GP1

I had a chance to watch Winthrop play some the past two games. Good team, but beatable.They beat Georgia Tech 79-73 and looked great doing it. Then they followed it up with a loss to a very average Baylor team 62-54. Inconsistent play is normal this time of year until teams find their sea legs. As good as they looked in game one, they looked that bad in game two. They have a new coach this year so they may be getting accustomed to his style of play.Akron's ability to beat Winthrop will depend largely on the Eagles team that shows up. If the good Eagles show up, Akron will not stand a chance on the road against a very athletic team that is accustomed to winning. If the bad Eagles show up, Akron will have a punchers chance of winning the game. Either way, Akron will need to bring it's "A" game in order to win on the road.Good luck Zips!

This is an amazing statistic. Not in that we give up the rebounds........it's amazing in that somebody actually tabulates the statistic. Coming in last in the freaking country is just nonsense. Getting that rebound should be a given.I saw Charlie Coles once take out a kid for missing a free throw and yelled at him for missing it for a minute or two. In the past, KD has worried a lot about defense. He should start punishing players for not putting the little orange ball through the orange ring at critical points in the game.

If this is the strategy, I don't find fault in the logic. In fact, I think there are a lot of teams that look at it the same way. There are probably some programs like Duke, UCLA, etc. that know they are going to make the NCAA and spend all year preparing for March. Unfortunately, the college basketball regular season has become almost insignificant to the tournaments. Knowing they have no shot at an at large bid makes spending the year preparing for the MAC Tournament the logical move. Akron is going to win more than they lose so they are guaranteed a good season. The only question comes down to whether or not they can make the NCAA Tournament or not.

Ridiculous!Be careful of the ad homonym attacks.ZA is the type of person who would fart in a crowed room, blame it on someone else and then lecture the room on how inappropriate it is to fart in a crowded room.

I don't know how a post about JD makes it onto the basketball page other than petty and personal animosity.With that said, KD is a very good coach. The biggest difference between him and JD and the soccer coach is that JD and the soccer coach come through when they make it to the MACC. If JD gets fired after this week, he will leave here with a championship ring on his finger. A ring is something KD is still lacking and is largely at fault for not having one.Zips fans should be patient to see what KD does this season and probably next season. KD is a Zip, and as such, should be treated a little differently IMHO. After being badly out coached and out played in the MACC last winter, that team owes you die hard fans a championship in a season when they are not predicted to win. This season would be a good one to do just that.

Everyone needs to go take a look at this web page. It should be titled DollarGeneralonLine.com. Two things stand out.First, there is a good chance that 4....maybe 5 teams of the 13 will finish the season with winning records (.500 or above). That's just plain bad.Second, if Miami loses to OU this week, they limp into the MACC with a 6-6 record. If they lose the MACC, they don't go bowling. Is there another conference out there where the runner up played itself out of a bowl by making it to the conference championship and then losing? Only in the MAC.........

All good points.A lot of the solutions come down to winning. I'm not certain that is the problem. Miami is on the brink of going to the MACC (actually, I think they got in yesterday) and there was not anyone at the game Wednesday.When I go to MAC games, I see a lot of very average talent o the field compared to what I could see at a Big East or even ACC game. I think when the average person looks at the MAC, the talent (product) just falls inches short of what they would expect for them to spend a day of their life and money to go see. They certainly wouldn't spend a lot of money to go see it. MAC players are much more likely to drop a pass or slip and fall or just really do something stupid. That really isn't good entertainment.The reason the MAC needs to play on Wednesday and Tuesday nights is nobody wants to watch it. ESPN needs to fill air space and promote it's Saturday ESPN/ABC line-up. The MAC makes good filler. If it was a better product, ESPN would show it on Saturdays.

