GP1

A kid going to Tiffin from Steubenville should not be a surprise in the future. Dave Walkosky is the coach at Tiffin and I have known him since high school. Dave was a star at Steubenville CC in high school and lettered four years at Toledo. He coached at Toledo for a long time too and I think his wife is a professor at UT. Steubenville was part of Dave's recruiting area when he was at UT.If we are recruiting guys who end up at Tiffin though, we are recruiting the wrong people.

Interesting thought. Smith is a 4-3 cover 2 guy who might not fit in at Pittsburgh. Smith will contribute next year somewhere, but he may not be a good fit for the Steelers. Could someone please check to see if DomHix is a free agent this year? If I had to decide between Smith or Hix on the Steelers, Hix would be an immediate improvement over Nate Washington. Washington is a free agent this year and they could easily replace him. With an aging Ward and Sweed who seems to have forgotten that part of his job description is catching the football, Hix would be a great fit next year and in the future. The best Hix will ever be is a #2 receiver and he could fit that bill for a long time in Pittsburgh. The more I think about it, the more I like the idea if he is indeed a free agent. He would also be a great kick returner which the Steelers really need to improve upon.I'd rather the Steelers sign a white guy personally. Anybody else agree??There is going to be a robust competition for punter next year.

Interesting hire.Good offensive coordinator, questionable head coach. Being a former head coach will give him some instant credibility with the players. The rumor was always that the players hated him, but I think that is a good thing. Show me a players coach and I'll show you a losing coach. I guess I'm leaning toward this is a good hire.He went to the MAC Championship as a head coach. He must have been doing something right. But then again, if you can squeeze out six wins in the MAC, there is a good chance you could make the championship game.

Interesting thought. Smith is a 4-3 cover 2 guy who might not fit in at Pittsburgh. Smith will contribute next year somewhere, but he may not be a good fit for the Steelers. Could someone please check to see if DomHix is a free agent this year? If I had to decide between Smith or Hix on the Steelers, Hix would be an immediate improvement over Nate Washington. Washington is a free agent this year and they could easily replace him. With an aging Ward and Sweed who seems to have forgotten that part of his job description is catching the football, Hix would be a great fit next year and in the future. The best Hix will ever be is a #2 receiver and he could fit that bill for a long time in Pittsburgh. The more I think about it, the more I like the idea if he is indeed a free agent. He would also be a great kick returner which the Steelers really need to improve upon.

This is an important question. A more important question is, If they left, would they get more playing time somewhere else?.?I'll use another Steelers analogy since I am still in a bit of a Super Bowl after-glow. The Steelers are full of a bunch of guys who could only be good playing in Pittsburgh. Put them on another team and they become very average/bad players because their skill set probably does not fit most other teams.Aren't the Zips this team? A group of guys who are specifically recruited to play in a system suited for their skill set. If they transfer, they become lesser players than they would have with Akron.Is there enough playing time to go around? In the minds of the players, probably not. That isn't a bad thing though. Keeping the players hungry for more PT is important in a competitive atmosphere.

Exactly! When the game is on the line, the QB MUST perform.I'm sorry, but when you have a 2 score lead late in the third quarter early in the fourth, and you lose the game, that's not the on the QB it's on the Defense. BGSU 23 points given up in the 4th quarter.Ohio loss, no turnovers.Both those game lost because of poor defensive play. Buffalo game lost on a bad handoff in the 4th OT. The only reason the game went to OT? Solid play for Jacquemain. Because the defense sure never stopped Willy or Starks.But yeah we'll just keep blaming poor QB play on the losses like typical NEO sports fans.Did you see the Super Bowl this year? The best defense in the NFL had their pants pulled down with 2:30 to go in the game and the QB had to bail them out. Like it or not, it is always about the QB in football. He is the guy who touches the ball every play.

Exactly! When the game is on the line, the QB MUST perform.

