of nonsense that fans say when they don't know what else to say. Being overwhelmed can look like quitting. Overwhelmed is something you can visually see. Quitting is a statement that assumes the person making it knows the mental state of those quitting. I think the Zips, in the second half of BG and last week, became overwhelmed by their inability to compete over a five week period against overall better players. BG and OU are good freaking good teams...look at who they have beaten and you can see for yourself.

The major difference is our basketball team experienced success before KD under different coaches. The basketball program is a good program and will continue to be good under the right leadership in the future. The evidence is there for that. If KD left tomorrow, Akron would be an attractive school for good lots of good coaches because they want to take over a winning program. What we describe as good as it relates to our football program really isn't that good. We have had little success as a D-1A team under various coaches. I think we have a good coach now and we are still struggling to get our footing. The opposite is true for this program. If Bowden left tomorrow, is it an attractive program for any coach? Not really...they struggled to fill the position the last time it opened because it is a losing program. I posted a link not long ago that showed it doesn't matter what schools do. Historically, schools that are bad tend to always be bad...schools that are middle of the road tend to always be middle of the road...schools that tend to be good are always good. This isn't ALWAYS the case, but it is the case almost always. We have 25+ years of circling the drain at D-1A. That's a lot of evidence that maybe we are not cut out for D-1A. Give it three more years and if things are still the way they are now, we will have 30 years of evidence and they can make a decision as to how to proceed then. Getting rid of football isn't an option. What to do about the program, if anything, needs to be explored at that point. The best option is to start winning. Edit: You are correct. It is time for different leadership in the Athletic Department. Every time I think of TW, I think of the guy who destroyed a football program in order to give a friend of his a job because they had the same stupid ideas. The guy has a terrible stink on him. Michael Corleone settled all family business by eliminating people and even killed his brother as one of the last acts of cleaning up past business. Without the clean-up, organizations sometimes can't move forward. TW should have been let go a couple of years ago. I'm not sure why he continues to stink up the Department with his past failure. Please don't anyone tell me about his successes in making obvious decisions. He gets paid to make big decisions and he failed at his biggest decision and we have to suffer with it for years. We could still be suffering even after he was gone. He is so bad, he will never get another job as good as Akron. If he could, he would be gone by now.

Actually, this is evidence of how almost useless buzz is. Results count for more than buzz.

I'm already past this point. Looking forward to the day when I can kid myself that we have a good football program after a 4-8 season.

Link I'm not surprised that all of the university presidents did not respond. However, a statement like, "Here at University X, we have a long tradition of college football and are looking forward to current and future success."...or something like that. What makes the link worth following is the Skype interviews with Marc Edelman and Jason Luckasevic on this link. Edelman pointing out that the original mission of the ncaa to protect players is no longer being followed because it is about.....watch it yourself. Luckasevic mentioning that he has never been contacted by the ncaa or a university to consult on brain injuries is important. It shows how little the schools really care about the players. The nfl at least is hiring consultants and working the problem. The ncaa will probably come up with a "solution" that requires a kid to sign a waiver against future law suits in the case of brain related injuries. BTW, is there more evidence needed to show how weak the world economy is when Santa has to take a second job working at UC? He was living fat and happy at the north pole and now look at him having to work two jobs.

I don't know if you know this or not, but a Zips football fan owns the rights to this phrase....

Since I didn't get to attend the game yesterday, I still would like a feel for the atmosphere. Homecoming should be a day of fun and festivities shared by all. However, if you haven't figured it out by now, that skank, Mother Nature, is not a Zips fan. In my lifetime, there has never been a more comprehensive categorization of the types of rain one can experience than the wise man Forrest Gump described. Since we all process events a little differently depending on the person, I've put up the categories of rain and added one of my own so you can choose for yourself. Laughing frequently a physiological response after crying. Have some fun.

Bad mood around the board. Surely, the weather must have been great to watch a game and take in the Homecoming festivities?.?. I have a hurricane blowing through today and I'm not moping around with a case of the Mondays. I figured watching the Zips get beat by 40 would be the type of masochism enjoyed by the board and everyone would be in a good mood to discuss.

Ooops. Tripped up by iPad auto correct. Life goes on.