GP1

Good point and you have picked up on my biggest complaint about the defense. It's not that guys aren't lining up in the right places, it's that we use the wrong size guys to perform tasks more suited for larger people. A rover is not the size of a LB or DE and gets exposed because of it.

There is enough talent on the Zips to go 6-6 and compete well in the MAC. The only missing link, like at most MAC schools, is the QB. With bad play calling and the 3-3-5 defense, the remaining talent will go to waste.

Here are some questions I would like you guys to ponder about Zeke. Is he the guy who is going to make the Zips great right now? Is he the foundation for a team that will be great after his time at Akron?Zip Watcher could chime in on this one as he went to school at UCONN, but Zeke could be Akron's Cliff Robinson or Chris Smith. UCONN didn't win anything with these guys, but they were the foundatioin for the future of the program that included Don. Marshall, Donny Marshall, Ray Allen, etc. that took the program to another level after they got it winning in a very tough conference.Instead of putting pressure on Zeke to make UofA Gonzaga while here (I think that is unfair), I would rather look at him as the solid foundation for the future of the program. If it happens while he is at Akron, even better. One player really didn't do anything for UCONN. It wasn't until they were able to use the minor success from one player to attract better players years down the road that the program really took off. It may take more than Zeke's four years at Akron.

Raising pricing is one of the most difficult things to do in any business (one of the easiest things to do is lower pricing or keep it the same). In order to raise prices and maintain existing volume, one very important condition must exist. First, there must be a real increase in the value of a product to the consumer. The Zips must raise prices now when the new stadium is opening as the increase in the value of the venue has increased. The new stadium is a real and tangible improvement in the general product. In time, the product on the field must improve to keep the volume, but for now an improvement in packaging should be enough to raise prices. The Zips have one, maybe two years to improve the product on the field or people will turn away. I'm not asking for much here. Six wins gets us a bowl game and a good chance at the MAC Championship Game. I'd take that. It's all about getting to the post season. God Bless Joey Chestnut, a great American. Some people have the heart of a champion, he has the stomach of a champion.

I wonder if 5 years from now posters will still be asking about the status of Harvey?

Good questions. First a comment. The only thing MAC ADs see five years into the future is their next job.Wlll the BE implode? Hell no! The league can sustain itself on being one of the best, if not the best, basketball conference in the country.BE Split? Into what? The trend in college athletics is to have mega conferences. They are as big as they need to be and the competition is pretty good. There is strength in numbers and if they split they lose strength. The only possibility of leaving would be Pitt or WVU going to the Big Ten and I don't think either school is in a hurry to do that. They will never give up the BB only schools either. It helps make them the mega conference for BB. They are big enough for football.Memphis leaving C-DOA? Memphis is a basketball school. If they leave for the BE, they lose their automatic bid to the NCAA each year and their guaranteed 22 wins as they may not be hands down the best team in the conference.The Zips are going to no other conference and nor should they. The MAC is a I-AA football conference with a 1-A tag on it (Look to see how MAC schools did in bowls. How did our league chamion do agains an average Clemson?). App St would stand a better chance in football in C-USA or the BE than UofA or even most other schools in the MAC. As far as basketball, God bless you guys and your enthusiasm, but I think you guys are letting the fact that the Zips rack up lots of wins against horrible OOC teams, get to the finals of a bad conference and beating an unmotivated FSU team in a completely irrelevant tournament (OSU looked more relieved the tournament was over rather than happy they won) get to your heads. I lived in Connecticut for a year and saw a lot of BE basketball. I went to some ACC basketball games last year including the ACC Tournament. Akron would get killed in the BE if they had to play night after night at that level of competition. We can't even beat Winthrop for crying out loud. We would be the worst team in the league....hands down. Here is the real question, Why would the BE want us? Why would C-USA want us? Don't give me the media market crap either. As bad as Akron would be in those leagues, nobody would tune in to watch blow outs. Local TV would be better off showing reruns of Fat Albert.Here is my question. Why can't we just try to be the best team in the worst league? I believe being the best team in a lot of sports in the MAC is an achievable goal. If we could get to that point, we should all be happy.Getting back to the logo. I'm absolutely amazed the league has been around for around 60 years and is probably still in relatively the same shape it was in 60 years ago. Being this bad for this long should not be advertised.

