GP1

There are lots of things I used to be interested in as a Zips fan and now I'm not. Season ticket sales is one of those. In fact, I'm down to only caring about one thing and I'm obsessed with it.... Is the team winning or not. I don't care who coaches them, who plays for them, where they play, who they play, etc. I'm at the point where I only want to see winning when I turn on the TV or computer. I'll worry about all the other stuff when what goes on between the white lines gets better.

Why look for a modern name when old themes can so easily be used? How about Akron Building Process? Feel free to suggest a team motto. Mine would be..."Playing football while pretending to get something done."

With a name like that, a team could live for a long time and prosper well in Akron.

I'd be interested to know from Mr. Thomas the situation with the other RBs. Chisholm is mentioned having a long run. I've always thought, given the chance, Chisholm could do that and be a very productive RB. I guess my questions would center around the entire group. Do they seem to run the same plays with all of them or do plays vary based upon who is on the field? Late in a game with the team winning, who is going to be the guy to milk the clock and get the tough yards when everyone knows a running play is coming? Is there a "third down back"? Is the third down back actually good at catching (are any of them good at catching in this offense)? Who is doing a good job of blocking on pass protection? Has anyone taken an unexpected leap forward because their style of running is better suited for this offense?

Love the topic. Could they surprise? Yes...it's the mac and strange things happen. A surprise for me would be 5 wins, but all things considered, it would be a huge success.

So do I and great points. zen as well. Soneone once asked me about the guys I knew who played in the nfl and why they were so good. The answer was not they are physical and "excited" all the time. One guy couldn't crack an egg when he hit you and he played multiple years in the nfl. The answer was they were able to do the same thing over and over at a high level. One play was the same as the next and they did it well. Everything was about the next play and not the play before or the 100 in the future. Brains beats emotion every time. Bill Belichick was a brains guy. Bill Cowher was an emotions guy. Belichick beat Cowher on a regular basis and in games that matter because of professionalism. I'm glad to see that type of professionalism on display with our Zips. Go Zips!

Link This topic can go from what the ncaa should to to what psu should do. What their Board is doing is probably the right thing to do. However, they can do better. They need to get a bunch of their rich attorney alumns, and there are a ton of them, to start filing cases against the ncaa. Make the ncaa miserable. Threaten them to have to spend millions in defense of their actions and press it if they have to. If the other members hammered them, hammer them back and drag all of them through the psu wreckage. Make ALL of them spend hours upon hours defending their actions. The ncaa played rough with psu and those remaining behind who didn't have anything to do with the Sandusy problem didn't play at all. They took a huge punch and now they need to recover and come back swinging. They have nothing to lose at this point. Personally, I don't care what happens to psu football. I hate the ncaa like a hooker hates a case of crabs and I would love nothing more than to see them get bullied back. A bunch of a-hole alumni lawyers would be a good start.

Sure there are. It all starts with philosophy though. I can't think of a good leader that once said, "I'm going to create a process and then put a philosophy around it." I think we can all agree John Wooden was one of the great coaches of all time. He used a philosophy to become great. The "process" was just something he used to reinforce his philosophy. If anyone reads his Pyramid of Success, they will see it transcends they normal "building process" that even good coaches use. There is none of the usual tripe we hear from coaches like, "Defense wins championships" or whatever they use to cover up their averageness. I guess this all brings us around to the Zips. Can we go from good to great with our current philosophy?

A guiding philosophy isn't just "also important", it is the key to any successful organization. Process is easy because one can read about process in a book. Someone can get a Six Sigma black belt from following the proper process and it takes almost no creativity to get it. Examples of black belts in college athletics can be athletic directors. These numbskulls who run athletic departments all go to the same seminars and basically all do the same thing because they are "building process" oriented. IMG is a good example of a tool (funny I would use the term tool when writing about a group of tools) all of them use in the "building process". They take all of their former employees with them from school to school so they can have people around them who think like them and will do their process for them. There is little vision involved. Many of them can be described "good" at their jobs. Mack was very good at his job. Process allows someone with minimal talent to be "good". Most good college coaches struggle to go from good to great, not because they can't execute what they learn at all of the clinics; they fail to go from good to great because they don't have a guiding philosophy behind them them that allows their thinking to extend beyond the clinics and those around them who think like they do. Getting to "great" is more difficult and it requires a guiding philosophy. We have seen greatness at Akron and see it today. Mike Thomas was/is a great AD. Caleb Porter is a great coach. They see outside of the annual athletic directors/coaches conventions and produce great results. I think Terry Bowden has shown himself and will show himself to be a great coach at Akron because of philosophical reasons. Philosophy...difficult. Process....read about it in a book.

Thanks for your deep analysis.

Winning and losing can also be part of a failed philosophy. If you build a process around an unworkable philosophy, losing will take place. For example, the pro style offense Coach I brought to Akron was a failure of philosophy more than it was a failure of process. If a business leader wants to bring back the horse and buggy as the primary means of transportation in the US, he can put together the best process in the world, but failure (losing) will take place. Process is for people who don't have much vision. Process is how people pretent to be smart. Process people are the "survivors" of the world. I represent major manufacturers of construction products for a living. Very few executives have a winning philosophy, but their company does well with little intelligence being applied to what they do. All of them have a process (see how Six Sigma is destroying creativity in this country). By the time they really screw anything up, they are off to another job and others are left behind to take the blame and clean up the mess. I see it all the time with thse companies. Process is easy. Philosophy is difficult because it challenges norms and forces people to act outside of their comfort zone.

