GP1

I just got home from the Wake Forrest vs. Nebraska game. Huge Husker tailgate. 25% of the stadium was in red.I got to talking to a few Husker fans in a bar before the game and they said a lot of really nice things about Akron and the game against us in 1997. Extremely nice and friendly people. Wished Akron well. They were so nice talking about Akron, I almost forgot they waxed us 59-14. They are really smart college football fans. Very refreshing.

I'm not going Saturday so I didn't even look into it, but wasn't the OSU game tied into buying season tickets somehow? I'd like to know how much Akron received out of the the OSU tickets they sold.My understanding is between Akron, Army and the Cleveland Sports Commission, only 10,000 tickets were sold for Saturday. Not good. I'm very concerned that having a new stadium is not going to be enough to sell a lot of tickets in a couple of years. For decades, people around Akron have never spent their own money on Zips tickets. Why will they start in two years?

AHHHHHHHHH, the old Ginger or Mary Anne question. You can't lose either way. I take the MAC Championship. There are too many questions remaining the remainder of the season if we beat OSU.Championships really matter as they define a season the players work for all year. They also give the players a ring to keep the rest of their lives.Tough question though.

Frye will be starting Sunday against the Steelers. I am a Frye doubter, but he proved my prediction wrong that he couldn't beat out Anderson for the starting position. In my usually magnanimous way, I present this letter to Frye.Dear Charlie,In a battle between two midgets of NFL quarterbacking, you and Anderson, you have emerged the tallest midget. Congratulations!Best wishes,GP1

Yes I did. He is developing quite the man-gunt. Does anyone need the term "man-gunt" explained?

I noticed that our coaches were wearing Tony Soprano shirts Saturday night. You guys know the kind and I'm sure some of you have some in you wardrobe. It's the shirt that is not designed tuck in in order to hide your aging and expanding stomach. I have two. I liked them. There is nothing worse than looking at guys who work two minutes from some of the most modern exercise equipment in the world, yet somehow get out of shape because they spend all day looking at football games on film like a pervert watches porn, parade onto the field with a polo shirt tucked into their pants and their guts struggling to get out like a baby passing through the birth canal.

Columbus is an awful city. I used to travel there for work a lot and I had to stay the night there frequently. I used to call it West Virginia West because is seems as if everyone there is from West Virginia as that is the closest city you can relocate to from West Virginia on a tank of gas in your pick up truck.I went to a local bar where I live around five Saturday to watch the Zips play. There was the usual obnoxious OSU fan (female) being real loud and all I could think of was something my father once told me. "Loud girls are easy." I'll never forget it.

Thanks....I guess. I don't know if it was up beat as much as just a good feeling that we took care of business. 1-0 is a Hell of a lot better than our usual 0-1. I thought I handed out some good criticism and things that need to change. I guess people read into things what they want. The final score Saturday should have been 27-7.OSU didn't run up the score on YSU because the D-Coodinator for OSU is the brother of the YSU head coach and sweater vest Jim was the coach at YSU. JT also does not typically run the score up on other teams. Had they wanted to, they could have easily put up 50 on YSU. My brother told me OSU had their second team players playing in the second series.Let's assume that Akron puts up 14 this weekend. OSU has to score 45 to cover 30. That's really close. I don't see OSU scoring more than 45 on Akron as they probably don't want to show what they really have. The only question I have is how much can Akron score. If OSU wanted to, they could open up their play book and keep Akron from scoring more than seven points, but they won't do that either. Tressel doesn't need to run the score up on non-BCS teams to get high rankings. OSU gets handed out high rankings by the media like priests hand out communion wafers.....one at a time, but by the dozens. It's more important to them to hide what they can do and get back up players some playing time than killing us. Can we make one FG to get 17 is the real question. Keep in mind that trends matter more than anything and we only put up 14 in 2001 against what was a bad OSU team. I'd wait to see if all the OSU honks can drive the line up to 30.5 or 31 prior to betting this game. If Akron gets 31, take the Zips. That's my head saying that. My heart says C. Jackson scampers for a late score and the Zips win 21-20.

