GP1

You just described 2-4 MAC teams a year. Talent is the difference in the MAC. The MAC is littered with second place coaches. Coaching is an extremely close second. We now have the best coach in the MAC and one who knows how to bring in talent. Our future is bright.

OOC schedules are terrible. The only way to have teams play real nonconference schedules is to rework how college football is organized. As long as BCS schools play in the same division as MAClike confernces, they will play those schools and call it "competition". It's competition like me playing the five year old next door in a game of basketball. I'll win every game, but he will try really hard to beat me in the process. I could give hime $5.00 per game and since he doesn't have a job he'll think he is rich since he has enough money to buy himself cookies for the week. They can have computer schedules to calculate SOS...there will always be flaws. They can get the smartest minds in football to assign a four team playoff...there will always be flaws. I think you are alluding to this not really being about a playoff system but about what goes on from August through mid December. That's the real issue, not playoffs. If the ncaa could get rid of the bullcrap OOC schedules teams play by creating a national division where those schools are required to play each other every week, then the problem is solved and playoff teams are created as a result of the body of work they produced over a 12 week season on the field. Until that day happens, all of us can continue to throw out flawed ideas as to how to solve the problem and the Zips will head to Columbus every for year for cookie money.

I agree 100% on this point.

It's funny, after many years, the ncaa successfully made conference tournaments irrelevant for big time college basketball conferences. The 64 team field and the selection committee were huge helps. Now, they are on the verge of makeing conference championship games irrrelevant for college football in a much shorter time period. It should be REQUIRED that a team win their conference to make any type of ncaa football playoff. Personally, I'm looking forward to the time when the BCS schools have their own Division so we don't have to talk about selection committess or anything else related to how their champion is decided. Meaning will then be given to the season starting in late August and ending whenever they want it to end.

Agreed. Owens was a second place coach at best. He is still a second place coach. He recruited second place talent. He still recruits second place talent. He has tons of second place trophys at Ashland to prove it....what?...They don't give trophys for second place and that's why he didn't leave anything behind. There is an old saying, "Always a bridesmaid and never a bride" comes to mind when I think of him....followed closely by a vision of him and Terry Pluto walking arm-in-arm down a beach together...sick, I know, but I keep seeing it over and over again. If we want to be an elite MAC school, we can't let kids like Mr. Hicks get away or we fall into the Owens trap. One game can be the difference between first and second place. How many times did we lose key games to Marshall when Owens was the coach? How many times did we lose a game by a play or two to them because they had better talent or our talent couldn't make the plays. They had first place talent and we had second place talent...nice local players, but the real talent had already gone to other D1A schools. A great player here or there is all the difference between first and second place in the MAC. Some of you may be happy with second place, but I demand first place. TB knows this and has made it a goal of his to get elite players. That's why I'm excited he is the coach. He isn't just saying we can win with local players. It's much deeper and intelligent than that. He is clearly saying we need the best of local talent in order to be an elite MAC school. What he isn't saying, but if one is smart enough to read between the lines, is there isn't enough depth of talent in NE Ohio to have an elite team if you lose out on too many like Mr. Hicks. He is 100% correct.

No. I'm stating his idea that we can't let NE Ohio kids who don't go to OSU land at another school is absolutely the correct idea because if we want to be an elite MAC school for many years, they can't get away. So in reality, I'm saying TB knows exactly what he needs to do to be successful.

The good old boys will be part of it. Like I said, find a way to solve that problem and I'm all for it. In my opinion, the BCS is good enough at picking the final two. Let the computers have two more shots at picking teams and four teams will be enough. People will always complain and they should be ignored. Americans have had enough of college football by January 1 (see decliniing TV ratings for BCS Championship). Football fans are ready for the NFL playoffs in January. Four teams is enough.

I don't see any reason why a selection committee and a point system wouldn't be a bad choice. The ncaa basketball tournament does that informally. My beef with the basketball tournament committee is it is filled with the good old boy network....Solve that problem and I'm all for it.

I never thought of this and it is a good point. I always thought the bcs had some sort of strength of schedule in their calculation and for the most part, I believe the BCS has gotten it right. Like all decisions though, it leaves some unintended consequences that could be a huge negative for non bcs schools some would say (I say there wouldn't be many). For example, the financial ramifications for non bcs schools would be huge. I hate the games, but we NEED the money. In many ways, the bcs schools need the home games because their "building processes" over the past few years have left many unable to support that process. I don't want to see an 8 team playoff. Four teams is good enough for me. They can play the first four New Years Day and a week or two later play the championship. Except for the "more is always better" crowd, most people would be happy with that. We need to restore some sanity to college athletics and limiting it to four is a good way to do it.

