GP1

I agree. Watching Ball State made me want to vomit. Watching Buffalo made me want to projectile vomit. I can't believe the Zips lost to the balls. They will not go winless this season.

At both Clemson and Wake Forest, you can leave to go to your tailgate at halftime and re-enter for free after half.

I don't blame you. Being a season ticket holder is not rewarded. Especially if you are a reserved ticket holder. They treat season ticket holders like crap when they sell reserved tickets for less than face value on the day of the game. It is a stupid, stupid, stupid idea. Even worse, it is lazy to do so.

I can't blame you. One can only expect so much out of their fans.

If they allow people to go to games for free, they my as well close up the stadium and end the program. Free means there is zero value in watching the Zips play. As bad as they are, there is still a value to watching them. Supply and demand only works if there is a real demand and not just people buying tickets out of the goodness of their hearts. Right now, there is such little demand for the Zips that it my as well be zero. The should keep prices where they are and put a team on the field worthy of those prices.

Do 80% of your sales come from 20% of your doctors?

Who is the consumer? Person at home? Hospital? Nursing home? Doctors office? All of the above?

Losing control of a team that has won six straight games? Hmmm. Read the reports on this incident and you will learn that Courtside is a pizza place that serves beer. Boo was inside when the bouncer started to beat up his brother (not an OU student) outside. Boo went outside to pull the bouncer off his brother and was sucker punched by a bouncer who came from across the street. Hardly a case of an "out of control" team. BTW, take a look at the comparative graduation rates of Solich and Akron's previous regime and you will see that Frankie is doing just fine. He's a great coach. It was a joke. Coaches don't lose control of teams, they lose games.

I think you did just give some free advice. Show appreciation towards your fans by not allowing other to purchase tickets for less than what the die hards purchased theirs for. Second, become a marketing wizard like Waddell at Cincy by winning games. It isn't difficult. Put a winning product on the field and fans come. Put crap on the field and fans stay home. There is a reason marketing is the easiest business major....it isn't that hard. I have a marketing idea for the Zips and if fits the current state of the program. Everyone attending the next two home games will receive a free blue and gold Zips bucket autographed by TW. Fans can use the bucket to throw up in while watching the Zips play. There...I'm done giving out marketing ideas as well.

Does anyone thing Solich is losing control of his team?

I love this topic. Let me be clear. I never said they could never raise their prices when they turn things around. It is hard to raise prices. It is easy to lower prices. The biggest problem the Zips have is they rely greatly on season ticket sales. Those tickets are where the "money" is because they involve sales for the entire season whether or not the tickets are used, and they usually involve some sort of donation to the Z-Fund. How do you expect these people to buy full price season tickets after the following things have happened: 1. The team lost every game. 2. They can wait for prices to drop and then go. The Zips don't sell out games and every seat is a good seat so they can buy a GA seat and have a pretty good seat to watch a game. The Zips are past the point where there is a "demand" for tickets. Most people know when they go to buy season tickets next year they are doing it out of the goodness of their hearts. Since there is no demand for tickets, why lower price. I will use an example I have used in the past. Before working for myself, I worked for a large building products manufacturer (try hard to figure it out). A way to create demand in your product was to decrease price (closing plants was a way to increase price by reducing supply but that was not needed during the boom years). It was called "emptying the plant". During the boom years, the plant was going to make 1.3 million square feet of drywall a day. Drywall must be stored in the factory for 24 hours before shipment. Every square foot of that drywall must move to make room for the next day's production. In order to empty the plant if we were already not sold out, the sales manager (that was me) had to call up the best customers and talk them into taking the drywall. The best customers took it as a favor at the price the Great GP1 wanted. You had to give a break to the lesser customers and risk reducing the overall price for the product in the market-place. During the boom years, it didn't matter if you gave a deal to someone. The factories were running at > 87% capacity, which meant every time you farted you could raise your price because the demand was outpacing the capacity. We received junk drywall from China for this reason. Fast forward to the recession. Multiplication is used to figure capacity and supply and demand. As we all know from grade school math, anything multiplied by zero is zero. Building slows to a halt in the US during the recession. Drywall manufacturers lower prices to try to create demand......nobody buys. They lower prices again....nobody buys. They lower prices again to below cost....nobody buys. Essentially, there was almost zero demand for the product and if they were giving it away, nobody was going to take it into stock. In the middle of the recession, drywall prices went up in order to at least pay for the cost of production. It was unheard of, but everyone should have known that if the demand was zero, then the supply and demand curve would not work because everything becomes zero because that is how math works. Now let's talk about the Zips. The reason they shouldn't lower prices is because there is no demand for the tickets other than a few good hearted people willing to purchase them because the love the school. Nobody has answered my question as to how many $5 tickes were sold. My guess is an extremely small amout. It isn't going to do anything other than set a low expectation for low prices and piss of the good customers. The Zips should keep their prices where they are.

