GP1

You're right. The decision of who and who does not make the cut is difficult. Some schools would throw a fit if they didn't make it. Real reform is not easy. Many of the debatable could easily be replaced by one of the excluded teams you mention above.Keep in mind, being included in this group would be voluntary and a team could leave whenever possible. Maybe bumping the divisions up to 12 teams and having a 14 game schedule could be an answer.I'm not sure what to do about the bowls. I love bowl season. After what I saw on TV this year, it appears as if people are losing interest in lower level bowls. Crowds seemed small. The bowls could die on the vine.After a couple of years, schools would adjust to their position and this system would settle itself out.

I have thought about posting this for a while and the crippling two inches of snow we have in the Charlotte area today has given me the time to post it.I was reading Drudge this morning and there was a story about the government forcing reforms on college football. The best way to prevent them from doing that is by reforming themselves. The Great GP1 is not of the opinion that dividing money among all schools is realistic or will accomplish much. Instead, the NCAA needs to take the following steps and structure.1. Identify the top 40 teams of the past 40 years. Joining this top 40 ranking would be voluntary and your school could option to leave it at any time after the season. Another team would be selected to take that teams place.2. Separate those teams into a league of their own consisting of four divisions.3. The season will consist of 12 games. 9 divisional games and three non-divisional games.4. Non-divisional games will take place against teams that finished in the same order from the previous year. For example, if you finish third, you play the other third place teams from the year before. The better you do, the more difficult schedule you have the following year.5. At the end of the season, a four team playoff will take place between the first place finishers of each division. A system of tie-breakers similar to the NFL will need to be established. A playoff match up system will also have to be established.6. There will be a two week layoff between the final game and the first playoff game.7. The championship game will take place on New Years Day Night.8. Expand spring practice to 30 sessions for these teams.9. Any team making the playoffs will only have 20 spring practice sessions.10. Expanded practice time for these teams will be required during the season.11. Scholarship players will be paid $1,000 per month ($12,000 per year) for their service in addition to their scholarships.12. Bonuses will be paid to player and coaches for making the playoffs. Pick a number.13. Each team will have 2 pre-season games against teams they are not scheduled to play in the regular season.14. Non-divisional games would be the first three games of the season.15. After six games, each team will have a week off.I took a look at the teams in college football and the following is what I came up with. The first 30 teams were pretty obvious. The final 10 took some thought and could be debated. My four divisions would be as follows (I tried to keep it geographically close):Division 1Boston College (debatable)PittWVUPenn StateVA TechtOSUMichiganNotre DameMichigan StateVirginia (debatable)Division 2ClemsonFL StateMiami FlFloridaNorth Carolina (debatable)GeorgiaGA Tech (debatable)TennesseeLSUAlabamaDivision 3WisconsinIllinois (debatable)PurdueIowa (debatable)Missouri (debatable)Arkansas (debatable)NebraskaOklahomaAuburnTCU (debatable)Division 4TexasTX A&MBYUUtah (debatable)CalUSCArizonaOregonWashingtonBoise St. (debatable)IMHO, those are four very strong divisions where every game would be tough and every game would matter. No more BCS teams beating up on non-BCS schools or worse yet, I-AA teams.I also thing this would be good for the remainder of college football. They could do something similar witht he remaining teams and really give those teams something to play for each week. Another division in college football wouldn't hurt it.

GP1, best piece you have ever written. I, too, know about playing for a losing college football team. Losing sucks.This evening I looked in the women's media guide and found that last year was Kest's best year as an Akron coach.She posted an 11-19, 6-10 MAC record. So, for the record, with ten games remaining the Lady Zips are on the verge of producing coach Kest's best year. Currently the Ladies are 11-9 and 5-2 in the MAC. The Ladies shouldfinish in the upper half. Quite an achievement for a once morbund program.While coach Kest may and probably should bolt at some future date, I do not believe that it is any sooner than twoyears away. Kest probably wants that MAC championship and a trip to the NCAA on her resume. She earned it.Thank you for your intelligence and open mind. Can't say the same for others.

