GP1

I did.

Sorry. Original post was supposed to be a poll.

33% of the season is completed. Lets give the Zips a performance review. UCF was what I thought it would be. Good team on the road in Florida in August = loss JMU was a good team that gave us a good game and we won. I expected that to happen. Michigan far exceeded my expectations. Lafayette exceeded my expectations. They are a better team than we are and we had a shot to beat them. I expected the Zips to be 1-3 at this point. I didn't expect the Zips to play as well as they have. Therefore, this season has exceeded expectations. The bad news is we are still 1-3. It looks horrible for recruiting because it should be 1-4 after next week. I expect this team to get to four wins this season. Fall short of that and the season will fall short of expectations. What do you think?

Corsica picked Akron as his upset special on game day.

Sounds like the coaches and athletic directors. How come nobody ever asks them to sacrifice? How come coaches can't cut back on the "coaches" who do thing like organize film or some administrative assistance and work more hours? Some of these guys are making millions a year. Let them really earn it. How about if the ADs cut back on their administration personnel? Ever look at the Zips website and the number of administrative people? What the heck do some of these people do? My wife works somewhere they are trying to curb some of their spending and are calling it "Operation Drunken Sailor". How come we never hear about something like this going on in athletic departments?

Coaches weren't making that money that many years ago. All they need to do is allow the guys to cash in on their fame.

Thanks for posting this Dr Z. This is exactly the type of article that should be written. The comparison between what administrators and coaches are making to how the players live.

CK is going to need a booking agent before too long...

Did you see how depressed the guy looked walking out of the upper level bathroom? I wonder if he had to take a dump in a stall that didn't have a door. The good news is he would have had a lot of privacy because, according to the video, there are only about 5 other people in the stadium.

What if the Z could have the zipper in it somehow that looked really cool?

Love this pick. Further prediction...Fans have a blast watching these two teams go up and down the field.

The next game is always the most important game. There is zero evidence beating a BCS team catapults a program forward. It certainly didn't happen to App State. It's something fans debate that doesn't really matter.

Maybe. In 2007, App State beats Michigan with Armanti Edwards as QB. This guy may or may not still play for the Panthers, but I'm too lazy to look into it today. Later that year they win the National Championship. Great win/season and one that conventional wisdom would tell us would catapult a program to a new level. I'm not a big fan of conventional wisdom myself because there are a lot of idiots in the world and conventional wisdom requires agreeing with a lot of idiots. Let's look at how this huge win for App State changed the program and produced greater things. Link As you can see from the link, the App State program has been in a state of decline since the win in 2007. Still a great Southern Conference team, but not a national championship since 2007 and not making it as far into the playoffs as they have in the past. A big win at Michigan didn't propel the program forward and was more of an indication of the great talent App State had that year. Let's talk about the Zips. If the Zips would have won on Saturday and the program continues to improve over the next few years, many would say it was the win at Michigan that started the ball rolling. I don't think that would be the case. The Zips aren't a great team and have a lot of room for improvement. In my opinion, if this team takes great strides forward, it is the result of the day we hired Bowden as coach and all of the actions he took since that day, not a win on a single day. This is why I believe a win this Saturday would be just as important as the Michigan win. It would prove to people we have the program going in the right direction. It would prove to recruits Akron can win games and make it more attractive to players who want to go to a school to win an not play in a new stadium. It would prove to the players on the team they should have confidence in themselves and their coaches AND they can rebound from adversity. It would prove to everyone Akron can fight at its weight class. Wins against BCS teams come and go. We've had them before and look where we are. It's the ability to win and sustain winning that matters and we really need to win this week because you can't sustain winning by pointing to a past win over Michigan. Winning is sustained by winning more, not past actions. We lost to Michigan and need to get over it so we can get this program moving in the right direction. Go Zips!

Buffalo, Cal, SDSU and FL a and m. It's impossible to tell whether or not osu is good or bad because they never play anyone. They like to fly under the radar and hope to pop up in the national championship game. If the go 13-0 and there are two other undefeated teams like Oregon and Alabama, there is no way osu makes the national championship game. It is the perfect scenario for their fans because they love the victim card.

It doesn't matter if they join or not. I don't know why they would want to join the MAC. If your only option is the MAC, you don't move.

Very different scenarios this year. Tennessee was horrible last year and a bad Zips team played well against them. The Zips still had a long way to go. This year, Michigan is a much better team and so is Akron. Akron proved it Saturday. The Penno shot was much worse because the Zips were such a great team that year and there was so much riding on that play.