While we do not know how good Rogers is, CJ11 is not the answer. Getting a good frickin quarterback is the difference between 8-4 and 4-8 in the MAC. I'm watching the Oregon-Arizona game and Oregon's qb left with an injury. With the back-up in, Oregon looks like a second tier MAC school. They look, fat, slow, with poor special teams, an awful defense and I swear I'm watching CJ11 play on consecutive nights. A major BCS school looks this bad? It just goes to show how much a good quarterback hides other weaknesses.Good points.I've been saying on this board for years not that the first thing a team needs is a QB that can win games. In this day and age, that means a QB that is smart, mobile, above average arm and can run with the ball in the read option. You guys look at the highly ranked teams as your examples. My example would be Wake Forest. Wake has little to offer as a major college program and should never make a bowl game; however, Skinner is a smart and mobile QB with an above average arm that manages the spread offense very well and is a winner. They have six wins and will make a bowl game with very average to below average talent.The spread offense masks an average to below average offensive line. It can also move the ball enough and score enough points to mask a bad defense.Akron's problems have never been about defense or offensive line. It has almost always been about the lack of a QB that can win games when it really matters.Getting to another point on the board about Illinois not being better than OSU. That's just not true. Illinois came into Columbus and kicked OSU's ass up and down the field. At the end of the day, that means you are a better team. In the fourth quarter, they absolutely dominated that overrated defense OSU puts on the field. OSU's defense looks great against YSU, Akron and the host of bad teams they play in the Big Ten. It will look great today against that antiquated offense Michigan runs. Zook learned in the SEC what it takes to win in big time college football. With the exception of Northwestern and Indiana, nobody else runs the read option. Illinois wil be good for a lot of years because Zook knows it is about a mobile QB. Illinois is actually just getting started. In the near future, OSU's offense will be antiquated as well and they will try to run the read option with the talent they recruited and they will look like Akron this year trying to do it.I'm glad you made this last point...How much more can one team dominate the opponent, on the road, with everyone healthy and still be called inferior. But that's what happens when living in Ohno! And one more thing, how can the offsides on the fumble vs. MU be ignored. If that happened in c-bus, the entire city would be on fire.We had the Illinois game on at my house yesterday (why anyone would watch that 14-3 horrible OSU game is beyond me) and I heard that the top four teams in the Big Ten were OSU, Michigan, PSU and IL. IL beat OSU, Michigan and PSU. That means they are the best of the top four. If they don't stumble with a young team early, they win the Big Ten as they are the best team in the Big Ten at this point in the season.Illinois is going to be good next year. OSU needs to go to IL. OSU had better enjoy the Rose Bowl this year because IL is the team to beat in the future.I'll stop now with the non-Zip issues.

We talk a lot on this board about why people don't go to Akron, or even MAC games (with the exception of Temple who just broke the MAC single season attendance record). A lot of blame gets pointed at the Marketing Department or the commissioner of the MAC. Here is another way of looking at it....Last night my wife, who is infinitely smarter than I am, which makes her even that much smarter than everyone else on this board, made a really good point to me about why people don't go to MAC games. She doesn't put much blame on marketing departments or the MAC. She said, "Marketing the MAC is like being the Director of Marketing at Dollar General. You can get people to shop once, but once they see the crap you are selling, they don't want to come back." After that game Wednesday night, I don't see much fault in her logic.Unfortunately, Akron, and most MAC schools, can get people to fill a stadium when they give out free tickets. We've seen that for years at UofA. Even when they have been good, people still do not see the value in spending a lot of money to go see the product. Since people don't want to spend the money, we get a Dollar General type product thrown at us. Miami needed a win against UofA to help forward their chances to make the MACC and nobody went to the game. Why would anyone go to a game where the potential winner of a conference could potentially win the league with 5-6 loses?Now that the MAC is back to what it was during the pre-Marshall days, it is only going to get worse. It is just a bad league.I love the MAC and want it to get better. Now that I'm away from it and can look at it more objectively, I'm not certain it can be any more than what it is right now. That's too bad.Have a good weekend everyone.

