GP1

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.

That would be awesome. Dr Z could load up on old, tired cliches/bad internet articles and I could load up on facts/analysis about the game.

Normal, everyday cliches don't apply to the Browns.

This segment is on HBO2 right now.

No. A part of me thinks for good reason. A part of me thinks it would be great to watch and makes a ton of sense. It really has me questioning some of my beliefs about what teams should do in various situations. The placement of the ball on the 30 for kickoffs would make it very dangerous for a college team. I think high schools still kickoff from the 40 so if you don't get an OS kick, you still have them on their side of the 50. The quality of FG kickers comes into play as well...It wouldn't take many yards if you lose the OS kick to be in FG range for a college kicker. I do know this, over 50% of NFL FG attempts over 50 yards are successful. That's too many so I believe the goal posts should be closer to require more aggressive actions on the part of the offense so a coach like this might help change the game in that respect. This paradigm would really change play calling and introduce more variety into all of the downs. More than anything, I like creativity in coaching. This guy has 12 OS kicks they practice each day and they use every bit of the rule book trying them. One might think that when the other team knows it is coming, it would be easier to stop the OS try, but it isn't because of the creativity. You called this guys philosophy "extremely aggressive". Prior to watching HBO RS, I might have called it the same thing. After looking at the stats, I'm not sure it is either extreme or aggressive as much as smart coaching. A high school coach is there to teach kids how to play football and put them in the best position to win. The number of state championships he has won proves he does his job well.

Thanks JZ84. I just bought it.

Article If any of you get HBO, check out the story on the coach in the article above. Quite the eye opening story and it turns the whole way of how we view football upside down. Until they interviewed the economist, I had no idea how likely it is to make it on fourth down. I had no idea how stupid NFL coaches are when they punt on 4th and 2 from the other team's 36. Also, this guy onsides kicks every time...and for good reason...it works and the stats say it works. He once scored 28 points in the first four minutes of a state semi-final game. Great TV article. Economist from story has a book about football statistics. Can't think of the name of it. If anyone knows the name of the book from the TV article, please post.