GP1

I'm glad to see this. I'm also not surprised someone associated with car racing developed this helmet. Because of the personal feelings fans have towards drivers, they want them to drive for a long time without injury. The owners of nascar and their team owners understand the value of individual drivers. The nfl owners run their league as early industrialists ran their businesses (I'm a Steelers fan and they are a perfect example of this). Players are as disposable as early steel workers were. One steel worker gets killed because of safety issues, replace him. Player blows out knee, get another. Player loses some brain cells because of head injury, get another. The only thing that matters is winning and the team, not the single player. Owners didn't really become worried about head injuries until it started to cost them money in the form of law suits. The NFL is set up so if you don't run your team in a short sighted manner, you are making a mistake. Players have to be protected from this mentality. I don't believe rules alone can solve this problem. There has to be better equipment, better understanding of the rules and a real PED policy in the NFL if they are going to cut back on head injuries. If all they do is make a better helmet and think the problem is solved, players will go back to launching themselves at each other again.

Link I once heard the Zips on Sirius XM while driving in Atlanta. While they aren't on this week, it could be a possibility in the future. The link above will take you to the schedule link for Sirius XM. It gets updated weekly. You may want to save it where you save these sorts of things.

Wow, ground breaking information . I underestand how it all works and I know coaches use different film. They watch it on TVs now. Ill make that more clear in the future. Ive been in the meetings and Im not a two year old. Anyhow, a lot can be learned from watching the game on TV regardless. There is little differene between a fan watching a game in person or watching it on TV. Without knowing how plays are supposed to executed, we really understand little about what is going on. What we can understand and is in clear view during a TV broadcast are the basics. How is the line play? Does the QB have time to throw or not? How is the running back running? Is there anywhere for the RB to run? How is QB accuracy? Football is a very complicated game. Film is interesting to watch, but the average fan doesnt know enough about how plays are supposed to be run to make an educated evaluation about what they are watching. This Catch 22 is just another way for fans to look at a game the way they want to look at it without clear understanding of what is going on. Id be more impressed if we were allowed to see a written gameplan for both teams for that game and what the playcalls were, but that will never happen. Until then, Ill continue to watch games on TV and understand just as much as a person watching Catch 22. There is a difference between information and understanding.

Trust what you see on TV. Coaches spend their lives evaluating teams on TV. Its an exact representation of what is going on.

Hanging in is the key. Especially in early season games a team is expected to lose. Why? Teams dont like to show much in early season games they should win easily because it ends up on film. So, they end up having a close game against a team they should easily beat. They sort of figure they will get around to beating them by the end of the game. Then it comes down to less than handful of plays. Perfect example....Michigan losing to App State a few years ago. Michigan did almost everything they needed to do to win that game. It was close, but they drove down for an easy fieldgoal to win the game and it got blocked. One of the handful of plays in a close game lost it for them. This is how we need to look at a UCF upset. The Zips have to hope for a flat ucf, keep it close and hope they poop their pants in the end. It can happen. BTW, I saw where Michigan is trying to schedule App State again. My guess is they want to run the score up on them. I would.

You are right. There was talent, but not much. The coaching had to do with trying to play a pro style offense. It wasnt there was no talent...It was there was not enough talent to run that style of offense. The past couple of years, the results would have been a slightly better shade of terrible even with a better coach. In modern day college football, a coach can go from genius to clueless with the loss of one player. Like his style of play or not, Pryor made Tressel look really good because he could make up for declining talent around him by himself. Pryor could do things I rarely every saw a college QB do...things that cant be coached. osu didnt go 6-7 last year because of coaching. The went 6-7 because one of the best players in the country was playing in the nfl instead of the Big Ten and the remaining players werent very good. I dont care what the name of the team is, BCS teams that lose seven games, go 3-5 in their conference and almost lose to a Toledolike team have a talent problem. Bringing this back to the Zips. Football has become about QBs, WRs and coaching. The style of offense we play does not require large numbers of great players. Just good players in the right positions. If we can find a QB to do what the coach wants him to do, we can take this program to the next level. Score lots of points and MAC teams fall apart trying to keep up with the point total. Winning in the MAC is very easy. With all that said, the Zips still have a talent problem. The talent is better than last season, but it is still a problem to the point that looking at more than 4 wins would be wildly optimistic. Four wins moves us from terrible (0-3 wins) to just plain bad (4-5 wins). At least it will be a step in the right direction.

