GP1

I voted other. The player I want to see on the field next year is Brett Biggs Version 2.0. I don't care how big the guy is, how fast he runs or how high he can jump. I want to see who the next guy focused on winning is AND produces winning results. It could be anyone and fans are frequently surprised by the person when he reveals himself. I'd be happy to be surprised.

Great memory!!! Not only did he make that bomb, the the Zips didn't have much time to move into the position to kick the FG. Maybe someone can help me, but I remember Toledo scoring with around a minute to go. FG or TD and extra point I can't remember. I think it was a TD and extra point and they were going for the tie on the road. I was watching the game from the endzone. As soon as he kicked the ball, the guy I was watching the game with said, "It's good!". One of the best clutch kicks I've ever seen.7-3-1. WOW! In eleven games. I can't believe I'm about to type this, but those were the days. Who would have thunk? Two years later, the program was in free fall. Seven wins now would be a blessing.

Beating those turds from Portage County on Thanksgiving to go to the MAC Championship Game.Second would be the tailgating. If you could let yourself accept if for what it was, it was a great place to have fun. There was beer, food, passing football...the airdock was right there....And if you were lucky, you would get to watch a training pilot crash a plane. Nobody ever died on the runway, but a lot of wobbly flights landed.

There COULD be some interesting parallels between NCSt and tosu. What was suspected going into the ncs game was Chuck A. was on his last leg and the team had given up AND was in disarrray. That COULD be the case with osu this season, but there is still a lot we don't know.Akron had a much better team back then than they do right now. They just came off of the MAC Championship and had a lot of confidence. They also gave a respectable showing the week before at Penn State. We had a QB on a roll with a future NFL WR (who later decided a career in manual labor was more important than college). The also had a future NFL O-lineman on the team. Like Bill Cowher always said, "The most dangerous team is a team with confidence and momentum." We had both that week. It was awesome. Little did we know CMU would take every last bit of it away from us the following week, on one play right before half. We beat a bad NTSU team the following week, then the wheels seem to fall off. This current Zips team certainly doesn't have any momentum (Buffalo?) or probably much confidence. If the confidence and momentum were there, I'd hope for NC State. Given the current circumstances, I won't.

Seven starters were lost for the season that day.That was back when we were still fielding a lot of 1-AA players. We've played scores of Top 10 teams in the 2 decades since that game without any notable injuries.We're fine with conditioning, durability and size vs. Top 10 opponents. We just lack the speed, athleticism, depth and...about everything else.Agreed. I was just pointing out an unusual fact. The plane should have had a red cross and the words M*A*S*H painted on it.

Seven starters were lost for the season that day.

This attitude stinks IMO. I hope the team proves you wrong.He would have been much better off saying he didn't want the QB to get hurt in a meaningless game, which the vast majority of BCS vs non-BCS games are (with the exception of the pile of cash that lands in the non-BCS teams' banks).When is the last time an Akron QB got hurt against a BCS team? Play to win.That's not the point I'm making. My point was about college football in general. The risk of injury takes place in every game. If a player gets hurt, I want it to be in a meaningful game, not one designed to line the pockets of some BCS school while pimping out a non-BCS school.

This attitude stinks IMO. I hope the team proves you wrong.He would have been much better off saying he didn't want the QB to get hurt in a meaningless game, which the vast majority of BCS vs non-BCS games are (with the exception of the pile of cash that lands in the non-BCS teams' banks).

First, they need to do a better job of catching the ball when it hits them in the hands.

I agree. Dan went from being a loud, barking coach to being a dick.

I wonder how much Dick Tressel knew about his brothers bad behavior at tOSU.

Exactly. Piling up points and watching the other team implode trying to keep up is how one wins in the MAC. I guess my only question is, once we find our #1, is the guy a stud or not? We need a stud QB, but do we have one?

D'Orazio is not in the conversation. This NEEDS to be a two horse race. We don't have time for experimentation. Coach I needs to pick one and ride that horse. The only way the #2 gets in against tosu is if the we are getting killed and it is time to clear the benches. Not having a #1 QB going into tosu is exactly the indecision this program needs to do without.

I think that if the BCS level teams have their own division, bowls will go away. A middle division between I-AA and I-A can be created and it can have a playoff system like the BCS level schools have (If there are four divisions now, there could easily be five). I would rather see Akron play a home playoff game for a chance to win a national championship than to go to a meaningless bowl game in Mobile, AL. The key to playoff systems is to create a structure around it where teams don't make it every year like they do now in the playoff divisions.

Another entertaining game last night. The QB play could have been a little better, but on the whole it was a good game. Last minute victory by Toronto. Calgary scored two Singles in the first quarter, which ALMOST won the game for them, but a late FG by Toronto pulled it out.

Why not, people travelled from West Virginia to Akron (Barberton and Kenmore) looking for work for over a century. The three R's in WV were Readin', Ritin', and Route 21. I used to call Columbus, West Virginia West. It was as far as someone could drive from West Virginia on a tank of gas in their pick-up truck so they all immigrated there.