You can suck it if you don't like it. At least my head isn't pearched one inch from my own ass or KDs ass for that matter.KD is a prick and that is what makes him a good coach. If a player doesn't do what he wants, they are on the bench. KD will use players to get back into college coaching (see St. V-M history). I don't have a problem with a guy driven to get what he wants and I think he did the right thing. Porter is driven to win. When it is time to cash in, he will be gone. One year will not matter. Decent team? A good group of young players in Dru, Wood and Travis. Name one player JK had on the team nearly as good as half of one of those guys. Spare me, JK had NOTHING coming into Akron. You like building, that's building. KD had at least the foundation poured. Porter had everything complete except painting the inside of the building. JK took over swamp-land and is turning the program around. Sorry if you disagree.

Great post. There were many things considered blatantly obscene in the mid 20th century that are no longer considered so. For example, it was once considered obscene for people of different races to dring from the same water fountain. Dancing was once considered obscene. Jazz music was once considered obscene. Rock & Roll music was considered obscene. The list could go on and on......Our country is now better because these things are no longer considered obscene. Our country is better because The Catcher in the Rye was published. God Bless America!

Very true.It is my interpretation that modern day "conservatives" actually think they are conservative..... Instead, they are big government liberals with half thought out, teetering on childish, religious views (George W. Bush or any Weekly Standard writer).

Given what I see on this board, I'm not sure how many read very often, but a great author died this week...JD Salinger.Anyone who has ever read the great book, The Catcher in the Rye, may have had periods in their youth where they related to Holden Caulfield. I have attached a NY Tiimes article on Salinger and this is a link to The Catcher in the Rye quotes. If you have never read the book, it is one of the truely great books of the 20th Century and you should read it. If you have strolled through the melancholy pages of this book, I would encourage you to take a trip back to the feelings you may have had at times in your youth and reread it. Try to remember if you have ever wanted to be the catcher in the rye.Edit: Even The Onion mourns Salinger in their own way. The last sentence written as if by Salinger himself.

He seems like a middle linebacker to me, but I bet he can be successful at both.I think he is too skinny. I am going to send the athletic department a few vats of peanut butter to his attention.thank you..watched him closely in the emu game..he had problems covering their tight end,working in space...might be a big safety in a 4-3 IF he can roam the field..The lbs were in zone against emu. The td was a flag route i think. the lbs were covering hooks and seams. I thought he did well in coverage for a frosh.wasn't just referring to one play...he stands out because he runs around but seemed to consistently have some problems with decision making when he had to stay home with a receiver on his side...he just seems more like a safety in a 4-3...let him run around and head hunt...I have a better idea. Keep him in the middle and put a D-Line in front of him that doesn't get knocked off the ball and protect him. The middle LB is the most important player in a 4-3. Wagner could go down as the all time tackle leader in the history of the school. His ability would be wasted at safety and he doesn't have the speed to play the position...he has very good speed for LB. Wagner is a perfect example of why this team should win in the near future. He is one of many talented players on the team. He has two of the best gifts, size and speed. If the new coach can just change the culture of the program, we will see winning in the very near future.I remain very bullish about the near future.

Take those videos with a grain of salt. Best video I have ever watched of a recruit coming to Akron was this guy.How does someone get rated 999 out of 307? That means he is rated behind 692 people who don't exist. I don't see the NFL in his future.

Ahhhhhhh, Derrick Tarver.... He was the most predictable player in Zips BB history. If he got the ball past half court, a shot was going up. The team was terrible so you had to be entertained by something, and his strange brand of basketball was it.