Agreed. In my opinion, the MAC is the most difficult major college football conference to predict. Its not because of lack of information. There is plenty of information out there if you take the time to look. Picking winners and losers is so difficult because so many strange things go on in the league, which keeps it at least interesting. The talent may not be as good as BCS, but you never know how the talent they have is going to perform on any given Saturday......or Tuesday night .......or Wednesday night . Because of all of that, predictions can be fun to make, but we shouldnt take them too seriously.

We are not. Every year, SI puts the same five minutes into researching their prediction as I did my post above. There is no shock they predicted the Zips to go 1-11.

2011 SI Prediction 2011 Standings Comedian: "Those folks at SI are so stupid and lazy..." Audience: "How stupid and lazy are they!?" Comedian: "I'll tell you how stupid and lazy. They picked UofA to go 5-7 in 2011 (Most of the crowd roars with laughter while a few UofA fans are heard weeping). Not only that, the are so lazy, they picked the MAC west to finish in exactly the same order they finished last year... and most of the MAC East in the same position they finished last year (loud laughter)......(final punchline)....They are so lazy and stupid, they make the folks at ESPN look like hard working Einsteins (standing ovation).....Thank you and don't forget to tip your servers."

Great one!!! I wish I had thought of it. There are many things in my life I am thankful for and the Zips are one of them.

I think Im having one of the best emotions about the Zips upcoming season. In fact, Im having this emotion about the Zips athletic programs in general. It isnt excited, because I like something to happen before I get excited and nothing has happened yet. It isnt optimistic, because Im a naturally optimistic guy about most things and the Zips sort of fall into that group for me. Although, I would use the word "cautiously" to describe my emotions about the Zips football program. This program has nowhere to go but up, so we all should be optimistic about the future. I used this word a couple of years ago to describe the basketball program after a good season. Im "interested" in the program. Everything about the program interests me right now. Im interested in the new offense. Im interested in the new defense. Im interested in seeing how the players respond to change. Im interested in seeing how well the players compete between the lines. Im interested in what players will have an impact in winning the games we win this season. Im interested to see how the players respond when things dont go their way or after a loss. Etc. Lots of unknowns with this team going into the season. We are about to discover a lot of things in the next few months and Im interested to see what we discover. What is your word?

Ill take a shot in the dark here like everyone else. I think UCF doubles up on the Zips, but the Zips will put up a fight. UCF 34 UofA 17 We have a high powered style of offense now, but until I see evidence of it putting up points, Ill stick with a low point total for Game 1. Lets stick to the basics in this game. Its one thing to lose, its another thing to give a game away. If the Zips lose and they move the ball, limit turnovers and especially dont turn the ball over in the form of a pick-six and dont give up big plays, it will be a good start against a better team. It will sort of be evidence they understand what the new staff is trying to accomplish. UCF is a much better program than they were in the MAC. I dont see them running up the score if they get ahead because teams dont like to show too much early in the season in OOC games. The Zips will do many things well and have some positive accomplishments after this game that will allow them to have some level of confidence moving forward. Turning that confidence into momentum followed by winning is the challenge. Its got to start somewhere. The Great GP1 Bonus Prediction: Less than five people at the game will have to fight off the urge to kill themselves because of boredom. A number far lower than last season. Go Zips!

I know its taken, but "The Dark Ages". If we wanted to reach, we could call it "The Potato Famine" since RI came from ND and the Irish once had a little potato problem of their own. I like the Dark Ages myself.

Regardless of what our wives and girlfriends tell us, it always matters. Especially in football.

Im a Steelers fan and I found it funny as well. Its important to laugh at yourself now and then. I also agreed with almost everything he said with the exception of one thing. The Steelers will find a way to win one playoff game. No AFC Championship Game and certainly no Super Bowl. 11 overall wins is not a bad year for a fan.

One less scout team uniform to wash.