It is not my job to do his job for him. It is his job to put a winning product on the field. It is his job to hire a coach who would put a winning product on the field. I don't think Coach I is a bad guy and a lot of what is said about him is probably blown a little out of proportion. Having never met him, I have no idea what he is like. In reality, I doubt I will ever meet him. I have a deep philosophical disagreement with his style of play. I don't think it is a good way for teams to win in college football. Even worse, it is a terrible way for a bad team to get good in the hurry we all needed that to happen. TW is going to sink or swim with Coach I, that's the way it works. People are just as free to fail as they are to succeed. My responsibilities are what CK described the other day. Support the school financially (I have not been doing a good job of this lately, shame on me, but that will change)...buy tickets to events when I am around....pull for the Zips to win...I would start up a local alumni association around Charlotte if I could get a list of alumni around the area. It isn't little league sports where concerned citizens get to give their opinions on what goes on. It's D-1A athletics and we all need to behave like it is. The school smiles nicely and listens because they are public employees, but they really need to come up with their own ideas. Because it is D-1A athletics, expectations should be high and people should complain publically about what happens. I wish someone at InfoCision or Summa (sp?) would say something publically about what a terrible investment they have made thus far into Zips football and how bad they want to have a winning product on the field they are paying for. The rest of the advertisers should complain as well. If a business bought an ad at the Big Dialer expecting 20,000 people per game to see it and the team is so bad only 5,000 show up because the team is so bad, doesn't that business have the right to be upset about the money they are spending? I'd raise holy Hell if I was one of those businesses. Being critical of players, coaches, ADs or even university presidents is common at D-1A schools. If any of those people can't take the heat, they shouldn't be in the kitchen. The same goes for a potential recruit. If a recruit doesn't like negative comments on fan web boards, he should look at B-W or Case Western or Ashland or any other level of college athletics where the expectations are lower. I want the kids who want to win and understand that what is currently happening needs to change. Give me ten kids like that and keep the 25 candyasses who get upset about what people say on fan boards.

Link Very entertaining game if anyone watched it. It's refreshing to watch a football game with players actually playing the game because of the 20 second play clock. The NFL give us the "drama" of watching Peyton Manning point out defensive players and call out what position they play . There is another game on NFL Network tonight, I believe. It sure beats the half hour debates we get on the NFL Network debating who the best center of 2010 was.

I don't know we disagree, but I have a different perspective. The Big Dialer was built as a centerpiece for the campus vision Dr. P had. Regardless of what TW has done in other areas, his decisions as it relates to the crappy product on the field have resulted in an empty stadium. The empty stadium is crippling to Dr.P's vision. Instead of Saturdays on campus with 20,000 people showing up to watch a football game and take in what the campus/downtown Akron has to offer, the stadium will sit with a few thousand fans, if they are lucky, watching the game. Those few thousand fans will be the same fans who would go watch the Zips even if they were still playing at the Rubber Bowl. What is going on with the football program is a complete disaster that goes far beyond just the football team. Time will tell, but there is a good chance that after this season, the football program could be viewed as worse than when JD left.

Dr. Proenza hired the janitors of football. He is at fault for the problem we now experience with football. I don't see any other way to slice it.

Big Ten....

I'm sure the first time UNCC had the event, it didn't raise $200K. At some point, someone at UNCC was willing to risk something failing and had the event...then kept having the event. We don't have daring leadership at UofA that is willing to do something different that might fail. It's easy to have one event a year and call it a success. Judy Rose has been the AD at UNCC for 20+ years now. She is has taken the huge step of starting a football team where there was none. That's daring. Her resume is more complete than 90% of the good old boys club out there calling themselves Athletic Directors. She took responsibility for the department and the results are pretty good. We need someone who gets paid to be responsible to actually be responsible then demand responsibility throughout the Athletic Department.

UNCC had one and it raised $200K. All they offer is bad basketball. UofA should be doing something like that right now, not Homecoming. Better than incentives for fans selling tickets, how about incentives for Athletic Department employees selling tickets if the tickets are to new ticket holders? 10% of all sales? Schools need to do their own work, not ask others to do their work for them. Miami is taking the lazy way out. Think about it, if ticket sales fail because your fans didn't sell enough, the athletic department officials have someone other than themselves to blame. "Not my fault...."

Why? So you can show you supported diversity with a line on your resume showing you had the event.?.? In reality, they should have this event, but it should be part of an ongoing summer campaign. Wake has this event and it is well attended. They also have a tennis match.... a golf outing.... and a BBQ all on the same day. It's amazing an athletic department employee somewhere can walk and chew gum at the same time. At the end of the day, I don't know how much any of these programs would move tickets for UofA. And I don't just mean some company buying up 1,000 tickets that never get used. I mean people actually buying tickets and going to the games. The football team went 1-11 last season. Try selling tickets for that steaming pile of crap. It would be like selling a line of cars where half the product sold had wheels that flew off one mile from the dealership. There are marketing campaigns you could put together, but what would the message be? Pick one or make up your own: 1. We won't suck as bad. 2. You have to see it to believe it (read what you will into that one). 3. We might just win five. 4. More fun than raking leaves. 5. Come and watch us build...again. 6. Come out to InfoCision Stadium...there's plenty of room. See what I mean? There are no known players....not a single player anyone would recognized on an ad. There is no good record to point to from the previous year. The coach who went 1-11 would help sell tickets on an ad? Pictures of the stadium?....Everyone has seen it already. The easiest thing to market is winning. It is what people want to buy. Second to winning is quality football even if the team doesn't win. We don't have either. Just look at how well Cincy did when their team started to win....tickets were sold out. Now that they are on a downslide, let's see how smart their marketing department is now. A problem we have is marketing. The problem we have is winning. Solve the winning problem and the marketing problem will be solved as well.

It really isn't about getting people to do your work for you. That is how failure is created. Sales/Marketing is very difficult. I do it for a living. Many who don't do it think it is all about guys going to work at 10 AM and going golfing at 2 PM. That isn't the case. You can do those things, but you don't last long.