GP1

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.

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.