GP1

Wake me when we get close.....

This one will stick in my mind, however it turns out, I will remember this quote: ''I think Akron is a sleeping giant. You have got to give them two or three more years. The way they can coach and recruit, this is going to be a juggernaut.'' Reading a quote like this sometimes can make me want to have a stroke, but I'll hold the sharpe comments for now and try to read through it a little. It is true that it might take a couple of more years to become a juggernaut, although the definition of juggernaut is unclear. Juggernaut to me is going undefeated in the MAC and winning at least half of OOC games. We'd all take a 10 win season in a second. If it takes 2-3 more seasons to do that, then I'll be patient. With that said, what are we going to do the next 2-3 years? There will be games played and tickets to be sold. I'm not interested in buying a ticket to watch bad football for the next 2-3 years. They need to show signs of life this season. Show that they at least can perform the basic tasks of playing football. BTW, they need to win at LEAST 4 games this season. All my thoughts fall back on what I see teams do in the MAC all the time. That is quickly turning around a program after horrible results with the previous coach. There is a long list including Miamioh last season. Why do we always have to be the team in the middle of a 25 year "building process"?

I love the idea of helping contact former players. I volunteered one time to do that. It went great. Raised quite a bit of money. I'd love it if they asked people to do it again. With that said, I am not a professional fundraiser and my effort were strong, but the results were those of a volunteer. If we want the Zips to take it to the next level, a higher level of professionalism is needed, not volunteers. I understand how a lockerroom works. The lockerroom before the spring game is a prelude to a drunk fest that evening. The players just want it to be over. I'm not saying taking 4 year old girls into a lockerroom is necessary, but I'm sure grown men who have been in a lockerroom before understand what the visual is going to be. Having a couple of seniors come over and say hello wouldn't hurt. I would agree Ms. Gossens did a good job. She should reach out and touch former players more often. I though my suggestions were a good way of doing that.

Not a knock on what they are doing this year, but Gary Bogue did a great job when he was working in Athletics dealing with former student athletes. It was never a big deal for him to organize an event because he knew what to do as he had experience doing it at other schools. Schools bigger than Akron in fact. Again, not a slap at anyone, but I wish Gary was still around the Athletic Department for alumni relations with former student athletes. It's been around five years now since he moved to the Law School. He picked up some good momentum in a short period of time and I don't think they have anyone with the focus or drive to do what Gary did now or since. Just think of what he would have accomplished by now. He did a lot with very little support or money from UofA.

Require an at large team to have at least a +.500 record in conference. That's one I think we can all get behind. If you're 8-8 in the Big East... sorry, you aren't going to win 6 games in a row to win the National Championship. Most 15 win MAC teams are going to either. That isn't the point. Only one team is going to win. Why not create a field that has displayed a high level of performance throughout the season against their peer group? It seems much more fair to me to reward a team for a well played season than for just being part of a big conference. One 8-8 Big East team could win it this year. UCONN went 8-8 in conference. However, they are on a huge run right now and are in the Tournament because they won their conference. The deserve to be there because of winning their conference, not because they had a great regular season. A .500 conference team could make it, they would just have to win their tournament to do so, making tournaments more exciting.

I think the idea is a lot further along than anyone wants to admit. I learned four other things watching the Overtime segment. BTW, lance99 is correct, it was the best part of the discussion. The four things I learned were: 1. Jason Whitlock is a lot fatter on my computer screen than he is on my TV 2. The Ivy League Commissioner is a lot smarter than any NCAA league commissioner should be. 3. Billy Packer's head is melanoma central. 4. Rich Rodriguez is so stupid he can't pronounce simple words. I actually think that if there was a split and we rightly ended up in the lower level, we would be perfectly situated to be successful at that level. We would have great facilities for that level and a good recruiting base. It might be the best thing that could happen to us.

Require an at large team to have at least a +.500 record in conference.

