GP1

Maybe we are letting kids play football at too young of an age and they can't grasp the fundamentals of the game to the point where they can play it in a safe manner. There are a lot of bad jr high coaches who can't teach the proper way to play the game as well.

He had a point alright... A stupid point.

Concussions happen when the brain bashes against the skull. We are not made for sudden stops. They can design all the energy absorbing equipment, nothing can stop the brain from bashing against the skull when a hit is made. It all goes back to hgh. Force = Mass x Acceleration. The players today are too big from taking hgh and the human body cannot take the force. Look at James Harrison. When he came back from injury, his face was so red, he could have guided Santa at Christmas. The red was from all the hgh he takes. He is only one example of many in the NFL. My brother overheard the Falcons strenght and conditioning coach yelling at some linemen one day, "I don't know what you are taking, but you had better get off of it before your head explodes." Everyone knows it is going on and nobody wants to do anything about it. Back to force.... Specifically, the head can't take the force. Some may laugh when I say this, but the NFL needs to go through a five year period where they bring down the maximum weight of the players through weight limits like they do in little league. Make the NFL a sport again instead of a freakshow. I hate to say this because it may come true, but I don't think it is unreasonable to believe that an NFL player, or even a high level college football player, could get killed on the field of play in the next five years. If not killed, one of the linemen die from a heart attack during a game. If that happens, parents will really think twice about letting their kids play.

Actually, there is a funny story behind this that started the saying. To this day, when I call the MAC Dollar General, it drives some on this board insane. My wife, Mrs. GP1, the luckiest woman in the world, went to Miamioh (got here MBA from UofA). I forget how many years ago it was, but Akron played Miami on a Tuesday or Wednesday night ESPNWhatever game. Miamioh had an alumni party to watch the game in uptown Charlotte so we went. At that time, the MAC was really at a low point. Miamioh beat us that night 3-0. Almost a completely unwatchable game. On the way home, my wife says, "Being commissioner of the MAC must be like being VP of Sales and Marketing for Dollar General. You can trick someone to come in to shop once, but once they see the crap you are selling, it is hard to get them to come back." Mrs. GP1 described exactly why, for a long time now, MAC stadiums sit empty. You are new to the MAC...Would it surprise you to know the MAC has been around since the late 1940s? In over 60 years now, they have not been able to do anything with the league, but like a cockroach, it still lives.

I would have to say no to your question, because not enough people pay enough attention to the MAC to bash it. On the second point, the MAC is straight Dollar General

Article I know this isn't about the Zips, but it is about football and I worry about what the future may hold for some of our fellow Zips in terms of long term health problems.

Go Zips!

Respectfully, this wasn't a major problem compared to the history of losing and an inability of ANY athletic director to put a winning product on the field for a sustained period of time. Wistercil couldn't possibly have been ignorant of our football history...the records are easy enough for even a dimwitted guy like him to read. He was ignorant of how to manage the exit of an existing coach (Reno issue ties into this) and hire a winning coach that would put a winning product on the field. If this team won and where people parked became our biggest problem, I'd be all for it. In the mean time, parking is way, way, way down on the list of past problems. Our problems stem from not winning, not winning and not winning. If we win, everything else takes care of itself.

Actually, there is a magic bullet and it has "winning" written on it. Our major problem in the past has been that when we locked that bullet in the firing chamber, we often shot ourselves with the bullet before the gun even got out of the holster. Over the years, we have had countless discussions about our problems winning in football and what caused the problems. The truth is, we have been our own worst enemy. There was always a "building process" and never a "winning process". I have a good feeling that is going to change in the relatively new future.

:lol: Still a little sweaty from my morning work out right now. I got a kick out of this response. Sometimes I read the news and hear of something happening outside of a bar at 1:00AM and I think to myself, "1 AM? I'm getting up to take a leak at that time."

Good point. I guess how I look at a flagship institution is how the people of that state would look at it. That's why Michigan is a little different. I really don't know what the answer would be, but I think a school called Purdue in Indiana wouldn't be looked at as the flagship school. There are tons of Germans in Indiana. I can't see them going for more than one flagship school. That's just my guess.

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Good question. I'm going to assume, and please correct me if I'm wrong, but you are from the south.?.? Now that I live in SC, I understand this point much more than I would have had I never lived in the south. Is Clemson or SC the flagship school of SC?...Depends on who you ask. Same goes for NC and NCST. Same goes for Florida. Miss or Miss St.? Other states like Tennessee, Kentucky or Georgia are more like the midwest. Out west, OR and ORSt. Wash and Wash St. AZ and AZ St. God only knows what the flagship school in California is. In the midwest, I can't think of a state, with the exception of MAYBE Michigan that doesn't have one school that is the flagship. For better or worse, that school is looked upon by what seems like the majority as the center of the world when it comes to following a college program. It creates a different world view that those schools outside of the midwest. Maybe it's all of the German immigration to the midwest years ago that created this orderly fan dynamic (lots of Germans in Kentucky and Tennessee as well)...who knows. In any event, we are just a little different about those things. We value order and hard work. Anything that distracts from an orderly day of work, such as thinking about a flagship school other than the one most everyone follows, becomes very uncomfortable. I'm totally comfortable with tosu being the flagship school of Ohio. Our problem has never been tosu...it has always been the gun we keep shooting ourselves in the foot with when we try to pull it out of our holster.