I about fell out of my chair when I saw these words from our esteemed colleague from Green. Could this mean DiG has had enough of the "building process" and would like to see a "winning process" at this point that involves post season glory? If so, this is a huge step not only for Dig, but for ZNO.

I don't care if they play in their jockstraps as long as they win.

As far as the first line, leave Captain Kangaroo out of this. I couldn't agree more with the second statement. What your name is doesn't matter. What you do matters. If I told you a college football coach had winning records in 14 of 18 seasons, was the National Coach of the Year, went undefeated in the SEC and made the playoffs in 5 of 10 seasons in the lower divisions at two different schools, would you call that person a great coach?

Link Maybe this has already been posted. If it has, please delete the entire topic.

The building process lasts forever as it only builds a line of incompetents as far as the eye can see. On the other hand, the winning process in the MAC can take as little as two years. I'm a big fan of the winning process. There is actual evidence it has worked in the past.

Good post wadszip. This team does need talent. Right now, it needs wins more than anything. Coaching change or not, 3 or fewer wins for I believe would be four years in a row looks horrible to any recruit. Kids don't want to play at a program with the stink of losing all over it. I don't care how good of a coach you have or how good of a recruiter he is, the stink takes over everything if it is allowed to go on long enough. Winning brings in good players. The promise of winning does much less. If we can, get the kid here for a year and let's get this "winning process" moving.

Every dog has his day. His is coming....

UofA made a lot of mistakes in the move to major college football. No need to go into all of them. This was the biggest mistake of all. Dennison had zero qualifications to be the AD to kick off the D1A era. I like to look forward and not backward, but I often wonder if a different AD, with better experience, had been hired, where would we be today?

The only thing more stupid than the ideas of this man is the abj printing his ideas. Jim "The Victim" Dennison stories have long ago run their course. Dennison was a D2 coach with D2 ideas. Not the guy to take the program forward. I'm not sure what the abj is thinking when they print this sstupidity. Mayme Mr. Thomas can help us out.

Actually, the money grubbers are the university presidents, athletic directors and coaches. The ncaa doesn't represent the athlete-students. If they did, they would actually treat them better and include them in their money grubbing. The ncaa represents the institutions. The presidents say college athletics is important to the overall life of a student even though most would gladly give up good educational programs for a good football team any day. The ADs use college athletics to convince the presidents they need more stadiums to become a world class institution and the presidents fall for it every time. For a bunch of people with PhD's, they sure are stupid. The ADs use these construction programs to pad their resumes in order to move on to another school and make more money. The coaches go right along with it because participation in a "building process" is easier than putting together a "winning process". The athlete-students do all of the real work. Actually, I think a good topic would be: "Who Is More Sleazy, University Presidents, Athletic Directors or Coaches?" All three are pretty bad and I would have a hard time picking which is worse because they are so intertwined at this point. I lean towards ADs but could be swayed with a good argument.

Darn right it is a joke. It misses on many levels. Where it hits is helping victims, but they are going about it the wrong way. If this effort is to reform psu in some way, why doesn't psu have to fund something on campus that would help further the understanding of what a victim goes through and methods of treating the damage? Isn't that what a university is supposed to do...further knowledge and science? Look towards the future? Forced funding for something for five years tells me after five years, the funding will discontinue...not exactly forward looking by the ncaa. Shouldn't they also use money to fund the criminology of this problem? Questions such as..., How do we better help law enforcement understand signs of abuse and act in a more efficient manner?....should be asked and researched. These are just a couple of ways of turning a negative into a positive. Everything the ncaa did was to damage psu. Nothing good will come out of it.

I'd argue he is both a survivor and a winner as well. I would probably use wins to explain why he is a winner. I would look at who he has designed the program to win against a lot, (and who he hasn't beaten) to complete the survivor part.

#1...He could play in better facilities and has seen better facilities. What we have is nice, but not as nice was what most BCS schools have. #2...Most kids who would transfer to a MAC school would probably start in the Big Ten in front of tens of thousands of people. #3...He could have a building process at PSU as well. #4...Toledo has better tradition. The Bowden name is important to us (unless TB never wins more than five games in a season in one of the next five years, at which point he is doomed) if you believe in that kind of thing. I believe in good coaching and I think TB provides that. Tressel? So what? I think a kid who has lived through this whole mess at psu might be looking for something other than Jim Tressel. He has seen enough "legends". Here is how you sell Akron... Assume marginal BCS player coming to Akron. 1. Potential to win a conference championship. 2. Potential to go to a bowl game. 3. Chance to play right away with a fresh start. That's about all we/MAC offer to a kid who has played at PSU.

I can't read it because I'm not an important Insider. Does the article say something like, "nd is a good fit for the acc as they are pitt and syracuse bad and the existing membership doesn't have to worry about them dominating the league like va tech and miami did when they entered." nd joins the acc and they are in the wilderness of college football five years from now. they have some hope if they join the big ten.