While we do not know how good Rogers is, CJ11 is not the answer. Getting a good frickin quarterback is the difference between 8-4 and 4-8 in the MAC. I'm watching the Oregon-Arizona game and Oregon's qb left with an injury. With the back-up in, Oregon looks like a second tier MAC school. They look, fat, slow, with poor special teams, an awful defense and I swear I'm watching CJ11 play on consecutive nights. A major BCS school looks this bad? It just goes to show how much a good quarterback hides other weaknesses.Good points.I've been saying on this board for years not that the first thing a team needs is a QB that can win games. In this day and age, that means a QB that is smart, mobile, above average arm and can run with the ball in the read option. You guys look at the highly ranked teams as your examples. My example would be Wake Forest. Wake has little to offer as a major college program and should never make a bowl game; however, Skinner is a smart and mobile QB with an above average arm that manages the spread offense very well and is a winner. They have six wins and will make a bowl game with very average to below average talent.The spread offense masks an average to below average offensive line. It can also move the ball enough and score enough points to mask a bad defense.Akron's problems have never been about defense or offensive line. It has almost always been about the lack of a QB that can win games when it really matters.Getting to another point on the board about Illinois not being better than OSU. That's just not true. Illinois came into Columbus and kicked OSU's ass up and down the field. At the end of the day, that means you are a better team. In the fourth quarter, they absolutely dominated that overrated defense OSU puts on the field. OSU's defense looks great against YSU, Akron and the host of bad teams they play in the Big Ten. It will look great today against that antiquated offense Michigan runs. Zook learned in the SEC what it takes to win in big time college football. With the exception of Northwestern and Indiana, nobody else runs the read option. Illinois wil be good for a lot of years because Zook knows it is about a mobile QB. Illinois is actually just getting started. In the near future, OSU's offense will be antiquated as well and they will try to run the read option with the talent they recruited and they will look like Akron this year trying to do it.

Successful teams are still running the read option. We have the players to run it with the exception of the QB.Interview coaches, probably in their mid-20 and right out of graduate school, who have been with successful programs running the offense. Make that person your OC. Other coaches will complain of feel slighted, but that's too bad.If McDaniels can be the oc at New England at a young age, why not bring a young guy here.

If JD is smart, he leaves after this year before he ends up in the graveyard.

It is both. We have an OC who has never played or coached the read offense they use. My biggest complaint about the read offense we use is the QB NEVER keeps the ball. There is no reason to defend against the QB running. Every other team that runs it has a running QB and is successful with it. Look what Florida does with it. Hell, look what an average team like Illinios did with it against that "great"(?) osu defense last week. The kicked the crap out of osu with the same offense Florida used to kick the crap out of them last January.

I saw the same thing.

Bingo. I hate the term sense of urgency, but that's the best way to describe it.Second and four in the second quarter after a penalty on around the Miami 35. We have in our third team running back who does nothing but run east-west. What does he do? He runs east west for no gain. Third and four, we throw a sideways pass for no gain. Punt. A FG could have put the game out of reach.At that point, I look at my wife and say, "Akron calls plays like every play is first and ten." With second and four, we should have had our starting running back in the game and run him twice to get the first down.That was horrible last night........I have to get on a plane.

They could easily use the same promotion for their basketball team.......

http://www.boston.com/sports/football/patr..._their_efforts/If anything, GP1's estimation was too low.Average OL coach in the NFL in 2005 made $329,000. The Falcons OL coach that year made $1,000,000. JD could leave Akron, go be an assistant in the NFL, and almost double what his yearly income is.

I thought that was the line for non-parent Miami fans attending. Please double check with your book maker.

Good day for Steelers fans yesterday. Beating Cleveland has almost gotten boring. The most funny thing to watch was a Cleveland team winning 21-9 at half come out and lose a game they clearly should have won because of all the big plays they made. Their body language looked like somehow they knew they were going to lose.The sporting lesson here is that winners win and loser lose.Cleveland still has a good and improving team though. DA may not be perfect, but he makes the Browns a better team as he makes the players around him better. Since the NFL is so bad, the Browns could win nine games with him this year.Why is this thread still alive again?