It's funny when I see this and it reminds me of being in college. I swore I would never get up early in the morning to exercise again. Now that I'm in my 40s, I get up three days a week at 5:00AM to go work out at my gym. It's a lot easier to do when a I'm not hungover and people aren't yelling at me for an hour.

Thanks for the correction. My hope is the NCAA takes as serious of a look at ALL medical issues players sustain while playing all sports. Brain injuries (many get them in high school and problem continues in college), spine injuries, pain killer abuse, debilitating knee injuries, etc. all happen to college athletes and there is nothing to support them once they leave school. They are human beings. If a horse sustained an injury that caused it to not be able to race, it would probably receive more medical support from its industry than a former college athlete receives after his/her playing days are over. Very sad story.

Agreed. Two things really stick out. First, PK addiction doesn't care where you are from, what you look like or what your parents have. When it hits, it hits hard. Second, I have a real concern about Oxycontin being given out to college kids for shoulder surgery for what seems to be routine operations. From what I understand, Oxycontin does not block pain...it is a mind altering drug that cause the brain of the person with pain to tell the person that they have none. Given the pressures kids have to play with pain, etc., it is no wonder that something like this happened. Under normal conditions, the exit from these drugs has to be monitored by a physician because they are hard to get off of even if taken at the proper doses. Anyone remember when Brett Favre had to go to rehab? He wasn't abusing drugs, he just had a hard time getting off of his normal doses. Giving these drugs to a college kid involved in athletics and the pressures to play just seems dangerous to me. If the NCAA could get away from making rules about what goes on bagels, they should look into this issue. I would bet there are a lot of ticking time bombs out there. This is a serious, serious issue.

Or Marshall when they were in the MAC. The question really is what is in store for college football? If conference shake-ups result in BCS schools having their own division in a few years, none of this will matter. In fact, if they don't, I don't see how any of this matters. At this point, teams below the BCS/remaining Big East teams are jumping from one bad conference to another. I don't see the point. We can have it really good where we are right now. We have a national soccer program, a basketball team that is dominating the conference and a football team that can easily be turned around with the current staff. Everything else is Title IX compliance or general nonsense. We can dominate the MAC in the three major sports we have invested or looking to invest. Let's get this right before we make a move that might damage momentum. The MAC survives like a cockroach after a nuclear holocaust. It isn't going anywhere so let's make certain we have the three major investments showing results, not potential results, before we do anything.

Largely. Better talent also. Remember, basketball games are a form of entertainment. Themore entertaining it is, the more people will go watch it.

It's 2012. We don't need a meeting with a reporter. If he is interested in interacting with the fans, he could register on the site and start a thread.

This is very unique and interesting. I think I like the idea. Covering a good team has to be much more fulfilling for a journalist than a poor team. He probably thinks to himself, "Holy crap, I get to cover one of the only good sports teams in NE Ohio." A story on KD2.0's philosophy heading down the stretch and into the MAC tournament would be interesting. We already know a lot about the players. I'm not interested in personal stories as much as the direction of the team, success on the court and how they intend to do that. The reason for the "down the stretch" story is it allows the journalist to provide some analysis of a portion of the season in addition to the coverage of each individual game. He can then go to the coach at the end of the season and ask questions about how his plan did or didn't come together (even though we all know it is going to come together)...Did it come together the way you would have thought? What would you do the same? What would you do differently?....That sort of thing. Given the success of the Zips and likely trip to the NCAA tournament again, I would bet this writer has been given some additional space to fill up in the sports section. Interesting stories sell newspapers. Selling newspapers is a good thing when the reason for the sales is the performance of the basketball team for the local University. More than anything, I don't want the local media to be expected to be a cheerleader for the local teams. I want them to do their job and provide good, informative, analytical writing.

Good points. Toledo has been a leader in the MAC for a long time now. It takes more than facilities to have a good football program. Toledo has a history of winning, good coaches, talented players, institutional support and community support. I wish we had the program Toledo does. On the upside, we could be better than Toledo.

Isn't this person normally called an "Athletic Director"?

Once those leaving the Big East go and those staying stay and those coming in enter, shouldn't the Big East just change it's name to Conference USA?

I'd go as far as to say the talent is "win at least one game" level. If the chips fall the right way, it could be "Sweet 16 Level".

At-large...Schmat large. We'll get in by winning the MAC Tournament.