Look, I can tell when an arrow is aimed at my head. And even at my age, I'm nimble enough to duck ahead of contact. I attend more women's/girl's bb games than men's (and I attend a lot of men's games). I attended Akron women's games in the late '70s and early '80s, when there were perhaps two dozen fans in Memorial Hall. I put up with all the years of sad, losing seasons. I tried to provide excuses to outside WBB fans when 23-yo Angel Donley had to take over as coach when her boss quit over the holidays -- right when the team had some of its best young players ever. The coach who followed Angel took the ladies to their one and only post-season tournament, where they played even with MSU for 35+ minutes. I met that team at the airport and gave them leis on their arrival in Hawai'i in 2000. I have a long-term emotional commitment to the welfare of the teams and players -- that hasn't changed with the passing of numerous 20-loss seasons -- and won't change when they manage to win 20, something that I believe has yet to be achieved, but could be only a year or two away.Jody Kest arrived with lower expectations than even most Akron coaches, and she immediately recruited a band of HS all-stars including a state POY in Sarah T. Given the information that I and others had as an average fan at the time, it looked as if coach Kest had gone overboard in her disciplinary actions, and lost not only the players whom she dismissed -- for reasons that remain unreported, but some, including academic stars, who decided they'd rather play in D-2 (or in one case, the SEC) than be what seemed like a victim of the coach's rath. Wins and losses don't play into the question of whether I support the team, it would take a heck of a lot for me to give up on the ladies. Wins and losses don't play into my evaluation of the coach's relationship with the team either. I'm more than willing to congratulate coach Kest for beginning the program's turn-around. I expect the victories to continue, and that she can get a BCS-level job in a year or two. Notice she brought in her newest assistant from Virginia, who is being groomed as her successor. But, in my mind, the jury is still out on whether Jody is just a winning coach, or whether she is a 'good' coach. I would rather my daughter play for a good coach, who always has the players best interests in mind, than for a winning coach, who only uses young athletes for their own career advancement. There are a lot of those coaches around, but fortunately, Akron has managed to have coaches like Keith and Caleb who are capable of winning while earning the respect of all their players and building them into better citizens. I hope its proven that Jody Kest is a good coach, but that proof won't come on any basketball court. Go get 'em Zips. I love you Z.I.P., but this post is pure 1950s nonsense. Caleb will be gone soon enough. Dambrot wants to be at Akron, but as soon as he can win enough games to make people look past his "issue" at CMU, he will cash in. Let's not be naive. Both of these guys are complete pricks to their players and that is what makes them good coaches. Winning is absolutely in the forefront of everything they do. JK is possible the best coach at Akron.....no, she is the best coach at Akron. Porter took over a winning program (Quite frankly, I watched the final four and I'm not certain how coaching players to bounce the ball off of their heads for 2.5 hours makes a great coach, but maybe I don't know enough about the particulars of soccer). KD took over a decent team with some talent. JK took over a pile of crap.You say a good coach always has the players best interests in mind. Take it from someone who played for our losing football program, winning is in the best interest of the players. It is absolute misery losing game after game and I don't see how that misery is in the best interest of the players. Those young ladies playing basketball are at Akron to win games...period. If they go to class and graduate with straight Cs, even better. I had a friend in college who always said, "C's get degrees". Today that guy is sitting on a pile of cash. All they are asked to do is graduate and play basketball. It was that way in the 1990s...it was that way in the 1980s.....it was that way in the 1970s....it was that way in the 1960s....it was that way in even the great 1950s.If the mindset is it is about the competition and not the winning, that's nonsense as well. If sports are to prepare you for life, shouldn't an employer hire an employee that won and showed positive results in lieu of losers who show no results? Driving a team to win and then winning creats an attitude in a player that teaches them how to produce results and not process. Holding hands and singing "We Are The World" is process, not results. In closing, it's OK to confess that JK is a good coach and doing a great job with the WBB program.

It's Ken+, if your not passionate about losing to Ken+, how in the heck....never mind.Sometimes it's the way a team can lose that upsets a fan. We went from having a chance of winning, to getting embarrassed.I just got back from Arizona and I wanted to see the thoughts about the drubbing we took Saturday. I see the usual growers and apologists mixed in with the usual upset fan after a game, but as he often does, DrZ sums it up in a short sentence.By now we should all understand that divisional road games are difficult to win. Losing one should not be a surprise against a good team. Getting your ass kicked is another story. I left my hotel to get something to eat and the score was 35-35 at half....I was feeling good. Then I saw the beat down we were taking and I could not believe it. That was most upsetting.One thing I notice on the board though is there is not much outrage at the loss. Getting your ass kicked by Ken+ is something to be extremely upset about. I don't think that is a good thing because it could show people are starting to tune the team out. The Zips need to do someting to get people really excited about the program. Joe Akron loves when the Zips lose like they did because it gives him another reason not to attend a game.

This schedule isn't that bad. ORU has made the NCAA Tournament several times. Wyoming is in and out of being good, but they can be good. CSU will be a great game. Temple is a nice pick up. Miami is a good team. There are nine games listed above. Get 5 more and round out the schedule with one cupcake, two more like Niagra and two ATM games....the Athletic Department could use the money.

