GP1

Maybe the people shooting the guns should do a better job of doing what the coach tells them to do.

Rumor has it he even got a relative out of legal trouble in Mississippi.

IMNHO, what Akron lacks, and has lacked for as long as I can remember, is a guy you can bring off the bench and he is automatic offense. Maybe there were some, but I just can't remember. When you put a guy like this in the game, you have to accept he is going to play defense poorly so you have to figure out a way to keep him from being too big of a liability on defense. KD won't put up with a guy who plays defense poorly so he doesn't have guys like this on his team. I think a guy like this is needed for the times when everyone else is having difficulty putting the ball in the basket, because you have to keep pace with the point pace of good teams until you figure out what adjustments you want to make.

I wonder if Faust said, "By golly, anyone who coached at Notre Dame is a good coach as far as I'm concerned."

You just described the majority of coaching hires. He knows the same as everyone else. If he can get good players, he will win.....if not, then we all know what happens.

I think there was more to his getting hired at Pitt than his race. Pitt has had off the field problems and the school wants them fixed. He had problems like that at Miami and fixed them. Secondly, I don't think there were many people interested in the job at Pitt. It is a third place school in a BCS conference in name only. The program is not impressive and has rarely lived up to expectations regardless of the coach. Haywood won't live up to expectations and will be out sooner than later. Thirdly, Haywood won when it mattered...in the league championship game. Pitt has shown an ability in recent years to poop their pants late in the season with the conference championship on the line. In the glory days of Pitt football (Majors and Sherrill) Pitt had, let's just say, laxed standards for a player ever seeing the inside of a classroom. Pitt won't put up with that any longer. Haywood won at a school with good standards and that is probably attractive to Pitt. Sure, Haywood backed into the championship game by Can't beating OU, but he got there and won. JD did the same thing (OK, neither backed into anything). The big difference between the two is JD only won six regular season games. Haywood won eight regular season games, which is a good bit for a MAC school.

My hand isn't in the air, but a lot of Miami fans had the same opinion of Haywood last year at this time. Quick turnarounds happen all the time in the MAC with coaches nobody has heard of. Why not us?

I think you are being a little too harsh. Minnesota is a very good team with a very good coach. The Zips really hung in with them just days after getting waxed by an A-10 team. We have big guys, just not as big or as many as they have. That's the real difference between a MAC school and a Top 20 school. For every one good big guy we get, they get three. It's just a numbers game. Over a 40 minute game, the numbers catch up with you. The Zips have good enough big guys to win the MAC and then see what happens in the NCAA. I feel good about their chances after watching the game last night. Let's just hope MN's check doesn't bounce.

So let me get this straight. Since Chad Johnson wanted to play soccer, all American soccer players are as good of athletes as Chad Johnson. Kansas City (over half of their players are not from the United States) beats Manchester United in a "friendly contest". I'm sure this game was more like a preseason baseball game than a real game. If being able to run a long way makes one in great shape and better shape than people who play other sports, then marathon runners must be the greatest athletes in the world and not NBA players? Sorry bobbyake, your facts are weak at best and prove little. Here is how I see it. Chad Johnson is a world class athlete and probably ran circles around the little kids on the pitch (what a stupid name). At some point there was no challenge to it so he challenged himself with better athletes. Those athletes were playing football and not soccer. See preseason game analogy for KC vs ManU. Running and bouncing a ball off of your head while collapsing in pain after nobody touches you doesn't make one a great athlete. In Europe, great athletes are playing soccer...In the US, great athletes like Chad Johnson are playing football, basketball and some play baseball.

There are a lot of reasons why soccer is more popular in Europe than the US. The culture is different, but I think a big reason why it is so popular in Europe is when you go see a Europen soccer match, you are watching the best athletes in those countries. Let's be honest. In the US, you play soccer if you can't play football, basketball or baseball. In Europe, you play basketball and whatever other sports they play because you could not play soccer. The next time you get a chance to watch the US play a team from Europe, look at the size difference between the US and European players. The European players are much larger than the US players because the best athletes play soccer in Europe. They are bigger, faster and stronger than the US players, because our big, fast and strong players are playing football, basketball and baseball. I think it is really that simple. Good athletes can make a boring sport like soccer exciting and that is what you get in Europe. The rule they should get rid of in soccer is bouncing the ball off of their heads. I had a friend who played soccer in college and he was against heading the ball because he said it didn't allow for "control of the ball" and heading outcomes were too random. Makes sense to me.

The Big Ten is already a second tier conference like the Big East and ACC. No reason to join them, they are already one of them.

The Big Ten is obsessed with the past and this is an example of it. In terms of football, the best days are behind it and increasingly moving into the distance. This type of stunt strokes the egos of the blue hairs that remember those days. Basically, the names of the divisions embody how the rest of the country views the Big Ten. The fans of the Big Ten see it as a great conference with great tradition (best days in the past). The rest of the country sees it as a joke. What I'm trying to say is the names they selected for the divisions are actually perfect.

