GP1

No thanks on Scott Browning. His team lost in the layoffs 84-63 to West Liberty. If we thought the 3-3-5 was bad, God only knows what this guy would bring. He would be Lee Owens on steroids.I really don't know about the other guy.

I was hoping to get a few more takers.I'm seeing the MAC more and more as "Joe sports fan" since I've moved from Ohio. I'm still a fan of the league, but getting away from it has actually made my opinion of it change over the past three football seasons.Here is what I see. If a sentence ends with ...., that means "compared to other D-1A leagues":1. Players drop too many easily catchable passes...2. Players are too slow...3. Players are too small...4. Most stadiums are not even close to 20% capacity and ESPN has trouble hiding that fact.5. Referees have long huddles to decide what to do after routine calls.6. Players are not just slow, they are not quick...7. We don't see enough good passers.I'll go through this again. What does the MAC need to do?1. Stop the bleeding.2. Get off of ESPN week night games unless it is a Thursday ESPN game. The league is a mess right now and advertising the mess to the remainder of the country is not helping.3. Improve the product on the field. Better coaches would help. How are they going to pay for them if nobody is paying to go to Tuesday night games? How are they going to pay for the coaches if the product is so bad nobody would walk across the street to watch a game?4. Get better players? This is always the answer. How do you get better players if a recruit is watching from home and sees an empty stadium? How do you get better players if they want their parents to come to games and their parents can't come to a few home games because they are on a work night and they can't take the time off of work? How are we going to get better players if we don't have an academic support system to keep at risk players in school and on track to graduation?5. Get better coaches? Money is a good way to attract a good coach. Where is the money going to come from? Empty stadiums?6. Win more. Stop scheduling three guaranteed losses a year for each team and maybe people in their communities might get a little excited about going to games.7. As soon as they can, Temple is going to leave the MAC. Then what? The answer is to force the issue with Temple by threatening to drop down to I-AA. Then the MAC needs to become a I-AA conference. Are we better off as the worst D-1A conference or the best I-AA conference? Even if we get better, then what, we'll be just as good as C-USA?....that's still lame. Get as good as the ACC?.....we don't have the facilities/money to compete in the ACC...we would have the smallest stadium in the ACC if we entered the league. Don't get me wrong, I go to at least seven ACC games a year and it isn't that great of a conference, but I get to see some good athletes catch passes, run fast, make good tackles, execute game plans, make extra points, make long field goals, see some nationally known programs like FSU, Maryland, Miami, Stanford, Elon (OK, not really), NC State, Baylor, Clemson and sit in a full stadium. These scholols will always have more money than a MAC school. An 85,000 seat stadium is going to generate more money than a 27,000 seat stadium.8. Make the darn league smaller. Temple wil be gone and get rid of two more. Eleven games at I-AA is enough and if you make the playoffs, you get more games. There is actually a real reward for winning the conference if a national championship could be in the future. What is the reward for winning the MAC right now?.....Getting your ass kicked in a horrible bowl game.At the end of the day, the MAC has been around since the 1940s and this is what they have built? The league is terrible and we are exactly where we belong. Wishing and saying it is going to be good isn't going to make it good. Throwing money at the problem isn't going to make it good because everyone else will be able to generate more money. It wasn't until the last three years that I have really solidified my views on this issue. Getting away from the MAC and seeing how even a second tier conference like the ACC functions has been healthy for me and my views of the MAC. I think if the MAC would do what I want, it would be a GREAT conference. I know all of this looks really negative, but the athletic department has to function in the world of reality. The reality is the league is horrible and the entertainment value is poor. It is straight Dollar General.

Why does it suck? Specifically, what does a fan actually see when they watch a game?I'm not trying to be silly or anything like that. It's important to get these issues out in the open for fans so they understand where the league is and why it is the way it is and why it really needs to start doing things differently.No right or wrong answers.I said it in my post - MAC teams will not spend what it takes to be successful in D1-A football. If you want to be like Temple and turn around decades of losing - spend the f*ucking money. If you want to lose, if you want a "great" season to be 7-5, then keep your coaching salaries in the bottom 10% of D1-A football. You get what you pay for.That is the right answer. Any other answers are wrong.I don't disagree. What does a MAC game look like though? Describe what you see, specifically.....It has to be worse in person because TV can show only what they want to show. Some they just can't hide though.

Why does it suck? Specifically, what does a fan actually see when they watch a game?I'm not trying to be silly or anything like that. It's important to get these issues out in the open for fans so they understand where the league is and why it is the way it is and why it really needs to start doing things differently.No right or wrong answers.

