GP1

I too am optimistic, but not able to pinpoint exactly why. Better players? The unpredictable nature of the MAC? Every MAC team should feel some level of optimism going into every season. In any event, I think if . was here, he would be able to share some of his wisdom about where the Zips are right now. We badly need a good season to break the three straight years of one win. He would probably say, "The Zips are on the precipice of an enormous crossroads." One more horrible season, and there are huge problems. We need a minimum four wins.

I'd like UofA to put bad memories in the past starting with keeping Faust from sitting behind the bench at basketball games, but that isn't what this topic is about. The suspension of CJ started the ball rolling on a disastrous season that ended in the firing of a coach and the hiring of Coach I a few months later. I'm at a total loss as what there is to "honor" here. Do I feel sorry for his family? Hell yes! Do I feel sorry for him and want him to be honored? Hell no! He was a junkie who stole from his teammates and ultimately killed himself because he allowed himself to go down the wrong path. It's not like he was smoking a little weed like many of us did in college, he was a full fledged smack addict.

Interesting stats about beer drinking. Enjoy.

I understand that. I also believe it is a vulgar way for someone to use their money.

Insane is right. On just about every level....

Two questions: 1. I need a confirmation. Word has it there was a delivery van spotted near the RB recently trying to deliver a stall door. Did you see anything? The name on the delivery van was "Better Late Than Never Delivery Service". 2. Did you see ZipsWin!'s TV antenna along the fence? Any news would be appreciated.

I have no problem with such vulgar displays. All they need to do to support that building process is raise student fees so kids who can't afford to go to college have to borrow more money to pay the student fees to support the building process. I see no problem there.... If that's what we have to do to compete in D-1A, someone please get the paperwork for us to move to a lower division.

I don't, but not for the reasons people may believe. I want to be in a division where we have a realistic shot at winning each game. That is somewhere between BCS and I-AA. I don't care what people call the division as long as it gets done.

Might just be a down time for a lot of reasons. The season is over and all of the post draft activity has settled down. Throw in team executives and their families going on vacation after a long season and Europeans on their long summer holidays and you get slow news. I think people are just taking a break.

Article NFL conducting population study of naturally occurring HGH levels in players because they do not have an HGH policy. One of the comments is true. This is like establishing an average THC level of a population by testing only pot smokers. Until the size of a players is resolved, rule changes alone are not going to improve safety as much as possible.

The topic is what some see as a low graduation rate. It is entirely too low partly because we direct high school students towards four year schools when a two year school would be a better solution. The Great GP1 and Mike Rowe see it the same way. Sorry you can't see the connection. Doesn't seem that difficult to me.

Source. Seats 38K and change. I don't know exactly where it is listed, but if you read various articles on cusa football stadiums, they all discuss new stadiums seating minimum 40K or existing stadiums expanding to 40K. That's the number the conference is going to require of its members to have a football team. What cusa is really trying to do is slow the stream of rum dums who are trying to join their league by seeing who is really serious or not.

I think one of those reasons is CUSA requires a minimum 40,000 seat football stadium to be in the conference. UNCC will start to play this year in their new stadium that is designed to be expanded from 15,000 to 40,000 WHEN they join CUSA. Took a tour of it with some architects not long ago. Real nice place. Concourses are oddly huge, but that's just because of the allotment for the room to expand when needed. With UofA being as far in the red as they are, the question may be an either/or one....Add 13,000 seats to the Big Dialer or a new basketball arena. Screw it, do both....I don't pay taxes in Ohio any longer. You suckers can pick up the tab.

There is a price to be paid for everything. So, there is a price to be paid for safety. I think the cost is going to be large short term and a lot of controversy will happen. In time, players will change the way they play and there will be less players being ejected. At the end of the day, this is a good thing for football. While getting this resolved, they need to start cracking down on PEDs so the players can begin go get smaller and it will reduce injuries even further. The NFL is beginning to crack down on PEDs and in the near future, players will become smaller.

Good points. In addition, there aren't enough big teams willing to forego a home game and the cash that goes along with it for a road game against a MAC school for less money. In every case, it is better for a school like Michigan State to play a MAC school at home rather than travel to the MAC school. There is nothing in it for them. By the time Akron got around to paying the nut it would take to play MSU at home, they could have made just as much money (probably more...actually, probably just lost less) against an NC A&T while guaranteeing a win. There has been less complaining about the Zips ooc schedule in recent years for good reason. The Zips are playing a solid ooc schedule and that schedule has improved over the years as the Zips have improved. If fans want to point out that 20 win seasons are happening because of an easy schedule, maybe that is true, but the cupcakes run just as deep in the MAC as they do our ooc schedule, so we should be careful as to where we point the finger.