Winner of a tournament or the best team in the country? The ncaa does have a system that, for most teams, means if they lose a regular season game they are out of the championship running. What's the difference between that and a playoff? If they ncaa wants a playoff, fine. Make it a four team playoff. If someone gets left out who believes they should have belonged, that's the breaks. I don't believe for a second that an eight team playoff does anything other than make a bunch of money for the ncaa.

Lee Owens did the same thing. How did that work out for us? Terry Pluto thinks it worked out great. The Great GP1 thinks it worked out horribly and can use as evidence the empty trophy case he left behind.

Or, it could be the best thing to happen to us.

I agree. It is too many teams and will some day lead to a 32 team playoff if the morons who run the ncaa have anything to say about it. The ncaa basketball tournament was expanded because of "snubs", but let's not kid ourselves. It's all about money. Once the schools and ADs see how much money the can make and claim on their resumes, it will be expanded to allow teams that don't belong in the playoff. Say goodbye to interest in the regular season.

You're the Thomas Friedman of ZNO. Article

They did win the Bowl Challenge Cup...and didn't beat a single BCS team in the process. Be careful to use exhibition games as evidence of a conference being good. On another note, if the bowls have more meaning, further evidence is created that we should have our own division. If we are good enough to compete against the MWC and WAC in bowls, we could be good enough to win a national championship in a division we can realistically compete. In the mean time, we'll continue to follow Captain Smith's orders. Is there great talent in Ohio? Yes. To me, "great talent" could mean two players or twenty players. Be careful how you listen to people.

Did you read my post?

All I'm saying is when you factor in population and the number of horrible D-1 teams (6 of 8), Ohio may be towards the top of the list, but it isn't that impressive. Don't look at the numbers (the numbers are the illusion in this case). Trust your eyes. When you watch the MAC, are you seeing high level talent or are you seeing a D1A conference in name only? When you watch the Big Ten, are you seeing high level BCS talent, or are you seeing a conference that is at best the fourth best BCS conference? If Ohio HS football was that good, OSU wouldn't have the talent problem they experienced last season and Urban M. wouldn't publically state they have a talent problem. He's absolutely correct in saying it by the way. Georgia is another good example. Georgia produces a lot of kids that look good in a uniform and most of the time fall short on the field. They are soft compared to the kids from Alabama, LA and MS. It's not the number, but the quality....just ask Alabama. It's not the number of stars they put by your name when you are being recruited in HS, it is how you do once you get to college that matters. Ohio produces numbers because there are 6 D1a schools that aren't that good, but have 85 scholarships available for someone wanting to play college football (that's 510 scholarship players), but not much in the "difference maker" category. The main point I was trying to make is Coach Bowden is correct in saying we need to keep kids like Darian Hicks. By itself, NE Ohio doesn't produce enough great players to make us an elite MAC school. When one comes along, we need to keep him around for the Zips if he passes on OSU. If we don't keep kids like him, it becomes harder to be an elite school (doesn't mean we can't be good though) and even harder to maybe play in a better conference down the road. Elite players are not easy to get. Coach B didn't come here to be good, he came here to be great and his philosophy is designed around that idea. He's probably pretty mad this kid didn't come to Akron. In terms of the NFL analogy, I'm on ly looking at college football. Those numbers are interesting and the make good high school debate club points, but the number of NFL players is incredibly small compared to the number of ncaa players.

