GP1

OK, It was pretty stupid on my part. I should have figured this out the first time I opened it. Jabari and the football behind him is page 1. Knowing that, I've gone from thinking this is a good piece, to thinking it is a really good piece. Much better than what we have seen in the past.I would have moved page 3 to page 6 and page 4 to page 7. Other than that, it will take some real nitpicking to take this apart, so let the nitpicking begin.

Just picked up my season ticket renewal form out of the mail.I like it because....:1. The address page says "Roo Town this is your team". Good spin on the Fear The Roo plagiarism. Background of downtown Akron also reminds those living in Akron, but no history with UofA know the team is part of their community. The more inclusive the better. This should have been attempted years ago.2. It clearly states how one gets tickets to the Army and OSU games.3. The letter from the coach is part of the packet. Also, the letter is well written and points out the fact that Can't, CMU (MAC Champions) and OU (East Champions) are coming to the RB. That is actually a good point. Makes the schedule seem better than what it really is. Those who don't follow it closely will be impressed.4. For once, everything seems to be spelled right.5. Photographs look good and professional.6. Uses the logos of the teams coming to the RB as part of the packet.7. For those of you who love free things, free stadium cushion (one per ticket) is included to protect your ass from fiberglass. The free cushions would probably provide more valuable protection than handing out free condoms in the students section.8. Excellent personalization on the seat cushion page.9. The form sets a deadline.10. A decision about where parking will be assigned is included. Things I don't like.....:1. The form opens up funny as if they printed it backward. Someone with a third grade education could overcome this hurdle though. (five minutes later) Now I understand why it opens up the way it does.....maybe....2. Back to opening it up. I do think that somehow it was printed improperly, but it all still makes sense if you don't pay attention to the page numbering. Don't open it up on the perforated line, try using the two tape pieces. Actually, I think it is printed upside down. You'll have to decide for yourself.3. For $100 last year, someone could go to a pregame and half-time party outside of the RB as part of the $100. The parking this year makes sense if that is still included and is important to the school for people to attend. Would be nice to know.4. If someone had a wheelchair or a walker, there has never been information on how that person could get a disabled parking space. I'm surprised a public institution is not forced to put this on the mailer by bureaucrats.

This is an ideal situation for Andy. Three words......Super Bowl contender. Making the playoffs gives the player an additional source of income in addition to having a chance to win the Super Bowl.I don't know what the offensive line situation is for NO, but being a contender last year probably gives them a pretty solid line. Even if Andy plays as a back up player, he will still get some playing time during games. If they have a solid line, Andy will look even better. It opens the door for a long career as he could stay with NO in a few years, or he could get valuable experience and go to another team.Dwight Smith found himself in this exact situation a few years ago when he went to Tampa Bay.

I can't believe I'm defending a Notre Dame player, but here it goes.The fact that BQ went to two straight BCS games is a miracle in and of itself. Notre Dame is an average college football program right now that would be a middle of the pack Big Ten team. Without Quinn, they are a sub 50% team. ND had better hope that the cupcakes they are scheduling are really cupcakes because there is no talent there and that fat oaf of a coach thinks too much like an NFL coach to really get things turned around. As far as him not winning the big game, Mike Golic (yes, I know he is a ND graduate) did a great study on his performance in big games and compared it to the QB from LSU. BQ actually did well in most of his big games and even better than JR. Could someone please tell me a big game that Frye won?I can't believe you Browns fans. This is the best draft the Browns have had in......well, I really can't remember and you folks can't even be happy about it.

Your first point ties in with the second point. The University did not make up numbers last year. Community minded companies bought the tickets and nobody went.As far as give away items, they should be kept to a minimum, as they cost money and we run at about a $7 million loss every year, unless they can PROVE that those items are bringing people to games (holy run on sentence Batman). People now go through the gates at sporting events with their hands out for something for free like homeless people at the St. Bernard food kitchen.I don't know if UofA has ever known for sure why people do or do not come to games. They need to find out and find out soon. Marketing and sales information is best collected through the field. The marketing staff needs to get out and sell to the community so they can find out if their marketing campaign is working or not. Throughout the history of UofA, the marketing staff has focused on billboard buying and general self promotion for their next job. Doing the same thing over and over again expecting the same results is the definition of insanity. Goinig out to the community and selling the program is different and should be attempted by more than just the ISP group.I think changing the culture around Akron to support the programs in a meaningful way is a Herculean task. Just winning championships will not solve this problem because it is too difficult to win year in and year out in a conference like the MAC. One year without a championship gives people the excuse not to support the University any longer if that is their motivation for buying. A person who is on the fence can talk themself out of all sorts of things. On the fence fan thinking: "How many championships are necessary for me to buy season tickets?...... They won one last year, but maybe I'll wait to see how they do this year and then decide the next year." This is a horrible fan to base our fan base on.The people around Akron need to feel a part of the program regardless of whether they attended UofA or not. This has never been attempted. I saw a pocket schedule for next year and I think they have done a good job of trying to make people feel a part of the program. It is based on the "Fear The Roo" idea we stole off of Maryland. Pocket schedules and fancy print outs are only good if someone goes out and delivers the message. Mack needs to go out and deliver the message.