Is the MAC doing itself a disservice by entering in agreements (whoring itself out) with ESPN?Don't be scared guys. The first step in solving a problem is realizing there is a problem.

THERE IS NO RIGHT OR WRONG TO THIS TOPIC?The MAC was on TV every night last week. Think of the games in two ways:1. A MAC fan.2. Joe sports fan across America with no real interest in the MAC.Describe what you saw.

After watching the game on Friday, it is clear to me that the team continues to play hard even though they are not put in the best position to win and they do some really stupid things at times. In a season when everything goes wrong, people look for reasons why they happened. That's when bad sports cliches come out. Bad sports cliches include but are not limited to:"The coach has lost the team.""The players aren't listening to the coach.""They are playing not to get hurt.""We never make halftime adjustments."Observation is not enough to determine if any of these things happen because there are psychological components to them and we don't know what is in the heads of the kids. We also don't know what is talked about at halftime.What we can observe is effort. I did not see a lack of physical effort Friday. I did see a group of very talented kids giving good effort even though they were not put in the best position to win by their coaches. I do see kids giving 100% during a play and then doing something really stupid at the end of the play. I do see coaches hopelessly trying to make tactical changes in a strategy that is set up for failure and leads to failure (this is why JD should be fired). The Zips badly need a cultural change.

I find it hard to believe that TCU will not get a BCS bid. That's a really good team.

Nice line. I wish I had thought of it.

The real heartbreak is there are only two teams on that list the Zips could not beat in Temple and CMU. From scheduling to coaching, this team is so mismanaged.......

Thanks.I hope TBA turns into I-AA.Keep Syracuse.Drop either KY or IN (whichever pays less) and pick up another I-AA team. Actually, try to drop both and pick up a non-BCS D-1A team. We need to get out of playing 3 BCS level teams in a year. There is no reason to guarantee losing three games. The cycle of losing needs to stop and it needs to start with scheduling. Let's try to avoid three road games in a row next year as well.It's time to start winning. Let's put ourselves in a position to win and turn losers into winners.

Does anyone know who we play next year OOC?

Another thing about halftime adjustments. The most important drive of the second half is the first drive. a = Zips second half scoringb = Opponents (MAC only) second half scoring vs UofAx = Zips second half first drive scoringy = Opponents (MAC only) second half first drive scoring vs UofAIf x < y, I will buy the Zips make poor halftime adjustments.If a < b, I will buy the Zips make poor in progress adjustment.If x < y and a < b, we suck.

And another thing about losing. The Zips have been losing for so long they are actually getting better and better at it by the year. The team is on a great early game drive and the WR fumbles on a routine tackle. The QB runs into the RB. The list goes on and on. The methods we are deploying to lose are becoming more spectacular by the year.BG has a smart senior QB and an NFL player in #7. Other than that, the talent level is no different. Last night was a game the Zips could have won if not for their stupidity.

What if you have a good first half and the other team adjusts to it during halftime? At that point, your halftime adjustments are worthless. Football does not function in a vaccum where only one team adjusts.I've used this analogy before. Halftime lasts around 20 minutes. Five minutes to get in the room, five to get out, five for the coaches to talk and five to talk to the players. There is actually little time at half to make adjustments. On the other hand, a televised football game now lasts around three hours and fifteen minutes. Take out 20 for halftime and the game lasts 2:55. Sixty minutes in a game with each team splitting time of posession equally gives each team 30 minutes. There is actually around 1hour and 30minutes during a game when either the offense or defense is not on the field. That time is more important than the 10 minutes at halftime. There are drives that last more than 10 minutes in real time.Each play can be adjusted for. QBs do it all the time by calling another play at the line. Defenses do the same thing. For example, why can't a coach yell to a player on defense to take a deeper drop on coverage, etc. during the game? The players are at least smart enough to get into college, they should be smart enough to think through a simple game without a coach telling them what to do. Our favorite football team had a player (Harrison) think for himself last year in the Super Bowl and made one of the best plays in SB history. I doubt Harrison has a career at NASA waiting for him when his playing days are over. He was supposed to have blitzed on the interception, recognized the alignment the Cardinal presented was exactly the same as a play another team ran on them earlier in the year in the same positon and scored a TD. Recognizing this he made his adjustment, intercepted the pass and scored a TD. Yes, I believe a smart football player can make adjustments without coaches directing his every move. There's your proof.

