GP1

Why do we want the guy everyone else keeps passing on? He has had a couple shots at a big chair, including here at Akron, and has not landed the deal.If we need a guy to bring in money, we at least need someone who can close a deal.

Yeah!! Its OSU fault!! I love people on here. If I have said it once, I have said it a million times......OSU has been the big school in Ohio from the beginning. They play on national tv every week. They are ranked in the top 10 every year. They play in an enormous sold out stadium every week. They play the likes of Michigan, Penn State, Michigan State, USC, Texas, etc... every year and play in big bowl games. They have names like Woody, Eddie George, Archie Griffin...blah, blah...They had 14 guys drafted in one year!!Akron has only been D1 for 20 years. We have had what?....2 or 3 winning seasons? We have been to one bowl game, which we lost to Memphis. We play in the worst conference in the country. We play teams like Can't State, Temple, Eastern Michigan, Morgan State and Buffalo every year. Up until now our stadium was a 30,000 seat decaying dump in the middle of a muddy field that we can't even sell out on a sunny day when we play our arch rival!! If we played on tv it was on ESPNU or Fox sports Ohio where nobody saw it. We haven't had as many players drafted in our history as OSU had in one year. I could go on and on.....Please....tell me why everyone should be all juiced up because we have a new stadium? You think because they live in Akron that they should abandon their generations of OSU fandome to root for Akron? My answer is why? Until we give people a reason to be excited, why should they be? A stadium is a good start, but it is only a building. Until we put year after year winners on the field, nobody will care. Say what you want, but that is the honest truth of the matter. We are excited because we went to Akron and we are sick of hearing about how we stink and are irrelevant. You can't make people excited and you can't make people care. Well, you CAN make them care. Its called winning and beating teams people know.Also, don't give me this "go away" speech. I dish out a grand a year for Akron season tickets. I am excited as hell for the season to start, but I am not naive enough to believe that everyone should be a Zips fan because they live in NE Ohio. I am also not blaming OSU for their success. That reminds me too much of class envy and I cant stand it.I can't really argue against the logic. In almost every metrix, OSU is probably better than UofA, but it might be important to look at other issues around OSU that may benefit UofA.1. tOSU can not beat a decent team to save their life. Fans are growing tired of this. Fans get tired of watching second tier teams.2. The talent level at tOSU is not as good as the big three conferences: PAC 10, SEC and Big 12. Fans get tired of watching second tier talent.The point is this, tOSU is putting crap on the field and if it wasn't for a steady dose of MAC teams, a horrible conference and a huge cheap shot of a UofMiami running back in the national championship game, Coach T. might just be shopping for fruit at the Upper Arlington farmers market every week with John Cooper.The product tOSU puts on the field is almost unwatchable and I think most consumers know crap when they see it. I was at the USC vs. tOSU game last year and it wasn't so much unwatchable as it was laughable. The MAC, and more specifically UofA, needs to put a quality product on the field to give the crap eating tOSU fans something to go watch that is entertaining. Most people aren't stupid enough to spend many more Saturday afternoons watching Coach T. run the ball into the line every play against really bad competition in low scoring games. I'm not saying the MAC needs to have as good of players as the Big Ten, they just need to be entertaining. I'm not saying UofA needs to win a no less than 8 games a year, that would be unrealistic. Just play good football and the fans and winning will follow.Consumers can only fool themselves for so long. Soon tOSU fans will finally admit they are a second tier team. It is fun to skip a third tier team like UofA to stay at home and watch a top tier team play if the top tier team is your favorite team. I think it is more fun to go watch a third tier team play than to stay at home to watch a second tier team like tOSU play.

I have no idea how seat selection works so maybe I shouldn't type this, but it looks concerning to me that there are so few seats sold so far. What am I missing?

I have season tickets to Wake games and there is no beer sold in the stadium. Lots of wine and cheese in the parking lot before the game, but none in the stadium. No ACC school allows booze sales at their games. I went to the ACC BB championship in Charlotte a couple of years ago and sadly enough there were not beer sales at that event either.If I thought the kids wouldn't get out of hand, I would be all for it. Kids will be kids though and frequently bad behavior follows. If they need to drink that badly, they should just do what I suggested before and have their girlfriends stuff mini-bottles in their bras before the game.One of my co-workers a Wake Grad said there were sales at Wake games. I'll mention this too him when I see him at work today.At one time they may have. I have only had season tickets the past two seasons.Of course they should allow beer not only for the monetary benefit to the school but let's face it you can go to Iraq and give your life for your country and you can't drink a beer at college footbal game there's something wrong with that picture...They can use the profits from the beer sales to support the public relations campaign, including billboards, they will have to run after drunken students shower the field with objects.I'm also glad to see we are fighting in Iraq to protect the right to drink beer at football games.....I'm sure it is somewhere in the Constitution.

Or much thinking at all......