Charlie Frye had a chance to succeed as a starter for the Browns, and he failed. I wish it had gone down differently, as I'm a Browns fan and since I'd love to see a former Zip do well...but it just didn't happen that way. Do you realize in that defending Frye, the only positive you came back with was that he was "tough enough to take a pounding"? That's the best thing you could say? That should tell you all there is to know about Charlie. He's a backup in this league...and hey, there's nothing wrong with that. He can be a good one, and it takes a helluva lot of talent just to stick in the league, even as a backup. I just don't see how my opinion of Charlie Frye has anything to do with my allegiance to Akron. Do I have to pretend I think every former Zip is a superstar player to be a "true fan"? Why do you take it personally that someone disagrees with you? And can't you just leave it at that - two people who obviously know sports that disagree on a sports topic? Geez man...settle down... sgm405,Thanks for saving me the time.

Charlie Frye in the 4th quarter in 2007:70-118, 700 yards, 59.3%, 2 TD, 7 INT, 15 sacks, 57 RAT And Derek Anderson is nicknamed "choke"?Let's face it...as I said before, Charlie's a backup in this league. A good one...but not more than a backup.P.S. If you're no longer a Browns fan (and a Steelers fan now to boot) because they picked up Brady Quinn in an effort to get better, then you weren't much of a fan in the first place IMO. sgm405,Thanks for saving me the time. In General,I used to think that Frye would last 10 years in the NFL as a back-up. I no longer think that, but I do believe he has 2-3 years left and will be with the Browns next season and probably the following season as well as a back up. Cleveland didn't draft BQ to sit him on the bench next year. They have to win now. A 5-6 year career is pretty damn good regardless of how you look at it.I'm a Steelers fan and I hate to admit this, but this was a really good first round for Cleveland. BQ won on a absolutely horrible Notre Dame team passing to basically only one receiver when it counted (the guy with the funny last name). Those of you who think BQ is a pussy must not have seen a single ND game last year. The guy got killed game in and game out and kept coming back for more and his team won. I can't stand Notre Dame, but this kid was impressive on a bad team. I can't think of a single time in Frye's college career when he impressed me as much as BQ.

I've always found the argument that Akron did not have a good defense during the Owens years a good argument, if you don't include the fact that in big games, the great offense he had never produced. It always looked good against the Buffalos of the MAC, but almost never against Marshall and Miami when it counted. They moved the ball like crazy between the 20s and stalled out inside the 20s. Zac Derr didn't become the school's all time scoring leader during this period by accident.Probably the best year for the Owens offense was 2000 when Butchie Washington (the most underappreciated Zip of all time) was the QB. In seven of eleven games, all against D1-A teams, the offense scored 28 or more points. They also beat Miami and BG (at BG) when those teams were good. They then amazingly went on to lose their next three home games against a bad UCONN, NIU and a beatable Marshall team. It was like a bad dream but still probably the best year. 2003 also put up a bunch of points, but coming in third in the MAC East was a joke.2000 should have been a springboard for the program, but it just fizzled out the following year with a 4-7 record followed by a 4-8 record in 2002. At that point, the program was dead in the water.

I think you are right. They players may not be better, but a more mobile QB mixed with an option type attack at times and they will at least look better.Think about the Can't State game last year. Can't State does not have that great of an offensive line (they did have big athletic kids though), but they ran all over us and opened up the defense for a below average passing QB to complete some passes down field. The option type offense they run creates double team blocks at the point of attack and leaves at least one guy unblocked to option off of. Double teams and options off of unblocked guys make an OL look really good. It's nothing more than a numbers game.

With the mobile QB's, do you foresee an option attack as a major component of our offense this season? "Major" part....no. Part of the offense.....yes.