Not born in Cleveland. Not born in NE Ohio. Lived in Akron most of my adult life and developed a good understanding of Cleveland fans. I tried to explain Cleveland fans to someone here in SC once. Modern Cleveland fans are very angry. Pre-Browns leaving, Cleveland fans were very smart and understood their sports well...especially football. They have had a lot of crap piled on them. They have piled a lot on themselves. However, there isn't a fan base in the United States, that actually cares about their teams, that has had it worse than Cleveland fans. One of the good things about Cleveland fans is they are starting to get a good sense of humor about their teams. If they didn't, half of them would throw themselves off of the I-480 bridge. In the end, I believe Cleveland fans have the teams they deserve. Is it easy being a Steelers fan? Of course it is. They play in the AFC North. They split with Baltimore most of the time and they have four guaranteed wins against Cleveland and Cincy almost every year. When I was growing up, the AFC Central was a much, much, much better conference with Cleveland, Cincy and Houston (This is why Bill Cowher should not be mentioned in the same sentence as Chuck Noll). Five wins are almost guaranteed. 10 wins gets a team in the playoffs almost all of the time. They only have to go 5-5 in the remaining 10 games to get to 10 wins. Normally, they do better so we can talk about things like a bye week or home field throughout the playoffs. It's good stuff. Then....the Pirates. While it looks like they are good being in second place and all behind the Reds, let's remember that July is right around the corner. The Pirates are five games over .500 and could easily be 15 games under .500 if history is any indication.

Mayber there isn't as much "real" D-1A talent as we may think. Our coach wrote this article when he was still writing. I think when you look at it in terms of population and REAL D-1A schools, a different picture can be painted. Ohio has eight d1 schools. Let's be honest. The MAC is a d1 conference in name only and it takes up six if the eight spots. Ohio really only has two d1 schools and only one BCS level school that will move up to the super division when it is finally created. UNCC is calling itself a d1 school now and it hasn't played a game EVER. The term d1 gets used too loosely and distorts the reality because there is no real barrier to entry. I understand people from Ohio like to believe it is an elite recruiting state, because "it just is". It's average in most ways. Every other state is in the distance behind the top three states becauses of the number of real d1 schools they have, how good those teams are and the amazing volume of d1 players they produce each year. The distance between third and four/fifth place is huge. Look at the charts and population again. The states with amazing records are Alabama (23rd population), LA (25th population) and Mississippi (31st population). They produce a huge number of d1 players as a result of their population. Great players too. If you look at it in terms of population, it is the most impressive statistic in all of this. If Ohio could produce players at a rate of these much smaller states and with the same quality, the MAC wouldn't be as horrible as it is. Coach Bowden is exactly correct. We can't let kids like Darian Hicks get away because there aren't that many kids around NE Ohio who can really make a difference. We can win the MAC without kids like him, but a lot has to go right in order to do so. Get kids like him and a great program is created. Those of you who want the Zips to be in a bigger conference down the road should understand that kids such as Mr. Hicks can't get away if you want to compete at higher levels. I've said it for years. Ohio high school football is a shell of what it was 20 years ago. There is a lot of illusion in terms of referencing the number of d1 players created, but the reality and numbers show different.

Great video DrZ. Probably one of the best videos of a local news cast in a long time. Good thing for the internet or not many people would have watched it. I didn't vote because none of the candidates reflect my emotions about LBJ winning a championship. Basically, I have no emotion because I didn't watch 30 minutes of the NBA playoffs this year. I can't remember the last time I spent more than an hour watching an NBA games for a while. LBJ is a bit of a jerk the way he left Cleveland. He also admitted he left Cleveland the wrong way. How much longer does the guy have to hang on the cross for it? Deadspin had a good take on LBJ.

UCONN is the real name here.

GoZips.com Do your friends really not know where to look? Or, are the just too lazy to look? Do they not know how to use Google? I live four states away and know when every game is with little effort on my part. It's 2012. I find it almost impossible to believe that if someone wanted to go to a game, they couldn't find out when the next one was going to be within a few minutes.

The Zips play a I-AA team in the first four games. They won't start the season 0-4. I'm not so concerned about the losing as much as I am about seeing a QB find some success in a season that is going to produce a lot of bumps for him. If there is almost no chance of him finding some success next year, he shouldn't play. If there is a chance for some success and for him to improve his game greatly between his frosh and soph seasons, then start him. I don't want to see baby steps with players from year to year. This isn't high school.

Give it a year or two. Another coach will be getting job offers better than Duquesne.

I'm totally in agreement with this strategy. It also isn't just about him getting more practice snaps. It's about the other guys who will be on the field with him getting game experiece before he starts. More than anything, his freshman season can't be a disaster and experienced players around him will help his development. Wake took a similar direction with Tanner Price a couple of years ago when he was a freshman and it worked out great for him. While he didn't start in every game, he played in every game and the freshman will need some experience before getting on the field. Even if the Zips get blown out by Tennessee, he could play in the fourth quarter. There isn't much difference between Tennessee's low back-ups and the MAC competition he will face later in the season.