GP1

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.

Or both with a third "philosophy problem" (pro style offense) thrown in for good measure. Losing so much had to create a morale problem. The philosophy problem created the losing. The Zips were two games better last year with a better coach and good morale; leading me to my final point. I still believe, at least for this year, there is a talent problem. 1-11 vs 3-9 are two separate levels of terrible. The Zips were so bad the last two years, there had to be a talent problem. The bad news is we had/have a talent problem. The good news is it doesn't take a ton of talent to win in the mac. The coaching will be there. Once the talent catches up to the coaching, this team could do extremely well in years to come.

I've seen UFC and from all I can tell, there are probably some places at Highland Square that show it.

Given the injuries, he is certainly worth a shot.

Or the NFL next year after doing nothing this year. Never too late to get a job in the CFL for few weeks. Actually, he could start working on his product endorsement signing bonuses and live off of that until next season.

There are never enough wins....sort of like sex and money. However, 3-4 wins with a competitive team would be acceptable. 2013, I expect much more. There is too much evidence in the MAC proving it is easy to turn a program around in a short period of time. Average coaches have turned programs around in short order in this horrible league. We have an excellent coach and I expect big things his second year. I'm sure he does too.

Interesting news. The bad news for him is he is kicked off the team. The good news for him is he will have more money than God next year at this time after signing his NFL contract.