I don't disagree.The only thing he deserves is an open mind. There is no guarantee anyone will be successful at any job. It's the MAC and anything can happen. Turner Gill won the MAC...will that make him a winner at Kansas? We'll see, but probably not. People on this board wanted winning lower level candidates...will that make them a winner in the MAC? Maybe, but the nature of coaching is getting fired so there is a good chance most will fail.In reality, this guy is taking a risk at Akron and we would be taking a huge risk with anyone we hired because we don't pay that well.This team needs on field coaching badly. They have the talent to be good and they need to get everyone rowing in the same direction. His challenge isn't recruiting, it is teaching young men how to play football and execute what he wants done.I don't like the way the AD went about hiring a buddy, but I don't hold that against his buddy. We have a lazy AD and not necessarily a bad coach. In fact, we really don't know what kind of coach we have yet. I hope the new coach works his ass off and can really get a group of underachievers to live up to their potential and win some games.I'm going to Arizona tomorrow. You guys behave yourselves while I'm gone and keep in mind it isn't the 1950s anymore.

Since everyone associated with Can't State is a bunch of boobs, shouldn't the title of this thread be, "Small Ride Down Mammary Lane"?

Like I said, ESPN protects their own. An ESPN insider blasts his own network for Alamo Bowl coverage of this issue.

If the contract has been broken, how come we are not bringing a case against CSU for damages? We could get some money out of it.I think CK is right. This has gone on long enough. In a big boys and girls world, companies break contracts all the time and then re-enter into a business relationship at some point down the road. We need to get back to playing CSU. They are entertaining games.

These positions will be fine. What we will need are WRs that can get open and catch the ball down field. Does anyone know who that will be?I'd like to see the TE in the offense more. For example, they need to block well if the Zips can get the ball down by the endzone.the same concern about rb was posed before last year..the same response was given by a number of folks...it wasn't fine last year...until we see who these guys put on the field we won't know if it will be fine..The lack of ability had nothing to do with the players last year and everything to do with a coach who couldn't get everyone moving in the right direction. If the new coaching staff can do any on field coaching at all, the talent is there at RB.Again, nobody has answered the question. Who are the big play WRs going to be next year? We have a QB with a cannon for an arm and we need to find a way to use it to throw the ball down field and not hand off the majority of the time.MAC schools are horrible at playing from behind. The Zips need to focus on big plays early in games that get leads and then if they want to try to run out the clock in the fourth quarter with seven or less minutes to go, I have no problem with that.Who are the big play WRs going to be?

I really like some of these ideas about how to get these teams to play one another. In Boston, they have what I think is called the Bean Pot for college hockey. It is a weekend tournament between BU, BC, Harvard and either UMASS or Northeastern....can't remember.We should have a weekend tournament at the Q between UofA vs YSU, Can't State vs CSU. The winners play for a trophy and the losers play a 3rd/4th place game. It might mean UofA playing Can't four times in a year, but so what? The rivalry is great and it could make it even better. They could call it The Mayors Cup...the winning city gets to keep the trophy in their city hall until they lose it.

The only thing Temple has going for it over ECU is it's proximity to Atlantic City and casinos. ECU gets 55,000 per game. Typically, that includes 50% beach bums and 50% rural people. If he has a good season at ECU, he is a God. If he has a good season at Temple, he is just another team in Philadelphia.The one thing about any team's trajectory in the MAC is most schools don't put too much rocket fuel in their rocket. You can easily go from good team to bum quickly. Look at Buffalo. Look at the Zips 2006. Even if ECU slides a little, they can still make a bowl.

I agree. One leads to the other. The net is as pathetic as the choices and variety.It's not like UofA has unattractive colors or something. Blue and gold is a good color combination. I can't ever remember really good clothes to purchase. People like quality. Make the quality good and people will pay for it. Make clothes people want to be seen wearing in public....and it has to be more than one item. Everyone in Akron can't be walking around with the same shirt on. UofA can do much better with what they are selling.Just like in football. The talent is there (blue and gold colors) and someone needs to do something with the talent. For crying out loud, Clemson's colors are purple and orange...their merchandising looks great with two of the worst color combinations.

Don't tell me. Charlie Coles is coaching their women too?!?! If he is, I am sure he is uncomfortable with the offensive explosion that took place.

Best way to get your answer. Let us know.CK is a good source of information. I want to know what he knows because his response indicates he knows something. I would like the members of the Akron media to get off of their collective asses and ask the question then report it. If there was nothing there, they should publish it.

Obviously, there was nothing of substance. I'm very disappointed in my University.So what was found?

Has anyone asked the new AD what happened in the great recruiting scandal that helped to cripple the program early in the season? What were the findings of their investigation?