I was thinking of making a complete mockery of this logo by creating a poll. The poll would use my original slogan of "Building Since 1946" or whatever year it says. You guys could vote for the completion of the slogan. Who would like to participate in the mockery?

zen picks up on everything that is wrong with the new logo. When you don't know what something is or it looks like something else, it does not say much about the league. I always make fun of the league for it's endless building and little results, and I think the lettering leaning forward is supposed to signify the league building to the future. It is just lame. We could call it the "Lamego".

Nice!!!!Actually, I was thinking..."Building Since 1946"

Exactly. Zips fans have no idea how cheap they really get off. There should be absolutely no complaining about how much tickets cost to a Zips game.Here is what I had to pay for Wake Forest season tickets (2). $125 donation to the Deacon Club (foundation). Try not to go crazy with this cost, but the parking pass was $70. The two tickets were $225 each with a $5 service fee for a total of $700 for one season. All total, the cost per game is $50 per ticket and they have seven games. Wake offers nothing state of the art. They have an old stadium in dumpy old Winston-Salem.Read on if you want to hear a funny story about the incompetence of people working in college athletics....you think it only happens at Akron...... Last year, my wife and I attended the Wake vs. Nebraska game. For those of you who have never been to the Carolinas in September, just assume the hottest day of the year in Ohio every day from the middle of July until the end of September. For those of you who went to the NC State game a couple of years ago, it was much hotter this day than the NC State day. You would think that Wake would be prepared for the heat right? Wrong, they ran out of bottled watter by the middle of the second quarter. I had to pay $10 for two cups of ice at halftime.Now the funny part. Wake only has 31,000 seats in their stadium. 10,000 of those seats had to have been filled by Nebraska fans. People from the Carolinas weather the heat really well and let's just say people from Nebraska aren't used to the heat (they also drink a lot before games so it doesn't help). By the middle of the third quarter, it was a parade of sunburned white people packed in ice bags dressed in red shirts being carted out one after another on stretchers for heat exhaustion. I know I shouldn't laugh at things like this, but it was really funny to see. The more interesting thing is I remeber more about that than what happened on the field in a Skinner-less Wake loss to a bad Nebraska team .

I don't see much wiggle room here for UofA . An appeal may take longer than they want and then they also have the lawyers fees to make the appeal. At some point, UofA needs to move forward. They may be at that point now. As far as changing the project, there is a cost to changing construction and I don't think it would be worth it to do so. Since the project is being financed with bonds, the additional cost will just be spread out over time. In the end, the people of Ohio will need to pay the bill for this.

Mike Thomas sells his soul in order to have a winning team. Where was this initiative at Akron?The most interesting thing in the link is the fan who blogs "He's done nothing, been charged with nothing." Isn't that almost as bad as the crime itself? This football player watches a man rape a woman, has the physical ability to stop it and does nothing (assuming you consider filming the event nothing). Shame on Mike Thomas, a man I greatly respect, for allowing this to happen.

Good logic. I predict the same outcome with different wins and loses.I don't see Can't above, but that will be a win.Wisconsin = LossSU = Win. If we don't win this against a really bad team, it says a lot about us and the MAC.Ball St. = Win. As much as I hate our 3-3-5 defense, it is designed to do well against throwing teams. Can we score though?Army = Win. Same logic as SUCincinnati = Loss. They can win on talent alone.BG = Loss. This will be a loss in a game we should win. Historically, we have one or two a year like this.EMU = WinToledo = Loss. We have trouble against teams that are traditionally good.... Maybe because we are traditionally bad.Buffalo = WinOU = WinTemple = Loss to the team that may win the MAC EastI know what you are all saying, "GP1, you say 5-7 but your schedule shows 6-6". I know, please do not apply logic to the MAC. Akron will inexplicably lose to either Buffalo or OU. Ball St. is too logical of a candidate for us to lose to so I am going with a win. The Syracuse game is really going to set the tone for the year. A win there gets us going, a loss could start the beginning of a really bad year.Either way, get ready for the greatest tradition in the MAC..... Five more years of rebuilding.

http://www.charlotte.com/observer/story/683465.htmlA recent study has been published by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. Dr. John Green is on the faculty at UofA and heads up this Pew Forum. Around 15 years ago, Dr. Green was my graduate school advisor. If you haven't been paying attention to the news recently, this study is making national news. The above article was in the Charlotte Observer and Dr. Green was interviewed by Gwen Eifel on PBS Monday night.UofA is an excellent school with excellent faculty. This exposure is just another example of how good the school is and the quality of education some of received and other are currently receiving.