Temple goin' nuts!! Hit the nail on the head CK. I can't believe I'm about to type this again, but the future of MAC football is in Philadelphia at Temple. The brilliant and well hung GP1 with his movie star good looks was the first to post here weeks ago that Temple has a chance to dominate the MAC within three years. Temple will be the next Marshall, but with the potential to be even better. That school has a good geographical area to recruit from, they play in an NFL stadium, they have a huge population base to draw fans from, the school has played big time football in the past so they know what it takes and it is in one of the largest cities in the US so the kids have plenty to do when they are there. The campus is in a bad part of town, but so is Akron.Whatever stadium we build will be dwarfed, as well as every other MAC stadium, in comparison to the stadium Temple offers.I notice Temple is drawing a lot of "urban" players. They are accustomed to keeping at risk kids eligible with a big time basketball program and should be able to do it for football as well. We worry about recruiting "good kids" or "good students" or whatever anyone wants to call them. I call them future losers.The thing I notice, outside of the fact that there are slim pickings, about the Zips is one of the players is named Harvey. Any relation?If JD is banking the future of the program on kids from NE Ohio and western PA, that will be a disaster. NE Ohio and WPIAL high school football is a shell of what it was 20-30 years ago. Once the major conference programs finish picking through the better players, there is little quality left.

you mean after the signal?Does Dr Z stand for Dr. Zapruder?

That offense never put up points when it mattered. Winters is not the answer.The only "Akron guy" qualified to coach the team is Mike Johnson. He is a former QB and the WR coach for the Ravens. Zero college experience. NFL position coaches make in the neighborhood of $250,000 to $400,000 per year. He would laugh at the salary.

Last night showed the type of coach JD can be. He is indeed a good coach and the best we have had, by far, during the D 1-A era. The consistency of the team will improve with the consistency of the coaching.The offense was much more excitiing to watch last night. With the exception of the interception, CJ11 looked good (Note to CJ11: When blocking, use the left side of your body). Maybe the foot in the @$$ last week was what he need to snap him out of whatever funk he was in. The play calling was much different and had OU off balance most of the night.Player development. This coaching staff has taken a young offensive line and turned it into a solid group that is only going to get better in the future. There should be more posted on this board about the improvement in the OL this season compared to last. The coaching staff has recognized it is a young group and has changed blocking schemes to help them. That's good coaching. I hope I can say the same thing next year about the secondary.Leadership. JD figured out this year that it isn't the NFL. In the NFL, the players lead the team. In college, they players are too young to really lead a team and need an "adult" to lead them. JD has to continue to do what he did last night.Recruiting. JD does the job he is asked to do recruiting. He goes after good players and brings good players to Akron. JD can't coach, watch film, recruit, fundraise, etc. and be a tutor to the players. He needs the University to make a commitment to helping him retain the players he brings in with a good academic support program.Staff. The pay at Akron is horrible for assistants. When Jim Prye leaves Akron to go coach tight ends at Illinois and makes more money than JD, there is a problem funding good coaches. 2-3 coaches will leave at the end of the year again this year.I like JD. I want him to stay and be successful. I don't think any of us agree with 100% of what he does. Some on this board wanted to run him out after his first five games at UofA and won't give him credit for doing anything. That's fine, but that thinking is sad on many levels. JD isn't some salesman who just walked off the street and got the job at Akron. He has NFL and major college coaching experience under his belt and knows more football than all of us put together. We are lucky to at least have someone here with that experience. Does that make me a JD apologist? Maybe......If so, I can live with it.Good job last night JD!

Here is something we have not seen much of this year after halftime. The first three times OU had the ball after half, the following happened.First, three plays for seven yards resulting in a punt followed by an Akron TD.Second, three plays for two yards resulting in a punt and then an Akron INT.Third, 4 plays for one yard followed by an OU FG. Good job not allowing a TD after a turnover.Akron gave up some points later, but when they needed it, the defense came through and slowed OU. The defense gave the offense the ball in positons to make plays and win the game. I give this defense a lot of crap, butt in this case, I have say good job guys.

Can I get a report on the door, or lack of door, in the home side bathroom stall for men?I plan on never stepping foot in the Rubber Bowl again in my life. However, this bathroom stall will be my most lasting memory of the Rubber Bowl. If anyone out there could do me a favor and take a picture of this stall (only if there is not door on it), and e-mail it to me, there will be a special place for that photo in my bonus room. Please make certain the bathroom is empty when you do this as I do not want anyone to go to jail for taking photos in a public restroom.