Nothing really new on the HBO show last night. Guys not graduating is not news. Guys getting paid is not news. Guys getting sex during recruiting visits is not news...that was going on in the 80s at Akron when I was in school. There was more indepth analysis related to corruption. It was funny to watch Rich Rod try to glorify the NCAA and what the schools are trying to do...clearly he wants to coach again and couldn't say anything to get in the way of that happening. Billy Packer was 1950s guy. Sort of pathetic in a lot of ways. Jason W. was the journalist laughing at 1950s guy. The best guy on the show was the commissioner of the Ivy League. The only guy who talked about the future of big time college athletics beyond paying people. For a long time now, being the visionary the Great GP1 is, I've been telling you guys that there needs to be a separate level of DI sports where you have a certain number of teams at the top and they have their own league. Everyone said, "But GP1, that's a stupid idea. Nobody will do that. It will kill the NCAA." The Ivy League guy brought up this very point. He said there should be around 60 teams that are "just different" from the rest. Packer talked about it as well toward the end of the program. I told you guys this was being talked about and will be here before too long. If the NCAA loses the lawsuits they are in, it may come sooner than later. The NCAA doesn't need to try to make the lower level conferences equal to the bigger conferences. They wouldn't know what to do once they got there. Another level is needed. Right now, UofA needs to be talking about what they will do when higher level of college football was created and we are not (we won't be) included. I know this is going to hurt the feelings of a lot of you, but hiding heads in the sand and pretending things are different than they really are got the MAC and worse yet, Akron, into a difficult situation. This situation is real and coming our direction. Clearly it is being talked about in other circles or the Ivy League Commissioner would not have brought it up. What do we do? I'd like to hear from some of the smarter posters on the board about it....the list includes, but is not limited to DrZ, Cap. K, Zip Watcher, ZipsWin!, JZ84, Z.I.P., InTheZone and where the heck has Z-P been. If you are a smart poster, but not listed, please comment. If you are a stupid poster, please don't post.

I just received a nice note from a Ms. Megan Gossens about some activities on the weekend of the spring game. Good stuff, but I'd like to offer a little advice. Don't try to stuff everything into one letter. Write a series of letters and mail them out a couple of weeks apart. There is a lot of good stuff you can expand upon and make it more interesting. Letters could include: 1. Expand upon what is going on the day of the game beyond drinking and playing corn hole. I'm not interested in corn hold, but I might be interested in a putting contest or something along those line. Who we kidding? The drinking is enough for me and should be for most. Anyhow, expand a little. How about a small tour of the lockerrooms and fieldhouse for former players startnig around noon? The game starts at one o'clock so there would be time. It would give former players a chance to say hi to the current players while they get ready for the game. It's the spring game, not the BCS Championship so I don't think there would be a problem. What if a former player brings his children. Is there somewhere outside of the alumni event where they could go play on something for a while? 2. Fundraising is good. The information on the locker sponsorship is good. The Varsity A stuff is a mystery to me. I hope by now the University has absorbed the Varsity A and it isn't serving as a middle man for the scholarship programs. BTW, why isn't John Buddenberg in the Hall of Fame yet. Not enough years in the NFL. He did a lot more than almost every other football player on the list. 3. The Homecoming game is too far away to mention in this letter, even in a "save the date" manner. Mention next season after the spring game. Save the space and do a letter next August. Send letters out when events are almost completely planned so you can say what is going on that day. 4. The Z-Fund is a scholarship program. Ask for money. Where can I send a check and who should I make it out to? Can I pay on line with a credit card? 5. What summer events will there be? Last year they did a ladies day for football and breast cancer awareness. They didn't do a golf outing. They should do BOTH this year. Both are equally important. The golf outing is a fun thing for fans to do and is a relaxing event. The female audience is the fastest growing segment of the NFL. I'm sure that is the same in college football. They should continue to do things to attract female fans. I'm glad they had an event like that last year. Not a bad letter, just a little too much information. I'm not a fan of making everything better by making it bigger and doing it once. Stay in front of donors with small, directed marketing efforts specific to concise topics. The more you contact people, the more they think of you. The more they think of you, the more likely they are to give. Nice start Ms. Gossens. Take my advice and you will do better with your solicitations.

One game does not mean much to me. Make sure what is in your pan isn't pyrite.

If he isn't sure how to do it, CK knows where he can get a good manual.

Thought he grew up in Kenya? 30% of Republicans would probably believe it.

I like the suit as well and I think people at the NCAA have to be making a little bit of a poo about it in their pants. The argument the NCAA can make is, "Well, they made the deal. Now they have to live with it." That's a terrible argument. They make the deal because they have no other good choice and are basically forced into being labor in a monopoly. Their choices were very similar to choices give to Native Americans in the 1800s: Native American Option 1: Go live on a reservation where you really don't want to live and will barely be able to make a living. Native American Option 2: Get in a line and we will gun all of you down. Option 1 doesn't sound so bad after being presented with Option 2. Early in the Frontline piece, the President of the NCAA says something that I have said all along and it goes to the heart of the future of college athletics. The President specifically states that the NCAA is a "voluntary organization". My advice to the President of the NCAA would be, don't remind the BCS level schools that they don't really need you and the schools are free to go elsewhere, including starting their own association. You need them Mr. President, they don't need you. If the big schools left the NCAA, their athletes wouldn't have to abide with the NCAA's 480 page manual. Let me repeat that....480 pages. Again...480 pages. One more time just in case you didn't hear it.....480 pages. Are they college students or lawyers? It's no wonder they are all walking NCAA violations. With that many rules, they must be breaking one at all times. It's no wonder the NCAA is the bloated bureaucracy it is...they need that amount of staff to police the petty rules they force on schools.