http://iuhoosiers.cstv.com/sports/m-footbl...tt.html#coachesAbove is a link to a Big Ten team we play this year, Indiana (I tried to look up OSU, but their web page is slow). Big Ten teams can throw money at anything they want. They have no special teams coach who has the sole responsibility of coaching special teams. Indiana uses a LB coach as special teams coordinator similar to what we did last season, and everyone complained about that. The idea that hiring one will solve the problems is silly. I'd challenge anyonoe on this board to find five BCS schools that hire a coach for special teams only. It just isn't done. Akron loses money with it's athletic teams. Does anyone think they could possibly get the money to hire someone for a positon like that?As far as defending JD, I think I presented pretty good criticism of him in my two posts above. I'm just not going to call for extreme changes after one game.....and one that we won. All they had to do was close down the gaps on the punt at the end of the game and we win 22-7. It takes no special teams coordinator to figure that out. Akron was in control of that game for the better part of it. Speaking of special teams, didn't we capture the Army on side kick at the end of the game? In years past, that ball surely would have gone to Army and they would have found a way to beat us. Before anyone tells me JD is a bad coach, let's look at history. Faust's first three years in I-A, 15-17-1. Lee Owens, 8-26, JD:Record: 19-19One MAC East ChampionshipOh, there's that inconvenient MAC Championship where he completely out coached the other team that tends to trip up the JD doubters.Then there is the first ever bowl game.MAC COY in his first year.First ever win against a BCS school.We saw a lot of good, young, aggressive players play last night. The talent level as a whole is the best it has ever been. Another poster said they had great energy and he is right. We do for the first time. The team was focused (only three or four penalties). Last night was a good night. Akron won it's opening game for the first time since 2001.....the time before that was....get this.....1993.JD is a good (not great) coach. Some of you just need to get over it and stop rooting for failure so you can be right about something.

I wonder if his getting cut in person is going to make that HBO show on this season where they are with the Chiefs.It's amazing how stupid a lot of the players are when I watch that show. Even more amazing is how stupid some of the assistant coaches are. These guys are grown men who have no sense of reality.

The blocked punt factors as a punt for zero yards and against the average. Backing out the blocked punt, the average was 36 yards. Not great, but not a disaster either. The running kick can't help. I hope they had that in there to make OSU prepare for something different.I think there were some bright spots last night they can build upon. Good returns in both kick off and punt return. The center was actually able to get the ball to the punter this year. A punt inside the ten yard line. Kick coverage was good. We did make some field goals.....in fact, far more than I thought going into the game. Accuracy decreases greatly after 40 yards and kicking off grass is more difficult. Using high school kickers as an example is silly. They kick off of tees and the uprights are so far apart it is difficult to miss.The idea that a special teams coach is going to solve the problems just leaves me confused. Actually, I think some of you use it as a chance to take a cheap shot at JD. At some point, the players have to execute. The field goal kicker, not JD, needs to get his ass out on the field and make some kicks when called upon. TV showed JD chewing out a player after a kickoff for not taking the proper path to the ball. The coaching is there, just not the execution.What JD needs to do differently is not use the spread out line formation late in a game when punting. Protectiing the lead is like protecting your castle. Call in the troops, pull up the draw bridge, flood the moat and hunker down for the siege that is about to come. The only hope Army had was to block that kick and Akron didn't line up to just protect the kicker and get the ball away regardless of the distance it goes. This is something that goes directly to coaching (strategy and tactics), not nonsense like blaming the coach for missed kicks or the distance a punt goes. Yikes, that's just stupid.

While watching ESPN yesterday, I heard Lou Holtz make the quote of the day when discussing the App. State win over Michigan. "Never underestimate how important is is to be accustomed to winning." Never a more true statement about sports has ever been made. I always say that winners win and losers lose. Same thing.The Zips have to start winning so they understand what it takes to win. Starting out the season 1-0 moves them in that direction.