Two years ago, all the hand wringers came on this board and said we would do nothing without Frye, and we went to the MACC, won the MAC and went to a bowl game.Last year, we were way overconfident and it was a miserable year with the only bright spots being beating NCST and Miami for the first time in a long time.I don't know what to think about the upcoming year. I have a feeling we are going to see a much different offense than we saw the past two years... or that was even on display during the public's viewings of spring practice. I like our chances with a more mobile QB with an inexperienced offensive line (a QBs arm strength, mobility, accuracy under pressure and intelligence go a long way to cover OL mistakes), but I still have the same distaste for the 3-3-5 defense that we play. The big unknown in the MAC is always the quality of the rest of the league because it changes so quickly. I happen to think the MAC is on a down swing, but we'll see next year.The fun thing about sports is that you get to play the games to see who is good or not. We will have 12 games to see if we are good or not.

A few weeks ago, someone mentioned they were waiting for something with "baited" breath and I said we should not wait for things with worms in our mouth.Just for the record....the word is "bated" as to hold back in anticipation. True story....I knew someone who used the word baited instead of bated on a college paper and the professor wrote on the paper, "Are you attempting to build a better mouth trap?" It was funny then and is still funny now.I don't think we should get too worried about writing style and mistakes on a sports web page.

At this point, the University should just plan on building around any building remaining, give them no access to parking and tell the owners to go "F" themselves.There is plenty of room there now to build the stadium. Build it, drive these greedy bastards property value and businesses into the ground, and then buy the property at a discount. There should be no pussy footing around at this point. It's been long enough.

There is an old saying, "Shit or get off the pot". I think that is where Akron sports are right now. I would have never said this even three or four months ago, but I think Akron needs to seriously consider two options.Option 1 (Shit): Make a full commitment to D-1A athletics and a big time conference. Right now, we are making a half ass effort in a half ass league that gets no respect. The Big East is the answer if this is the case. C-DOA would be just more of the same. Big time money, big time exposure would assist the program financially.Option 2 (get off the pot): Declare the move of football to D-1A a failure (shouldn't be too difficult to make this case) and move back to D-1AA and beg the Gateway Conference to take us. We could get into a basketball only league for other sports and go from there. The new stadium and fieldhouse could make us a national power at the 1-AA level.Personally, I would prefer Option 1, but it requires a whole ass effort. I don't think the University, Athletic Department or the citizens of Akron are interested in putting the effort necessary (actually buying tickets to games) to be successful in a conference like the Big East. As far as Big East football. We know right now that we are almost as good as Cincinnati as we played them well last year. I would like our chances against Syracuse. We'd struggle mightily against the remainder of the conference. As far as Big East basketball, we would probably get gang raped by that conference for several years before even getting to the low level Cincinnati is right now.

Don't forget the Bellisari (sp?) missed snap that would have given us the ball on OSU's two yard line had our nose tackle been two inches taller.

I disagree.The Ohio State game is the only "pure" money game on our schedule. And I don't think you'd find a Zips player who wouldn't give their left nut for the opportunity to play is the horse shoe on fall Saturday afternoon. We played there a few years ago...nobody died. In fact, if John Fuller doesn't tip that pass into the OSU receiver's hands for a TD, that game is tight going into the 4th quarter. And that Zips team wasn't very good. A 6-6 Marshall team took OSU to the final gun a few years ago. Playing the Buckeye close can be done by a "mid major."Indiana is much closer to a mid-major than it is a BCS pimp. Ditto UConn. If we were an upper-level MAC team, those are winnable games. I don't think there's anything wrong with getting paid a few hundred thousand dollars to play teams that should be roughly your equal. I still contend the game in Cleveland is great. And it should be counted as a home game.There are aspects of the schedule I hate. Especially the weekday November games. I'll save that for another thread on another day. I don't really disagree with anything you said. MAC schools at times play the BCS schools very close. Far more often than not, non-BCS schools lose the game. I would be interested to see what the win/loss records of the non-BCS schools were against the BCS schools the past three years. If six wins is still the magic number to make a bowl, then 2-3 guaranteed losses a year with an almost fourth sure loss make it extremely difficult to make a bowl game.The problem now is that the NCAA has structured football (in all sports actually) so that the BCS schools can improve at a faster pace than the non-BCS schools. Money and exposure are weighted far more in favor of the BCS than say the MAC and they will draw better players because of it. For example, the reduction of scholarships a few years ago improved many non-BCS teams. However, the BCS teams had the resources to improve their scouting and recruiting becoming more efficient than the non-BCS teams (they have fewer scholarships to waste so they reduced wasted scholarship). Now their talent level is accelerating faster than ours even though our talent level is improving. It's like changing the tax code...you can change it, but people with money and a good accountant find other ways around it.Akron must play OSU, IU and UCONN, all BCS schools and all on the road next season. I'll bet you double or nothing on the six pack of Yuengling you still owe me that UofA goes 0-3 in all of these games. It's one thing to compete, it's another thing to win.