Did you watch the Frontline story?

Article

Good points. I think the bad football performance has an impact on the number of people who go to basketball games. When the local population, who is looking for any excuse under the sun not to attend UofA sporting events sees a horrible football team, they ignore everything else. Soccer is hard to ignore, but they sort of live outside of the norm at UofA. If the football team is good, the momentum will follow into basketball ticket sales. Speaking purely in ticket sales, if we are going to hit the football team for hurting basketball sales, we need to hit the BB program and hold them accountable as well. Winning the MAC isn't enough to sell tickets next year. We know that from history now. KD and his team need to stop losing to every major conference team they play and the likes of CSU/Dayton. Right now, the team is good. If they want to be great, they need to play well from day one until the final buzzer of the season. This nonsense of the team being unimpressive until the end of the season isn't enough if they really want to be looked at as a great program. A great program will sell tickets. What we have now won't. It's not a negative, it is just the way things are around Akron in general.

I don't sense any optimism, yet I know most really want the team to be good. I love the comment about there being no substance. I agree completely. For years, we have convinced ourselves that all we needed was a new practice facility and a new stadium. Well, we got those and now look at the program. The substance has always been missing. What is the substance? Our housing bubble has burst. We built and built and built without knowing what we were going to do after everything was built. There was no substance to our program just like there was no substance to our economy during the housing explosion. We need good players backed up by a good coach. We have had a lot of bad/average and a couple good players, but we haven't had a great player since Dwight Smith. We need substance. My perspective is a little different on Coach I. He is probably a good coach and knows his offense well at least. I don't know him so I can comment on his personality, and I could care less about his personality as long as he can win. The problem with Coach I is the type of offense he wants to put on the field isn't suitable for college football in 2011. I agree with the defense though. We are never going to score enough points to keep up with high scoring offenses and win a lot of games. Anyone watch the Rose Bowl last January? We want to be Wisconsin and the good teams in the MAC play like TCU. We have a philosophical problem and it started with our AD who thought you can field a team like Wisconsin everywhere and win. I'd rather field a team like TCU and REALLY win.

No, no, no, Cap'n, you have it all wrong ... !!!! Tressel's a LYINGweasel. Both of you are wrong. He is a lying, cheating, phony weasel.

News to me? Me too. I guess if being the knife in the back of Dan Hipsher is a better job, then so be it....someone had to put Hip and Zips fans out of their misery, why not KD? After being the knife, then he did have a better job.

Marla gets is wrong. In the MAC, spending on head coaches and assistants does not always translate into success. If it did, Miami wouldn't have been able to turn their football program around in two years with the lowest paid coach in the league. They had a hugely ambitious coach who wanted to get in and get out ASAP. He brought in great talent for the MAC, whipped it into shape and won the league. It had nothing to do with the money Miami spent. Whenever you read an article and it says that the only way to improve something is by throwing money at it, don't believe it. You can throw money at something, but if you put it in all the wrong places, you get nowhere.

Specifically, they are looking for coaches with RECENT success against high major teams, which KD doesn't do. They are looking for RECENT success in the NCAA Tournament, which KD has not produced. KD isn't going to a high major school and if he wants to go and doesn't, it's his own fault.

I may be stepping in it here, but I think we have a better shot of winning, given the current situation, than we did in 2001. If that year is right.?. A few plays go differently that year and we win the game. Score was not as bad as it appeared. I wish we had more juniors and seniors starting for the experience and size factor against tOSU's second level players. Hell, it's a crap shoot. We have no idea how we will be next year, but I remain hopeful.

Please tell me this was tongue in cheek.

But he does coach a team we are playing in the fall. The discussion ties to what players will be on the field this fall for our first game. Who is remaining on their team ties to the lies Tressel tells and is caught telling. You're right, the threads would be posted, but they would be posted on the Smack board. It isn't smack that Tressel is a cheating liar, it's a fact. Since it is a fact, it can be posted in the Football forum.

Seriously, why no responses after 24+ hours? An article on maybe the best player and noboy has anything to say... I pray the level of interest in this program hasn't fallen this far, but I can see how it could.