I've seen Duke's facilities. They probably have the worst facilities of any ACC school all around. Duke is bucking the trend at universities and spending their money on more important things like....call me crazy...but they are spending them improving their academic buildings so they can remain a world class learning institution.

Actually, I was making the point that there are a lot more important factors to program success than arenas. Please improve your reading comprehension skills.

It is a huge cultural problem that has been going on for decades. Want to listen to someone talk sense about this. Link Not the person you would think, but he makes a lot of sense.

Duke has all of those with the exception of an Elite Facility. They have a historic facility, but not elite. Explain their success. I'll take a stab at it first. Elite facilities are way down the list of things that really matter. Coaching, winning, stability, alumni support are way above facilities.

More Shows how far this idea has really gotten. Many converences (athletic directors) want to give the ncaa one more chance. Basically, change or else. The BCS conferences are setting this up so they won't look like such a bunch of a-holes after they start their own division. They are going to get a divorce from the ncaa because of irreconcilable differences.

What is the ratio of (attendance : empty seats) in each arena? I guess my question is, did CSU pay for 5,000 empty seats? Enjoy the JAR everyone.

I don't think it is out of control. I think it is an interesting change probably brought forward by design technologies that allow manufacturers to do things like this now. Technology provide change and we are seeing that in uniforms now. And everyone laughed at the Buffalo Bills years ago when they sported CFL type uniforms. Seems sort of tame now. At the end of the day, I don't care if the Zips are dressed like the guards in the 1974 version of The Longest Yard as long as they win.

You are making the assumption the athletic directors who run the conferences will care about winning and losing. They are past that now. They only care about money at this point. The one thing I would like to point out to everyone is that when we use words like "conference" we are talking about a group of schools whose athletic directors run the conference. The ADs sit on the committees and make recommendations to the Presidents, who basically let the athletic directors do whatever they want. Likewise for the ncaa. The ncaa is a member organization, whose committees are staffed largely by athletic directors. Athletic directors come in two types: 1. AD at a large school who is focused entirely on raising money to support the "building process" and his salary. 2. AD at non BCS school who wants to be the AD at a large school and won't piss anyone off at a large school so he can keep himself/herself in line for a future big job, so they go along with everything the BCS ADs want. At the end of the day, these organizations are going to have to make a decision about the future of college football. With the athletic directors running these organization, and in many cases the universities they work for, does anyone really think they aren't going to side with taking the money? It's really about what athletic directors want, and not the "ncaa" or "conferences". Let's not over complicate what is really going on and who really runs things.

I'm surprised they didn't market it as a 2 for 1 deal. Breakfast and lunch at the same game.

I'll address the AD portion of this statement first. My answer is, they would do it tomorrow because they are only thinking about the dollars, which is a perfect situation for a group of people with almost no moral compass. This decision goes beyond wins and losses. My guess is there were a lot of BCS ADs who loved the fact that the AD in the story spoke up. It reminds me of an old saying my architect friends tell me, "Never be the first to try something new and never be the last." The flood gates were opened this week. Athletic Directors see the future of college football the way NFL owners see their league. The NFL is about TV dollars and advertising. How bad is it for the Raiders or Browns owners that their teams suck year after year? In the grand scheme of things, it isn't a big deal because of the money they make outside of attendance and various other game day revenues. Source. Athletic Directors have known for decades now the goose that laid the golden egg is sitting in every living room around the country...the television. They don't want that money, they need it at this point. Why?.... ....Universities now have to pay for the "building process". Everything is real now and real money has to be spent to support what schools have done to build up their athletic departments. Soaking non-student athletes with higher student fees to support athletic departments will not be tolerated much longer. The money has become more important than winning or losing. As far as the coaches, they won't like it, but they will have nothing to say about it. If they don't like it, they can always quit coaching college football and go coach high school football, or be miserable coaching in the NFL (extremely limited job opportunities), or make a fraction of what they were making coaching broadcasting games, or any number of jobs that pay a fraction of what they were making coaching. The athletic directors know this and they won't give a hoot about what the coaches think about anything. When the coaches agree to only make $1 million per year maximum coaching (much higher paying job than they could get anywhere else), I might get a slight feeling of sorrow for their losing.