This is especially true in coaching. The coaching profession is full of good coaches who got fired at one point or another. Had JD stuck around Pitt for one more year, he would have been fired when Harris was fired. It is the nature of the beast.The Broncos coach was fired this year. He had won multiple Super Bowls. Does that make him a bad coach? Toledo Tom has MAC Championships under his belt, along with a few thousand dollars of Tony Pakos but that is another thread. Is he a bad coach because he basically got fired?Sometimes fans think a winning coach is a guy who holds some secret knowledge that other coaches don't have. That is not the case. The vast majority of coaches basically know the same things. It is more the case that the difference between an employed coach and an unemployed coach is the players. I've said it before and I'll say it again. 20+ years of losing has resulted in a program that has a losing attitude. Some of you can think whatever you want, but a coach is not going to make a player a winner. All a coach can do is teach a player to play. At some point, one or a group of players is going to make the program a winner when they find that attitude within themselves. Until then, the revolving door of NE Ohio coaches will continue.Some of you can rest assured though. JD is gone one way or another after next year. They can actually be a very good team. If they are, he needs to leave and go to bigger and better opportunities. If they don't, he needs to leave in order to freshen up the program. Six years at UofA, or any MAC coach, is enough.

2-3 JC players = "all those JC players". Yikes, the lack of perspective on this board is mind boggling sometimes. Assuming none of the JC players graduated after last year, that brings the total on the team to around 7. Seven is less than 10% of the team. 8 is still less than 10% of the team.I know a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy that said some guy told him Santa is real. I guess that means Santa is real.

Win 20 games regardless of what happens in the MAC Tournament. Keeping up a pace of 20 win seasons says the team is consistently good....not great, but good. Over the long haul, good is a good place to be. Good things happen to you when you are good.

No, they really can't.

Thanks for posting the videos DrZ. Especially the video of the loser Browns fan at the Christmas Eve blow out. Watching that never gets old. I was at that game and stayed until the last second ticked off. I sat in the club section and my wife and I were the only two people left in our entire section when the last second ticked off. What we see on this video is not cause for a multiple game suspension or even an ejection. Rough play? Yes. Penalty worthy? Yes. The real fine should be for the punter who ran around the goings on like a scared little girl. As far as I am concerned, #47 is a little bitch for allowing himself to be abused like that. The only thing missing was him falling into the UFC male on male sex position.It takes a special kind of coward to hit a man while he's down. No matter who your favorite team is you cant deny that. It sort of reminds me of this:Looked to me like Harrison was doing his job. The play is still going on in the background and Harrison is aggressively blocking his man during the play. With the exception of the punch (and a lame punch at that), it looks to be a legal play to me. Harrison gets paid to play football from whistle to whistle. His job is to block #47 during that time period. #47's job is to get up off of the ground and run down the field to tackle the guy that plays on Harrison's team. One guy did his job, the other guy failed at his job. It's the NFL, not some pee wee league where everyone gets a chance and nice guys do indeed finish first. The NFL is a league for savage beasts who get paid to savagely beat up on the guys they are playing against. Harrison understands that. He is the savage beast every team wishes they had.

Thanks for posting the videos DrZ. Especially the video of the loser Browns fan at the Christmas Eve blow out. Watching that never gets old. I was at that game and stayed until the last second ticked off. I sat in the club section and my wife and I were the only two people left in our entire section when the last second ticked off. What we see on this video is not cause for a multiple game suspension or even an ejection. Rough play? Yes. Penalty worthy? Yes. The real fine should be for the punter who ran around the goings on like a scared little girl. As far as I am concerned, #47 is a little bitch for allowing himself to be abused like that. The only thing missing was him falling into the UFC male on male sex position.