Deadspin Deadspin doesn't think the Browns have much of a chance. I dont either. The one thing I always liked about living in NE Ohio was how funny Browns fans can be once they get past the anger. Actually, NE Ohio people are really fun to be around when they arent angry about something. The best part of the link is reading posts from Browns fans. Enjoy.

Link I think you should look at what their season tickets sales are and compare that to what teams draw the biggest crowds at their stadium. Do they get large crowds? Yes. Is MN drawing the crowd?...Hell no. That is why they have such a low season ticket base. They are a joke of a big ten program. In the past seven years, Iowa has drawn the biggest crowds. In the past eight years, the largest crowds have been for Iowa and Wisconsin. My guess is there are a ton of WI and Iowa alumns in the twin cities and it is like a home game for them when they play there. What do Iowa and Wisconsin have in common? They border Minnesota and going to the twin cities for a weekend is probably pretty fun for those square heads. If you can, take a minute to look at the link and understand that without Iowa and WI, few would car about MN football. That's why the Zips are in a better position. If the Zips get good, people will care and in proportion to a big ten school, we will be in and are in a better position than MN. It's one thing to read a story...It's another thing to have the intelligence to understand what is actually going on. If you think MN is in better shape right now than UofA, you are just plain wrong.

I don't know what our numbers are so I can't tell if we are in worse shape or not. Our numbers are at least trending up. From a pure numbers standpoint, MN seems in a worse disaster than we have been in. We spent $64 million for our stadium. MN spent over $210 million. They have less than a 10,000 person season ticket base in a stadium almost twice the size of ours. They are the flagship school in a Big Ten state. They have an absolute nobody coaching their team and we at least have someone people know. In three years, we will be a better mac program than MN is a big ten program. MN is the perfect of what ADs see as a great "building process" gone bad. New stadiums don't make bad teams good. New stadiums give a bad team a new place to play, in front of the same sparse crowds they were before.

It could always be worse.

Article I figured it was about college football so I put it in the college football forum. Article touches on two topics I like to discuss. One, how overblown the Process has become (I wonder if Saban's Process would work if the SEC had a salary cap). Two, how lacking in creativity most coaches are that they rarely come up with their own ideas and copy others ideas they learned at coaches clinics (athletic directors do the same thing).

Its funny. This organization accredits based upon "governance, finance and integrity". If that is the case, shouldnt every accredited institution lose its accreditation based upon its association with the ncaa, if they have one? The ncaa is horribly governed. It is almost entirely financed by one event a year. Do we even need to go into the integrity of the ncaa? Every organization seems to want psu to fill out forms. Pretty soon, psu will be filling out so many forms they wont be able to, you know, make sure perverts arent on campus. This is all getting so freaking stupid. At one point, there was an opportunity to turn this entire issue around and start to make something positive happen for people now and in the future. Now it is all becoming silly and the focus is off the victims and prevention. Forms...that's what is needed here....forms. Nice work ncaa.

No

Good post Zach. I'd like to add to it. Even when a good idea comes about, nobody follows through on it if it doesn't show instant success. The reason is everyone is looking for a project to fall into that will be an instant resume builder for them. Effort...Even those things that look like they would take a lot of effort really don't. I sit on the Board of a professional organization that has a golf outing every year and the money is donated in scholarship money to architecture students at UNCC. We have it at the same place around the same time. It's no surprise and everyone volunteers a little bit of time. The real work is done by the people who work at the golf course. We get some product reps to donate a some give away items, the same companies sponsor holes every year and we are all set. All we do is sign the contract to rent the course and feed the golfers, do a couple of mailers (old school and electronic) to the membership and basically the same people who go every year and it sells out. Piece of cake. It's not flying to the moon. I would be willing to bet I could organize the Zips golf outing, scratch up some give away items and sell it out in less than two working day (not the sell out part, just the organization part...the outing does sell out relatively quickly though). While it looks like the University has to do a lot of work, they really don't because other people do the hard work. For the life of me, I can never understand what people who work in marketing for athletic departments really do to pass the time. They have outsourced much of their responsibiltiy to IMG. It can't be that difficult. I would be bored out of my mind if I was one of them.

I feel the same way. I wouldn't be shocked if they only won 3 and I wouldn't be shocked if they won 6 and went to a bowl. The mac is a strange league that way.