You have just summed up the history of UofA sports history in one sentence. Nobody is listening. I would love for one of the posters on this board who is really good at researching things (attention DrZ) to look up and see what the actual ratings were for the game yesterday. I mean actual listeners. On second thought, don't...we don't want to do the radio station's work for them. If they find out how low it is, they may not broadcast again.Athletic Directors get away with poor results here because unfortunately very few around the area even care.In terms of the schedule, I have said before that we are limited as to what D-1A teams we can get to come to the Rubber Bowl when there are only a small amount of paying customers. Teams are better off playing a BCS team and getting their ass kicked than coming to the Rubber Bowl and committing financial suicide. The only game Mack could have influenced at all was the CMU game at the end of the season. This is the game where he dropped the ball. We should be playing EMU instead. Other than that, the 12 game schedule does what it was intended to do....prostitute the mid-majors to our pimps in the BCS schools.

I didn't hear the interview. Actually, I had completely forgotten the spring game was not the last day of practice so I missed everything. Who was he talking about when he said "THEY"?

GP1....for the same reason we wanted Charlie to go to the Browns. We want to have more opportunities to see him play. I wanted Frye to go to the Browns, but not for this reason. I had seen enough.Plus, he's able to come to Akron more often. Don't you think it helps for college kids to get visits from their ex-teamate that is now in the NFL?No. Most kids are more concerned about 100 different things other than whether or not a former player now in the NFL comes around.Having a former Zip who becomes a pro playing close to Akron has a number of advantages.Frye playing for the Browns has done nothing to help the program that I can see. Jason Taylor, Victor Green, Dwight Smith and possibly even Chase Blackburn have added more noterity to the program than Frye has.But I understand your point about not wanting him playing on a crappy team.It's more than just playing for a crappy team. Look outside. There are any number of NFL teams he could play for where he could be sitting around his swimming pool right now instead of living through yet another miserable winter and spring in NE Ohio.

Alleman is a good guy. Why would anyone want him to play in a dead end like Cleveland? That team is on a one way trip to nowhere.I hope Alleman gets picked up by a Super Bowl contender so he can have some fun playing for a successful team.

A little bird told me. From the many many many posts I have posted on this board, I have never really posted about a recruit....basically because the whole debate over recruiting is borring. I would not post about this unless I had some good information. In the end I could very well be wrong, but today I feel good about what I know.People can agree or disagree about JD's coaching ability, but he has shown an ability to bring in and develop good wide receivers at UofA and PITT. I will defer to his judgement on this player. If we are not really recruiting him, there must be a good reason for it.Take care everyone.

The name of the kid going to WVU I'm thinking about is Gardner. Some of you guys can find things real quick.....it takes me 45 minutes on Google and three phone calls to find things out. The phone call was the key.Does anyone want to bet that Trey is playing for Syracuse in a couple years? How much would you be willing to bet?

Good find, but this isn't the kid. I looked at their team photo from last year and maybe #31 is the kid that signed with WVU...there are no names with the photos. I have no idea how to look it up though. I am very close with someone who knows the program well and he mentioned they have a kid going to WVU and it was not this Fairchild kid.

There was no WR that signed a scholarship to OSU from last years Coffman team. I believe the other kid was possibly #44 and he was a LB/FB. He signed to go to WVU. I was disappointed that we did not recruit this kid because he could have been a really good MAC player and I think he may get lost in the pack at WVU.The main point is that in almost no cases is there a third best player on any high school team that would be a big contributor to a D-1A team.The dynamics of recruiting are very complicated. I'm sure the coaching staff knows full well about this kid and maybe they feel they have enough players at his position. God knows we have brought in a bunch of WRs in the past couple of years. Who knows? Columbus has not ever been a hot recruiting area for the Zips. Probably the last really good player we recruited out of Columbus was Butchie Washington. I don't think the success or failure of the Zips will depend upon whether Trey plays for the Zips or not. Trey is a good kid from a good family and he will not be playing for Akron.

I saw this team play three times last season. Trey is a good player and a good person, but if we miss out on this one we will be ok and so will he. I wouldn't lose too much sleep over this one.There were at least two kids on the team last season that were better than Trey. I believe one is going to WVU on a full scholarship (Akron did not make much of a run at him). The other kid is the left tackle on offense and will be a senior next season (can't think of his name). 6' 6" and 305 lbs...he already looks like an NFL player and he still has room to grow. He has already declared he is going to OSU and without injury, he will be in the NFL some day. Probably the best high school offensive lineman I have ever seen in person. Some say he is the best Ohio offensive lineman since Orland Pace. He is shocking athletic for his size.