GP1

College football may change at the BCS level to the point that a ten game conference schedule becomes the norm. Conference champions make the playoffs so in order to determine that, they will have to play as many games against each other as possible so there are no questions about who, or who may not be the best team in a league. More evidence of the rapidly changing landscape of college football. I find it all very interesting.

I think your assessment is right on the money. The MAC should immediately stop the I-AA teams and play teams from MAClike conferences.

Depends on what they do to the RB. If they do the job right, it would cost less to build Crew Stadium? If memory serves me correctly, Crew stadium is 100% above ground and is a steel frame, aluminum seating stadium. It wouldn't cost much to build. The Big Dialer would cost more than Crew stadium because of all of the brick work and being partially in ground.

According to our friend in Montreal, some fans will be able to watch the game under a shade tree.

It would depend on what the contracts say, but I think this is a great idea. The problem is the league I would like the Zips to play BB in already has 16 members (A-10) so maybe there isn't a fit there. The A-10 is a fun league and I think you guys would love the competition. CK posted the other day about the teams that come and go from the MAC not really being part of the core group of teams. Historically, neither are we or Buffalo or NIU. Why not us? It wouldn't hurt to at least have some back room discussions about it.

The RB needs much more than a coat of paint. It is a concrete structure with a faulty foundation that will cost millions, upon millions to remediate. Thousands of potential seats could not be used because the benches would have to be replaced. The press box will need to drastic renovations to it in order to occupy it again. The stall doors in the mens rooms don't have doors. I've worked in the construction industry for a long time. I always tell people that if they knew what went on while a building was being built, they would never walk into one. Here is my opinion of the renovations they are going to make on the RB...If they can fix up the RB for what they say they can, don't step foot in that place or you will be risking your life. The RB should be condemned and razed before someone gets hurt.

Seat? Hell, you could sit in the entire row you probably had by yourself at that dump. The thought of this league trying to fix up the Rubber Bowl just makes me laugh to no end.

Where is Crash Davis when you need him? The left out the last two sentences of the scene, but you guys get the picture. Nuke says, "Can't you let me enjoy the moment." Crash responds with, "The moments over." I hope KD had a talk with the players ten seconds after the win against Miami along these lines. Playing like crap and winning isn't always a good thing.

I don't see it. Those spots are for teams much lower down the pecking order than we are. I would actually be upset if we got one as it would be a complete lack of respect from the Committee. I think Akron is as good as any 12 seed they could come up with. No reason to look for a 16 seed in a rinky-dink play-in.

With as little money as that league is going to make, they won't be able to afford stall doors for the shitters....sort of like Akron playing in the MAC.

Thanks. While on the surface this may seem like a good idea, it is actually a method whereby the NCAA Tournament Committee can screw a mid major such as Akron and not look so bad by doing so...."Sorry best team in the MAC. We are going to screw you, but don't worry because you can go play in the NIT. We don't really want you anyhow regardless of how good you are. We have $771 million to make and we don't think your presence helps us increase that number now or in the future." With that said, Akron needs to win the MAC Tournament to get into the big dance. If not, NIT bound. This is a "be careful what you sign" lesson. The guarantee NIT bid is a type of limited warranty we and schools like us have. If we don't win the MAC Tournament, we are guaranteed post season play by having this limited warranty. Never buy a limited warranty because it is written by the manufacturer's lawyers. In many ways, the automatic NIT bid limits our options just like a warranty limits your options if you buy one. The automatic NIT bid sounds too good to be true because it is.

Before I post, one question. Does the runner up MAC school get automatic NIT?