Why would he take the pay cut? Last I checked, $350k is more than $0. But if we really wanted to be actually competitive in attracting a coach compared to better than the bottom half of the MAC and Sunbelt, we would need to pay a new head coach $500k at the bare minimum. Doesn't Ryan still work for the Browns?

That is one way. The best thing he can do to survive is just sit back and wait. Republicans have a way of going too far with their power and making themselves look stupid in the process. Instead of focusing on jobs, Republicans will make the same mistake Democrats made and focus on things that don't really matter or make them seem out of touch. Like it or not, the health care bill can not be overturned with the existing composition of the Congress, but Republicans will make it their first priority in January. For example, when Clinton was in office and the whole intern problem came up, Republicans decided to impeach Clinton. Had they just sat back and let things go, Clinton would have looked like such a laughing stock he may have had to resign. Instead, they made a victim out of Clinton. Within the next 12 months, there will be Congressional hearings on things like whether or not Obama was born in the US. Republicans won't be able to keep from making fools of themselves. Anyone know the old The Who song where the line says, "Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss." Get ready because here is comes.

Regardless of what some of us want, there will be no coaching change next year. I'd take any of the three in a second. All three of those guys won at places nobody said anyone could win. We need a guy like that here.

Why would he take the pay cut?

BZ just zeroed in on what ultimately makes a back-up QB, a starter and a great player. Every QB goes through bad spurts as teams adjust to their play. The key is to break through the obstacles put in front of you and then break through the next and then the next and then the next and so on. There isn't a QB in the NFL who can't string together a good game or two or three. Doing it week in and week oiut is the question.

I generally agree with your review DrZ. Adversity makes you stronger if you prevail against the adversity. Right now, the players are just learning a great Zips tradition, which is finding ever more creative ways of losing. We are extremely good at finding unusual ways to lose. We are the Charlie Browniest of all D-1A schools. We know it wasn't working and we understand we are behind the 8-ball. We also understand we have been in a constant "building process" for 20+ years and want winning sooner rather than later. I personally don't want to be reading the "building process" crap three years from now. A team can turn things around quickly in the mac. We need a fast "building process" with results at the end of the process. Results as in winning more than losing. Fans may not know exactly how a team got better, but they know crap when they see it. When we no longer see crap, we will know the team is getting better. If they do lose 12, they will have trouble recruiting and they will just have to work harder at it. They will just need to work harder at selling the program.

On the offensive side, I would agree...except for TE & FB. We need some talented receivers and some consistent line play more than anything on that side of the ball. Open competition isn't just to find new people. It can also be a method of making certain who you have starting is really the person you want. Sort of like proving a theory. A theory is proven when all other possibilities are proven false. Prove that all possible TEs and FBs besides the two starting are not as good and you prove that you have the best people at the position. It will only make the team better by having ALL members of the team fighting for a starting position. Even though these two positions are not that important to the success of a football team, they should be challenged to be better players.

Attached is his career record. All the guy does is win in a brutally difficult conference. He probably isn't a great coach under my standards, but he is one Hell of a good coach. His game time decisions are absolutely horrible and many LSU fans would love to see him gone. So the answer to the question is yes, you can win with superior talent and inferior coach. I'd like to compare the average SAT score of LSU fans to his and see who is smarter. Fan opinions are not a good way to judge the quality of a coach. Fans never know as much about their sport as they think they do.