I think there's something to this comment.See also (perhaps soon): Akron Men's Basketball - Defense. Individually, not all of these guys are exemplary one on one defenders (Conyers & Linhart the noted exceptions). As a team however, there have been flushes of phenomenal defense .. and it's showing up statistically .. and in the win column.Nice post GP1.Good points.Discipline runs throughout the Steelers organization. The owner knows what he wants his team to do and demands it throughout the organization. He could really care less what they say about him in the media or on web pages. He is more than willing to cut a fan favorite (see Joey Porter) if he feels the player is almost past his prime (they replaced Porter with Defensive Player of the Year Harrison). He drafts young players behind veterans who may be getting long in the tooth and he does not care if the veteran likes it or not. He built his team years ago, now he maintains the greatness through keeping his identity in tact. Moving this to Zips MBB. We all know how much I hate the talk of "building" on this board. As far as the MBB team is concerned, KD has built, not is building, a good program. The program is always going to function in degrees of "good". They will not become average and they will probably never become great. Good is an excellent place to be over the long haul (see the Steelers). Right now, the Zips miss that one player, the Roethlisberger type guy, who can bring it all together. Zeke is a HS All American. I expect him to immediately move the program to a championship contender again next year. If the Zips were an NFL team this year, they would be considered a playoff contender, but not a team that could win the Super Bowl (the Eagles are a team like this). Next year, they should be a "Super Bowl contender" as far as college basketball goes with Zeke on the team. When fans think of the future, they should not think in terms of building. Building means there is a lot missing. Zips basketball fans should think in terms of "maintaining". The Zips need to maintain a team that can compete for the championship year in and year out. Zips fans should understand this and accept that there will be a year here or there (two years ago the Steelers didn't come close to making the playoffs) where the team does not meet expectations but they still function in the "good" range of teams. Over the long haul in the MAC, good is good......great is unreasonable......average is unacceptable.Speaking of the value of discipline. When Warner fumbled on the last play of the game (the NFL confirmed yesterday that it was a fumble), the Steelers were so well coached and disciplined that they sprinted their offense on the field and got off the snap at the ready to play signal before they could signal for a replay. NBC almost missed the play showing the replay of the Warner fumble. Most entire teams would have run onto the field resulting in a penalty. The Steelers played to the end of the 60th minute and secured the victory. That's discipline. That's the Steelers organization.

What do you mean? A keg of Natural Light can't be that expensive. She wouldn't want any dinner because she wouldn't want to take up any beer space. Try to think of the positives.

I beg to differ on this comment. You can trade me your not-so-talented team for mine anyday.Your team is very talented. They just pick players with great talent that would be better playing in another system. They have an identity problem more than anything else. Your team has far too much talent to miss the playoffs. The blame really falls on the owner who probably can't admit that running an NFL team is not as easy as he thought it would be and he is in over his head. I guess I may be too hard on the Steelers talent level. They probably have a very high average talent level on the team. They keep that average up with a lot of "good" players, but not if any "great" players (with the exception of Ben). Too many teams get 3-4 great players and surround them with bums and they can't understand why they can not win.

There is only one statistic you need to look at with Ben. That statistic is wins. When the game is on the line, he comes through.I am a Steelers fan and I watch every game start to finish. They are not that talented of a team, but when you put it all together with a winner at the helm, you end up winning. Santanio Holmes would not be the #1 receiver on a lot of teams. Hines Ward is slow and old. Nate Washington only catches half the passes that hit his hands. Sweed........he is just awful.The Steelers won 12 games with Mewelde Moore starting at rb for a lot of the season. He was a cast off from the Vikings.Ben has 9 more years left on his contract. If he continues to win the way he does, the HOF is certain.

Maybe the replay booth saw that when he was hit, the ball came out before his hand went forward. Maybe the only reason the ball went forward is it was knocked out of his hand before going forward, landed on his arm and went forward because it was knocked loose from his hand prior to going forward.Oh well, at least Warner has the best wife money can buy.