The game went pretty good considering there were a lot of new players on the field last night. An early penalty turned a TD into a FG. The game was not as close as the score made it out to be. We should have won 27-14. Army is not the worst team in I-A.....close though. They would compete well in the MAC week in and week out. Here is what we need to improve and just some general thoughs. In general, I'll take a win any day and I'm feeling good today.Let's start with the most important player on the field, the QB. Jacquemain played decent. He needs to be more accurate with his passing. Accuracy gets yards after a catch. Accuracy limits balls getting picked off by tipped balls. He may not be the fastest guy, but they need to run that option more with him. We have a good back up if he gets hurt.Big plays. Big plays take game breaking players. Losing Harvey is going to kill this team because there is absolutely no deep threat on the field. Jabari is a good player, but while he made a great catch in the end zone, he also dropped a couple easily catchable balls. A senior needs to be more consistent. Kennedy does nothing for me, he is a mudder and not a game breaker.....way too easy to tackle in the open field. A good defense wlll just stuff up the middle with him in the game and force him outside where he is easily tackled. I think they could get more production out of another back. I think the only player on the offense who can change the game only played on series last night and that is C. Jackson. Jackson needs to play more....maybe not start, but one series a game is not enough.Speaking of catching the ball......Kasparek, you are a junior now.....if you want to be in the NFL some day, you had better start catching the f-ing ball when it is thrown to you and hits your hands. You have a young QB and you need to step up and help him. If you can't do this, we need to only throw the ball to 83.Defense. Int. for a TD is always a good thing. It seems as if teams are lining up, finding 19 and running away from him. Teams did this late in the year last year also. It's a good plan to run away from one of the better players. I still hate the 3-3-5 defense though....too small. It gives up too many yards and loses field positon. I don't think we had one three and out last night. Good teams will expose this defense again this season. There was a time in the second quarter where the defensive line was getting smashed. This can't happen.Play calling. I thought the play calling was pretty good for the players we have this year. First play they ran a quick pass to the WR and it worked so they ran it on the second play to the other side of the field. That's good play calling. They have a tendency to go to the well too many timess though and later in the game they showed they were going to run it and ran it. We lost five yards. It would have been a good time to run a deceptive play. I really think the play calling this year is going to be limited by the talent. They don't have anyone who can get open down field so look for a lot of short passes. The running game must be strong this season.Another play we run a lot is the fade near the end zone. I hate this play because it is all or nothing. We got one TD on a circus catch, but Jacquemain and Jackson both threw the ball badly out of bounds on the two other attempts.We ran the fullback for a ten yard gain last night. We have to run the FB successfully a couple of times a game because it opens the rest of the running game by presenting a threat to the defense.Special teams. As bad as it looked last night, it was still better than last year. I'll leave it at that.Kick offs. We had trouble last night, but watching TV yesterday, it appears as if there are a lot of teams having difficulty with kicking from the 30. It's not just us. There is going to be an adjustment period for everyone. Everyone may just have to accept better field position as the tradeoff.I think a young offensive line did a real good job last night considering their experience. A lot of the stupid penalties we say last year didn't happen (ie: the endless parade of false starts and holding). The option offense we run puts a young line in a position to look good.The crowd. On the way to the bar with my wife she asked me how many people I though would attend and I said twenty five thousand. When I saw the crowd, I said, "Did I say twenty five thousand, I meant twenty five hundred." ESPN did a good job of now showing the stands.I hope I don't seem overly critical here. Good win, good start to a season with a lot of new players. We played much better than the score looks. Let's get ready for next week.

We should always be ready.Here is another way to look at it. The Zips went to NC State last season and beat a bad team, then went straight into the . Maybe the same happened here. Time will tell.

Isn't Zippy a little out of shape to make All American?

I didn't say we could pick up a game in five minutes, I said OSU could. We would end up playing Indiana State or someone like that.The eight points you make are good, but most could be said about us playing Penn State or Michigan. Evey big program has a huge stadium, every game is on TV now (Is our game on the Big Ten Network? If so, few will see it.), not all of the kids on the team are from Ohio and had a life long dream of playing at OSU. I would hope the players want to win every game regardless of the other team.There really isn't anything "special" about playing OSU or Michigan or Virginia or Penn State, etc. for Akron. In fact, it could be looked at as typical for our early season schedules. It's just another game against a BCS school where we will be outmatched against so they can make their alumni feel good and get us some money. I love Akron football, but I can't pretend the circumstances are more than what they are in this particular case. The NC State game was fun last year, but it doesn't make up for tanking in the MAC.

Is the money worth it? Maybe. Let's look at the options.First though, we need to keep in mind that the athletic department operates at an annual loss and they are trying to turn that around.Renegotiate? UofA position would have to be to either get more money or back out of the contract. Assuming OSU would say no to more money as they can schedule another team in about five minutes, we have to back out. If we back out, OSU finds another school and pays them $600,000. Approx. $225,000 more than what we are scheduled to get That amount of money is a drop in the bucket for them. Push a few extra hot dogs at the home games and they make up the difference. Schools would line up to get it. Akron would have to back out and schedule a home game that would surely lose them money against some pathetic school like......say......I-AA.......YSU.Could Mike Thomas have gotten more money? Probably, but it's hard to negotiate effectively when you are trying to pad your resume and get on the first train out of Dodge. He probably would not have gotten $600,000, but $450,000 probably would not have been out of the question as when we played OSU around seven years ago, we got around $350,000.As far as the "prestige" of playing at OSU. Outside of OSU and Ohio, I don't thing anyone really sees it that way. Where I live now, most college football fans, in the little bit of time they spend thinking of OSU, pretty much laugh at OSU becuse of the butt kicking they took in the championship game last year. USC fans feel there is prestige playing in Los Angeles, Michigan feel there is prestige in playing at their stadium, etc. I don't think kids come to Akron to play at OSU once in a four year career....that just isn't realistic. One may, but not many.Back to the question of is the money worth it? Begrudgingly, I would have to say yes. Until the school can generate more revenue, they have to do these things.As far as the nasty personal attacks..........keep up the good work everyone.