There was also one on Saturday afternoon on ABC Charlotte that was about Marcus DuPree (sp?). Great segment. Those films are really well done. The best point I heard about it was E. Dickerson talking about why the NCAA selected SMU and why nobody else was selected for the Death Penalty. SMU had the nerve to beat Texas and that is when the NCAA gets upset because part of the good old boys club was beaten. The investigation of SMU started the next day. The NCAA was going to test the Death Penalty out on a small school to see how it worked. Had SMU bounced back in 4-5 years, more schools would have gotten it. Since it took them 25 years, the NCAA is not going to destroy another program or even close to destroying one in the good old boys club. I've never understood why after all of these years, a good lawyer didn't sue the NCAA for damages against SMU. The NCAA clearly acted in a discriminatory manner and SMU was harmed by their actions. I think there is a case there and it should have been filed years ago. The NCAA really can't do anything at this point to SMU so why not. The best thing about these 30 for 30 shows when they do one on college athletics is shine light on how corrupt the NCAA and how dirty college athletics have always been. People created a fantasy for themselves years ago that big time college football and basketball was all about the "student athlete". Sort of the 1950s mentality I always make fun of. That's all a bunch of crap and it always has been. The NCAA and big time sports are about money. If a sports fan can just accept that, it makes watching college sports easier.

Some of us already knew, but you couldn't mention it without being shouted down on the board. He couldn't hide forever.

Great job Zips!!!!!!

Coach I's bio Those of you who think Coach I has only served as a recruiter are grossly misinformed. The guy has experience as a position coach.

This is probably a good fit for JD if it is true. He is a west coast offense guy going back to his college days. Colorado is his home state. Some of you think JD was a terrible coach. He may not have worked out as our head coach, but before that he was a very good coach at Pitt and turned a couple of WRs into Pro Bowl receivers. In two years, he turned Hixon into a professional WR. The guy knows football and especially his style of football. I wish him well.

GO ZIPS!!!!!

First of all, welcome. The one thing I would really like to see recruits say is, "I am coming to Akron for two reasons. First, I want to be part of a great turnaround. Second, I believe I can start right away and contribute to the winning." I want to see players talk about winning and not facilities or playing right away. Those are important, but winning is the most important of all.

I'm with you. Any predictions on the combined number of times players will lay on the ground writhing in pain after not being touched by a member of the other team? About 7-10 as usual for a soccer match. But this isn't just any soccer match....it's the final four.....a shot at the national championship game....a lot is on the line. Care to redo your prediction?

I'm with you. Any predictions on the combined number of times players will lay on the ground writhing in pain after not being touched by a member of the other team?

IMNHO, this is a real good home schedule next year on both an entertaining/interesting level and importance of winning the MAC East (If Miami can do it, we can do it) level. Some think getting our butts kicked by BCS teams is an indication of where the program is...maybe. I believe a better indication is how we do against other non-BCS D-1A teams. Playing FIU at home will allow us to better measure our program in the world of reality. Please tell me that you are joking. Nobody cares about FIU or VMI. That is a joke of a home non conference schedule. A gauge of our program needs to be against the Indiana's of the world. We already play garbage in the MAC. Measures against other garbage teams does nothing to get fans interested. The VMI game should be a win and we should guarantee one win a year against I-AA teams. FIU is a game we can win. If we don't, it tells us we are not as good as a whatever league they are in team. It is a bad sign if we get run by these guys....far worse than getting destroyed by a Big Ten team when half of the player on their team really aren't interested. We are playing an Indiana next year in Cincy. Do you really think a BCS team is going to come to The Big Dialer when we draw about 5,000? I don't want guaranteed wins, but I do want to see how the Zips compete against a like-level school with a realistic shot at winning. Losing against BCS level teams time and again does nothing to get fans interested either.

If we were a BCS level school that went to the Sugar Bowl the year before and we played in the Big Dialer is it is now, I'd be pissed if we ONLY sold 80% of the seats. That stadium should have been 100% sold out for the year.

If there is a playoff, the bowls will come to an end within 10 years of the playoff system starting. There will be no interest in them. Neutral site games are not realistic for a football playoff system because most of the alumni of any school can't afford to travel to more than one bowl game a year, let along 2-4 playoff games. The stadiums would have a lot of empty seats as it is hard to find 85,000 fans in any city willing to go watch a game they have no interest in. Speaking of neutral site games, I see the PAC 10 is going to play their championship game at one of the schools in the championship. I think this is a great idea and something the MAC should look at doing again. Nothing says "small time" like the thousands and thousands of empty seats in Detroit. Play at a smaller stadium and the empty seats won't look so bad. If the PAC 10 can do it, the MAC can do it.In the above brackets, there are only three games there that would be worth the time watching. The first round wouldn't be much different than the first round of the NCAA basketball tournament. I agree, the game last weekend was fairly entertaining. If they had played before 20K at a 30K seat stadium that would have made it even better. I don't know if it would have made for a better game, but I do know it wouldn't have looked like a high school championship game being played at Ford Field.

IMNHO, this is a real good home schedule next year on both an entertaining/interesting level and importance of winning the MAC East (If Miami can do it, we can do it) level. Some think getting our butts kicked by BCS teams is an indication of where the program is...maybe. I believe a better indication is how we do against other non-BCS D-1A teams. Playing FIU at home will allow us to better measure our program in the world of reality.