The culture of stupidity has created the culture of losing. Watching the Zips play has made me extremely uncomfortable because I know it is only a matter of time until they do something backbreakingly (is that even a word?) stupid.The answer to the original question is to run forward. Almost every answer to the question of whether or not to run forward or sideways is to run forward. It is what they do in the NFL and what good college backs do. Getting yards is the key, especially in the game situation they were in. Like I said in the other thread, a 98 yard TD run is almost completely unrealistic...take what they give you and live to fight another day/play.I want football smart players. But more than anything, I want players who are conditioned to win and have won. Maybe that is the same thing. There are a lot of players who are smart at football and stupid at everything else. I want some smart football players.....right now, I would settle for them not being stupid.

They should select an atomic symbol and put them on their helmets for when they actually do something smart.

I would like to continue the theme I started a couple of weeks ago noting how stupid we are. Second and whatever from our own two....we run the ball, good....our RB takes the ball, gets into the hole, out of the endzone and could fall forward to the four for some extra breathing room and a chance on third down.....what does our stupid player do, he runs backward into the endzone and then can't get out.....safety.I hate to say, "When I was in school", because it seems so long ago now, but the coaches (some are in the NFL now) talked to the players about game situations and how to think when situation "x" happened to you. Either the coaches aren't telling the players how to think, or a college student can't figure out basic game situations. I'm going to split the atom for #22....when you take a hand-off in the endzone, the first thing you need to do is get the heck out of the endzone....once you get out of the endzone, don't go back into the endzone. Go freaking forward. Almost never does a RB go for a 98 yard run so get your ass out of the endzone and stay out.To our DBs, when the other team gets into the red zone, cover closer and let the smaller size of the field be another defender for you. Another thing, when you blitz, cover closer because the ball is going to be coming out faster.The Zips play every play as if it is first and ten from the fifty. Halftime adjustments are overrated. Make adjustments as the game progresses based upon each play and what the heck is going on at the time. Every play is valuable and we just don't use common sense.Over the past 23 years, I've watched the Zips do one stupid thing after another. And it normally isn't just some mild act of stupidity, it is a crushing, game losing act of stupidity. Watching the Zips is like watching one of my favorite TV programs, Curb Your Enthusiasm. For those of you who don't watch, it is on HBO. It is very uncomfortable humor and you feel uncomfortable while watching. That's the Zips. It isn't if they are going to make a crushing mistake, it is when. 23 years of this. Bad coaching doesn't define the Zips football program over the past 23 years, it is stupidity that defines it.

The ACC is one of the top two conferences in the country. I don't know where NC State will finish, but they are a good team in a great conference. I didn't expect much more out of the Zips than what happened today.The Zips will be fine.....

I go to that area at least once every two weeks. The county Myrtle Beach is in is a very nice place. After the summer season is over, it is a great place to be a local. The school is a nice place and they have upgraded a lot of their facilities. The football stadium looks great and the are building an office building next to it that will allow people to sit outside and watch games.

This paper was written by a professor at UC Berkeley on fourth down decision making by NFL coaches over a three year period.New England's coach is a big fan of this paper. One more foot against Indy and he is not the goat he is today. The paper basically says coaches kick too much on fourth downs. I really don't care what the paper says, I'll take an easy three or change in field position over the risk. College is much different than the NFL also....I'd like to see the same study done on college football with a larger universe of teams than the NFL and a different flow to the game than NFL.

UofA gets plenty of NE Ohio kids. That isn't the problem. Being on the news with BW is not the problem. The problem is UofA is not giving someone from Cleveland or Lakewood or Lake Co., etc. a reason to drive 60+ miles to watch a football game. The product is bad. When they do, people from Cleveland will come. There are enough people in Summit and Stark Cos. to draw from...heck, there are enough alumni in those conties to draw from.We go through cycles where Zips fans think bringing in more NE Ohio kids will draw bigger crowds. Each time we have tried it, failure has followed. Let's bring in kids who are good enough to win in the MAC and want to win....not play in a new stadium as their primary motive.

It's amazing they make as much as they do to do what they do. From what I've heard, there are only a couple of these firms and all you are really paying for is confidentiality. Athletic departments around the country a full of blabbermouths and word would get out as to who was looking at each job. These firms keep things quiet for as long as possible until the process moves forward to the point where a small group of candidates is comfortable with their name getting out as a candidate.Loose lips sink ships and they also cost athletic departments a ton of money in finders fees.

You haven't been back for a game yet, have you? I of course use the term "game" loosely.Please tell me we didn't build a $65 million stadium without doors on the bathroom stalls.......