http://www.nfl.com/players/lukegetsy/gamelogs?id=GET185899There are four QBs on the SF team. Getsy and Shaun Hill are listed both as #3. Hill has played in all three games, Getsy has played in none. SF cut nine guys today and Getsy was not one of them. Most teams keep three QB. Could Getsy be kept around for the practice team? Getting zero snaps can't be a good sign.I think Hill has 2-3 years in the league and the one game I saw him in he played pretty well. Hell, he could probably start for the Browns if that means anything. Maybe SF is giving Hill every shot to prove himself. Getsy would come at a lower price.Any thoughts?

Good post. Trends are more important than what a prognosticator says.The service academies bring a level of discipline that quite frankly is not equaled in just about 99% of major college programs. In reality, they have a lower skill level than most and the discipline is what they need to fall back upon. Army will bring a 100% effort this weekend.With that said, Akron should still win this game. Expect a dog fight. Expect two missed field goals. 21-17 Akron wins.

Akron may have been equally as bad with Nick Sparks. I don't know this for sure, but you folks don't really know if Frye would have won more with a better defense or whatever of the 10,000 excuses some of you have for the guy. What we know for sure is that he did just enough to lose.What we also know is that Frye's brand of heroics and leadership are doing nothing for the Browns either.We also know that one year after we lost Frye's heroics and leadership, we won the MAC with a team less talented than the year before. HummmmmmmIf you guys really want to continue this discussion, I could lead you hacks around all day. I'd rather not though as the challenge just isn't there any more. It's become too easy.

I love this quote the most. Improvement is what you get when you have open competition and guys just aren't given the job. I also like that JD has left the door open the first couple games until the MAC schedule starts. This will continue to make the players better.I like what I have been hearing. Competition and discipline are a good thing.

That team went 4-7. The only teams they beat were horrible (OU, Can't State, Buffalo and EMU). I feel pretty confident that this year's team will have a better record.....it wouldn't take much. I feel good about this year's team getting at a minumum 5-6 wins. Sorry for the optimism.

I looked at the entire group together as I really don't have the time to go positon by position. I include running backs as well. We have two solid TEs right now and both could get a shot at the NFL. WRs were probably betther then. Running backs are not only better now, but the depth is much better.I'll let Frye's record as a starting QB stand for itself.

Agreed.Someone still needs to tell me who is going to come to the Rubber Bowl (Yes, the stadium in Ellet that is falling down as we type) and play in front of 5,000 paying customers. Wouldn't the same question of professionalism be directed at an AD that allowed his team to come to Akron to play in front of such a poor paying crowd and money opportunity? I think there are a lot of dummys (not all) working in college athletics, but none of them are that stupid. As fans, we look inward. This question requires us to look at the point of view of the other team. We all have to remember that non-conference teams don't need us, we need them.A really smart AD would try to wait a couple of years and get on the schedule at the new stadium where more people will be paying to go and the stadium will be full. What is the advantage of playing in Akron right now?Note To eguins: Save us the post on why Akron should be playing YSU. None of us really care.

Excellent find Big Zip. Interesting.I'd say that the program is better now. I don't fee like going position by position, but the group of RBs, WRs and TEs are better now as a group. The offensive line is about the same. I always thought the offensive line during that period was really good. Two on this list either spent time on an NFL roster or in camp. The current offensive line will have one NFL player and maybe one make camp. It's no secret that I'd take just about anyone over Frye....the guy just doesn't win.Even less to say about the defense. They are far more talented now as a group and probably by position. The biggest problem we have now is the awful 3-3-5 defense we play and not the players.One person not on the list is the kicker. I think it was Zac Derr. If it was, the 2001 team had a faaaaaaaaaar better kicker.