Let me say this first. Ben Roethlisberger is a winner.Bradshaw to Swann. Montana to Taylor. Roethlisberger to Santanio H. If you look at any five year statistic worth anything, Ben is in the all time top five list. Two Super Bowls. A huge playoff winning percentage. One last minute win after another. At a minumum, he is only behind Brady in QBs of his generation. Save me the Manning nonsense too. No QB in the NFL is doing less with more than P. Manning.Did Ben earn a spot in the HOF yesterday? The pass to Santanio was magical at worst and the stuff legends are made of.

Most of you Browns fans would give your right nut to have Harrison on your worthless, losing team. Harrison has more fight in him than the entire Browns team. That's how you win Super Bowls and Defensive Player of the Year Award in the NFL.Suspended multiple games for punching one of your precious white guys in the back? Give me a break. Some of you are just stupid beyond belief. I was in Pittsburgh for work a couple of months ago and went to a Penguins game with my brother. We had tickets in the igloo club and Harrison was sitting a couple of rows in front of us. Between periods, Harrison hung out in the club (didn't have a single drink) and signed every autograph and took every picture people asked for. He was friendly to everyone. Didn't seem like a thug to me.

This is now a little off-topic, but something is definitely wrong with midwest football. Our teams are slow and boring to watch. The Big 11 is even more painful to watch than the MAC, IMHO.Even though I am partially an OSU fan, I WILL agree to that. Considering the amount of talent that comes out of this area, youd think the entire conference would be better, but either a. the talent is being recruited out of this region to the the South and West, or B. the talent is being recruited locally, but the systems they are playing in flat-out don't work.It should be noted, however, that the OSU/Texas bowl game this year was a very close game throughout, even though everyone figured Texas would just entirely dismantle OSU. Considering that Texas was the other team that really had a legit chance to go to the national championship last year, had they not been snubbed out of the Big12 championship, I would say OSU held their own against a far superior team, unlike Penn State... Alas, this isnt relevant, so I will shut up now. But yes, I would much rather watch a MAC game than a Big10 game.I think there is a third possibility; let's call it "c" for consistency. Perhaps Ohio and much of the Midwest, while still a "decent" region for prospects, isn't the "hotbed" it once was. It's a simple case of demographics IMHO.I'm absolutely convinced it is demographics. As people move from the midwest, there are fewer people with children high school football age and younger compared to other regions. Pretty soon, all that will be left in the mw are nursing homes as young people flee for opportunity other places.I've said it before and I'll say it again. HS football in Ohio is a shell of what it used to be. In a lot of areas of the country, there is spring football for high school. The kids are finely tuned by the time fall comes around and they have a lot more experience and coaching under their belts when they graduate HS.There is a trickle down effect here. As the Big Ten gets worse, so does the MAC. 5-6 years ago, both of these conferences were much better than they are now. Basketball is the same way. The key for UofA is to maintain good teams and dirgress slower than the rest of the league.

Not to defend anything, but the pass interference penalty was real. The cheap shot Will Allen took on McGahee in the fourth quarter taking him out of the game was the reall play that won it for OSU.Tressel plays a hefty dose of MAC teams every year. Why shouldn't he be recruiting MAC players . Hell, before too long, the Big Ten will be just as bad as the MAC.

#67 John Buddenberg

ESPNU just replayed the VA Tech vs. Pitt game from 2003. I watched it because I was at the game and it was the second coldest game I have ever been to next to the 2005 Can't game.While watching it, I noticed Pitt had a back up QB on the sideline you all might be familiar with. His name was Luke Getsy. Some of you may remember him as former MAC champion QB from Akron, Luke Getsy.They also had a defensive end that played quite a bit during the game named Andy Alleman. Some of you may remember him as former MAC champion offensive lineman from Akron and now Miami Dolphin, Andy Alleman. Moving to offense was a great move for Andy. He really wasn't a very good defensive end and would probably be working a real job right now had he stayed at Pitt.I just thought it was kind of funny and would share it.

AMEN! I was a senior in HS in 1986. I've lived through over 20 years of "building". I sure would like to see some results.