I hate to sound mean, but he really does NOT have the ability on any level and no amount of wishing will change that. His arm strength is not enough to be more than a #3. People say he held on to the ball too long....The truth is, he did, resulting in frequent fumbles, poorly thrown passes and down and distances too great for anyone to make up. When someone says a QB "holds onto the ball too long" they are really saying that person does not have the intellectual ability to perform in the NFL. People who are good engineers see the world a certain way that others don't. People who are good NFL QBs see the game a certain way that others do not. Charlie just isn't good at absorbing the NFL game as it is going on around him. That doesn't make him stupid, it just makes him unable to perform in the NFL at a high level.In the end, when you say "everything went wrong for him", it really wasn't everything. Charlie went wrong for Charlie and has nobody but himself to blame for being where he is. DA didn't have the same problems CF did and he played behind the exact same line, had the exact same RBs and had the exact same receivers. The Browns went 10-5 with DA starting last year and the fans actually have some hope going into 2008. While I don't know for sure, I don't see that team doing any better than 6-10 with Frye starting last year. Every team knew Frye was the weak link and exposed his weaknesses. The QB is the absolute worst place on the field to have your weak link.

Poor Charlie. He only gets to work at a job paying around $600,000 for the next 4-5 years doing little more than lifting weights and holding a clipboard. If he doesn't want it, I'll take it!

Rasor reported in his blog yesterday that this deal is not actually done for some reason. Seems all but done, but not done yet.Who is the short sighted idiot who signed a deal with Adidas in the first place?

Why don't I remember these two colors in my Crayola box of 64 as a child?

25 cents to $5.70 over 118 years implies an annual inflation rate of just under 2.69%. Oh if it were only true.It does seem odd. Originally, I used 1910 and it gave $5.70 which is the same as the 1890 number. Here is the calculator I used http://www.westegg.com/inflation/Since we are talking inflation and finance....and it is summer with nothing much going on, I learned an interesting fact from a friend. He is one of the probably 10,000 Vice Presidents at Fidelity. Between 1896 and 1996, housing value in the US grew almost exactly with inflation. Between 1996 and 2006, we had the housing bubble and now the bust. They are betting that the value of property has much further to fall than it currently has. Beware!

Since we only know this game was around the turn of the century, let's assume it is around 1890. A ticket to the game was 25 cents. Adjusted for inflation, the cost was $5.70 to attend the game in 2008 depending on the internet calculator one uses (the calculator seems suspect....maybe it's just the user). A Saturday matinee at the movie was also around 15 cents on the high end (I paid $7.50 last weekend). Zips tickets are in excess of $5.70 per ticket. Both the movie industry and the Zips are out performing inflation over the past century. I guess that's something to hang our hat on as long as we do not factor in the comp tickets given out over the years. Let's just hope this is not a sign of a Zips ticket bubble.

This guy uses the word "wood" in a post and not a single Viagra comment? You guys are slipping.

What size bowl do you use to trim that dome?

Nike schools always have better merchandising than other brand schools. In fact, the uniforms typically look better. For a young high school kid looking at schools, this will matter and KD will draw better players because of it.Last year I went to the Winthrop game and they were a Nike school. Their uniforms looked great and look great on TV. They all had matching sweat suits and looked sharp. The Zips looked like a parade of hobos coming out of the dressing room with nobody wearing matching anything.Will this contract apply to football as well? The Zips uniforms could use an overhaul.

Don't forget the popular Chris Spielman jersey. My wife and I used to bet on how soon we would see one while walking to games. I think people still wear them. The guy never played a regular season down.

So, I'm flipping around the TV this evening and the guys from Orange County Choppers (Paul and the boys) are at Giants Stadium learning about the Giants so they can make a Giants chopper. Blackburn and Diehl (sp?) do the tour of the stadium. I thought that was pretty cool.