Attached is his career record. All the guy does is win in a brutally difficult conference. He probably isn't a great coach under my standards, but he is one Hell of a good coach.

I think Brown is a good example of a good coach,the head guy at UT doesn't have to be 'great' whatever that is, who can attract consistently good physical talent because he is at UT. He can get really good players for key positions almost every year. Even in the Big 12 teams like UT and Oklahoma can win most games because of better physical talent. There will be a couple of games when the other team matches you physically. Whats the difference in those games? Coaching? Breaks? etc. How can you tell? How has Boise State managed to knock off some of the big boys over the past few years. They appear not to have as much physical talent at every position as some of the teams they have beaten. If coaches don't prepare their teams and/or adjust to what they have their teams lose. UT does make good coaches great. This season is the exception and not the rule. There have been very, very, very few great college football coaches. Paterno is the last living "great" football coach. He wins at PSU. He made the PSU football program and to some extent the university what it is today. He has changed with time and continues to field consistent winners. The other night, Lou Holtz said something funny, "Penn State is 15 minutes from Harrisburg by telephone." Paterno got good players to go to PSU and then he won. Recruiting to PSU can't be easy. Bear Bryant was a great college football coach. Won and changed an entire conference by allowing USC, with Sam Cunningham, to come to Alabama and kick the crap out of his team. The SEC is a great conference today because of that game. The south is a better place because of what Bear Bryant did. The culture of college athletics does not allow for someone to stay at a school long enough to be looked at as great. Most coaches are opportunists as they jump from school to school, cashing in along the way. Brian Kelly is a good example of this type of coach. Time is going to catch up with Kelly at ND in the next 3 years when he is unable to get that program to where the alumni think it should be. He'll be just another good coach who went to ND over the past 15 years and got fired because time has passed that program by. Paterno and Bryant had down seasons and bad losses. I wonder how many idiotic fans were saying things like, "The Bear has lost this team and should be fired." What they were able to do is stay at their school long enough to get things turned around after what was considered a bad season. If guys like Mack Brown and Urban Meyer stick around their schools and turn them around, they should be looked at as great. Congratulations to Coach Paterno for his 400th win. Most head coaches never coach 400 games let alone have 400 wins. If Paterno retires after this season, a real American treasure will be lost.

Unless the coach is making absolutely horrible decisions, the players are to blame. If I was Brown at Texas, I would treat this off season like a new coach does. Fiind out who wants to be there. Open up every position for competition. That team is asleep and they need to be awakened. The talent is there, just not the performance. A program like Texas needs this every once in a while. They play in an extremely difficult conference and sometimes some humiliation can go a long way to regenerate a team. Getting back to the Zips. This off season has to have every position opened up for competition.

That is correct. You don't have to be great. You can be good (there is a difference between good and great), recruit great players and create the illusion of greatness. Once the great players go away, you go back to just being good. Jim Grobe is a good coach fielding absolutely horrible talent. He is 2-7 right now. The talent is the difference.

When Kelly gets a QB like Dan L and Pike at ND, he will win 8-9 games. The secret to coaching is catching lightning in a bottle then moving up the pay scale. Kelly will do that at ND for a couple of years and then fall back down to 6-7 wins a get fired like all the rest. He can then retire on a giant buy out. Good players made Brian Kelly and all other coaches. Remember two years ago everyone talked about Jim Grobe being the best coach in America? This season, his Wake team is sitting at two wins against the mighty Blue Hose of Presby and Duke. Hear anyone saying he is the best coach in America? He was a great coach when he had the Seahawks Aaron Curry, the Lions Alphonso Smith, the Panthers Kenny Moore and Riley "Rhymes with Winner" Skinner all on the same team. Those guys leave and he is back to the guy who coached at OU. How many people know Jim Grobe has a sub .500 caree record as a head coach? EDIT: Jim Grobe has a career 94-90-1 record. I misread something on the internet. Sorry for the mistake. There are few great coaches. Kelly and Grobe are not great, but they are great when they are like all coaches who get surrounded by great players. Take away the great players and they are no longer great. Go figure. Anyhow, back to the Zips...... I'm going to go work out.

Please tell me this didn't actually happen....