I'd like to add to this point a little. Had a long drive yesterday and spent some time talking with a former D-1 coach I know. Since I didn't get to see the Zips game, I wanted his opinion. He watched the entire second half and was very impressed with the team. Mostly, he felt the Bowden is the calming influence the Zips need right now and said the team was completely in control on the sidelines. Never once did the players or coaches panic. Said the Zips had an excellent defensive game plan and their performance was no fluke. Loves the RB transfer from BYU and our tall receiver (this guy is a fan of every tall receiver). Feels that when the QBs wheel is feeling better, he will be even better than on Saturday. My biggest take away was his comment that Akron could easily win four games in the mac this season. They won't play a team that good the rest of they year and really should go into every game with the expectation of them winning. I know personally, my expectations for this team have changed in the past few days. I wasn't in a panic after the cfu loss. cfu is a heck of a good team and we melted in the first game in the Florida. Happens to a lot of people. JMU was what it was. The team found something last week...I don't know if it is more practice together, the coaches opened up the playbook more, the players performed better or all of the above and then some, but something clicked last week. Let's just hope the click we heard wasn't them turning the switch to the off position because these kids can play. Now they have to win. This Saturday is a winnable game and the Zips need to go out and win.

Akron was within one play of beating the #11 team in the country. Every game from here on out is a winnable game. For those of you going to the game, this could be one of the most exciting games of the year and I hope you are looking forward to the game.

I hope the one thing the Zips learn from this is you have to play well every week. They have to play that well in front of 100K in Michigan and they have to play that well in front of 10K at some MAC school. Keep playing like that and good things happen. Fall back and the losing starts again. Get to four wins ASAP.

I sure as heck hope not.

No. Les Miles is strong and knows how to handle the media.... and has a machine around him to help with that. Most of the sources (an large number of them are not named) don't have a large institution around them to defend them...former players. They are the weakest in terms of ability to defend themselves against a media attach from an institution as large as SI. One was interviewed coming out of a Bible study and the writer didn't take notes. I'll give credit to Ok State here. They set up a website (linked to on an earlier post of mine) so former players would have a method of defending themselves or to point out inaccurate parts of the "story". Is it worth it to trample over a guy walking out of a Bible study in order to get at Les Miles or OK State? If that makes people feel good for some reason, it makes me sad about the future of our country.

College kids are having sex? This news is Earth shattering. How will college athletics survive?

If a reporter went around and investigated non-BCS schools, would he find the following (yes): 1. Recruits having sex with girls. 2. Grade fixing. 3. Some money trading hands outside of ncaa rules. 4. Athletes smoking pot 5. Athletes selling pot (hits a little close to home) Here is why people should care about this non-story. Investigating the people at the bottom of the food chain in college athletics in such a haphazard manner, the players themselves, is an abuse of power by an institution such as SI. These reporters went out and picked on the weak. In lieu of picking on the weak, why aren't they out investigating who is making the real money in college athletics and how those people may be taking advantage of a corrupt system? The reason they don't do it is it is easy to pick on the weak. Coaches and ADs are too sophisticated with the media for a writer to produce a cliche story such as what this writer has written.

In the SI series today, we learn some athletes had school work completed by others. Shocking I know. News flash, non athletes can have others complete their school work for them if they are willing to pay or if a hot girl asks a nerd to do her calculus problems for her. How again is this news? OK State responds in the manner schools should in 2013. Don't let a bad report be the final word.

Writers like him tend to write for a lot of people. His Wiki page showed him working for AOL. ESPN is the "Old News", similar to the current status of the NY Times. Almost anyone can be a reporter these days. The only real issue is whether your reporting is any good or not. This OkSt story is horribly researched and written. If the OK St. "story" was published in a high school news paper, would it be taken as serious as it is by many? The bias is in the thinking that SI represents a high standard for journalism. SI has turned into a bunch of "click" whores trying to get people to click on their website. Bad writing, bad reporter makes this story a bad story. A guy like Whitlock is exactly who ESPN needs working for them. Someone who will break them out of the "old sports media" and make them interesting again. ESPN employs a bunch of dinosaurs. It used to be a person on TV had to be able to speak and be understood. God bless him because he had a stroke, but Lee Corso can't even speak and Lou Holtz...enough said. Mike Ditka can't complete a sentence and doesn't understand the modern game. It's terrible entertainment trying to pass itself off as journalism.