In all seriousness about Rico, he is still within a year of hurting his knee. It isn't uncommon for a player to take over 365 days to fully recover from knee injuries. If I remember right, he had a flare up earlier this season so I'm sure there is at least discomfort there. It's just something he is going to have to deal with and the coaches will have to adapt to. To me, he looks in much better shape than he did at CCU. His body can now do what his mind wants to do with the ball. It's a good step forward from the beginning of the year. I don't know that he has ever been in tip top shape, but he is in shape for himself and that makes him a pretty good player. Speaking of good guard play, I went to the VCU vs. UNCC game last night (No Z.I.P., Cornbread Maxwell was not there, but they do like to show video of him during their 1977 run). I only bring this up because a coach near and dear to many Zips fans is the coach of VCU and we are talking about guard play. Shaka Smart has a very good team with guard play at the forefront. They really took advantage of UNCC's lack of a quality point guard. VCU makes it extremely difficult for teams to get the ball inside of the three point arch. UNCC had one turnover after another. If UofA played basketball in the A-10, you guys would love going to the games and watching the Zips compete against much better teams than the MAC has. I believe we could do well in this league.

A guy indulges in a little bit too much paella this year and everyone is all over him....

Committed or stuck? I say force umass to leave. The MAC would be better as a smaller league.

If today's game is any indication of the results of a pre-game speech, KD might want to quit trying to inspire his team by telling them stories of his high school coaching days when Lebron was 14 years old. Anyhow, Miami is an absolutely horrible, horrible, horrible team. We should have beaten them by 20. Other than getting a win, there wasn't much positive about the game today.

Actually, it's only 498.6 miles from the JAR. Link Paragraph 2. All I want to know is, since he was brought in to raise money for an arena, how much money can he be directly credited for raising for the new arena? It's been a year, so surely those numbers should be measurable by now. If his presence gives us good exposure, how come they aren't lining up a brief interview with him coming out of a TV timeout during an ESPN game?

Link Former Zips OL coach to Colts. While the lifestyle change from San Diego to Indy will be harsh, it is a great place to go. Indy has good young players and a solid coaching staff that should make them a contender well into the future. Hunter is an example of the excellent coaches Faust brought in early in his tenure at UofA.

Thanks Coach Tressel, but you are being paid $200K a year to do this so I don't see your efforts as voluntary.

Do you think you may be overstating your case?

Actually, this isn't a bad thought. What's more important: 1. Keeping a national winning streak alive that keeps you in the news for a few weeks? or 2. Beating a high level mid major that puts you in the news for five minutes? I'd rather go for a win against someone other than the Dollar General crew, but there is a valid argument for keeping the streak alive.

Schedule Since mid December, the lady Zips' game results are odd. They have things like a three game winning streak followed by a three game losing streak. They need to improve upon not letting a loss after a winning streak send them into a slide, because if they slide late in the season, they might just slide right out of the MAC Tournament after one game and let a decent season go for nothing. I believe this would be a good opportunity for improvement.

I don't like people blaming him for everything either. I just blame him for most things that seem to go wrong because he always seems to be at the center of bad decision making. Reminds me of an old saying, "Criticism is the price of leadership." Allow me to add to your post above by rewriting it a little starting from "Yeah". Yeah, absolutely destroyed the football program and Dr. Proenza's vision for making the Big Dialer the centerpiece of activity on campus by hiring a complete incompetent in Ianello. I guess birds of a feather do flock together. But he also signed Caleb Porter in an obvious move and allowed Porter to help him not make a huge mistake again by assisting TW in the hiring of the next soccer coach, signed KD long-term and gave him a raise even though he had not serious offers and is isn't going anywhere because he isn't that attractive of a candidate to any decent school, and hired TB after botching the Winters Affair when TB threw himself at UofA, hired a Tennis coach who has won back to back MAC Championships, and a baseball coach who is supposedly good even though we don't see the results.

This is good news. It shows that TB is willing to make changes based upon what he observes in lieu of being an ideologue. Ideologues are narrow minded fools and we don't need one as coach of our team.

How much money would they have had to spend periodically? The UofA budget for athletics runs between the amount of money it takes to buy a Kit Kat and a three ring binder. Here is what I know from a lifetime of working in the building industry. The most expensive structures to maintain are concrete. Any repairs always come in over budget...frequently, twice the cost. Then, try to maintain a 70 year old structure on a faulty foundation and see what the costs would be. It isn't they didn't update the RB...It's they didn't build a stadium on campus 20 years ago. The reason Info was built had as much to do with the City of Akron almost closing the dump for safety reasons as it did to draw students.