I dare anyone on this board to surf the net to see who is playing back-up QB with each NFL team. When you do, please notify everyone on this board of which happened first:1. Vomit2. LaughterBrett Favre could actually start in the NFL next year. The guy stinks.Frye will be competing against Bruce Gradkowski for back-up. My team, the Steelers, has Charlie (Where's my wheelchair) Batch and Dixon (for crying out loud, I don't even know his first name). If Roethlisberger was hurt for the season the first game, they would be lucky to win four games all season. The point is this. A lot of negative things get written about Frye and he deserves every one of them. However, considering the level of "talent" at back-up QB in the NFL, there is certainly a place for him there. Hell, half the starters stink.I say good for Charlie. It is better than a real job and considering the state of the economy, it is at least a job.

I have season tickets to Wake games and there is no beer sold in the stadium. Lots of wine and cheese in the parking lot before the game, but none in the stadium. No ACC school allows booze sales at their games. I went to the ACC BB championship in Charlotte a couple of years ago and sadly enough there were not beer sales at that event either.If I thought the kids wouldn't get out of hand, I would be all for it. Kids will be kids though and frequently bad behavior follows. If they need to drink that badly, they should just do what I suggested before and have their girlfriends stuff mini-bottles in their bras before the game.One of my co-workers a Wake Grad said there were sales at Wake games. I'll mention this too him when I see him at work today.At one time they may have. I have only had season tickets the past two seasons.

I have season tickets to Wake games and there is no beer sold in the stadium. Lots of wine and cheese in the parking lot before the game, but none in the stadium. No ACC school allows booze sales at their games. I went to the ACC BB championship in Charlotte a couple of years ago and sadly enough there were not beer sales at that event either.If I thought the kids wouldn't get out of hand, I would be all for it. Kids will be kids though and frequently bad behavior follows. If they need to drink that badly, they should just do what I suggested before and have their girlfriends stuff mini-bottles in their bras before the game.

Beer is good....... Beer before a college football game is good....... Beer in a college football stadium with potential underage drinking being reported is bad..... Beer could cause an ugly scene..... No beer in the stadium. Let the girls sneak it in their bras like they do at every other school. One mini-bottle at a time. Beer after a college football game is good..........

I'd love the see the out clause MSU has in the contract for the game at Can't.

Moving the BB tournament out of Cleveland would be exactly the type of momentum squelching "growth" the MAC has prided itself upon since 1946. I have no doubt this could seriously happen.....

I'd be interested to know the parties involved in building a downtown bb arena. If it is joint venture with the City, no thanks. They need a bb arena, not a multi-purpose arena that is a horrible place to watch a game. If it is heaping more bond debt on top of the bonds they sold for InfoCision Stadium, no thanks. If the Univeristy can not support what it currently has. The State could one day have to take over the University, no thanks. I know the JAR is awful, but too bad. I don't want to have degrees from The University of General Motors. When a city runs out of ideas on how to develop economically, they throw out building yet another stadium. I would say IF they are deciding to do this in Akron.....think harder.

The MAC does it all the time. It must be smart.Building since 1946........The only advantage CUSA and other similar conferences have is they have not been around as long as the MAC so their record of stupidity is not as long. Maybe we can merge with one of those other conferences and bring our average years of stupidity down. I'm sure there are people around the country dying for a MAC/CUSA merger. They could name the conference..."The Worlds Biggest Train Wreck (TWBTW)"Even gamblers don't care about the merger. They will gamble on anything so any Tuesday night game in front of an empty stadium is fine for them.Someone has yet to tell me how two bad conferences merging into one really large crappy conference makes a good conference...... Please help me out someone. Spare us the media coverage....nobody is paying attention. Spare us better competition.....the competition will remain equally as bad.

I have news for some of you. Buffalo is not a big media market. That is why the Bills can't wait to flee upstate New York like the remainder of the population. Buffalo is a small city that is getting smaller by the plant closings and better opportunities elsewhere.

Talk about going from bad to worse. How does adding an already bad team to a bad conference make the conference better?

It's the coaching staffs job to turn around a "Losers mentality". When a player comes here he doesn't bring it with him, most who make it to this level have been "Winners". We have had three different coaches in the past 20 years. None have been able to turn it around. At what point is it no longer the coaches fault and the fault of the players?Coaches show players how to play and they call the plays. Each player on this team individually needs to play better at critical times in games. Coaches get the blame, and that is part of the job, but the real blame falls on the shoulders of the players. Players get coaches fired. There is too much talent on this team to continue to lose. "Enough is enough!" In fact, teams love year slogans, "enough is enough" should be the slogan this year.

Offense vs. Defense is always a good debate.The bottom line is this. It really doesn't matter if the Zips have not had enough losing. At some point, everyone on the field has to say "enough is enough" and go out and execute and win games. The talent is there and it has been for years. A losing attitude is killing this team and has been killing this program for many years now. Our problem is not talent and not coaching, it is the losers mentality.

Well, the Zips have had numerous school record-breaking offenses and players going back to the Butchie Washington era. We have exactly one championship that we were very, very fortunate to win. Overall, our defense during that time has been generally bad to mediocre. Coincidence? Not on your life.Owens teams always put up big numbers on offense, except when it mattered. It's more than numbers, it is when you put the number up that matter. It's about winners vs. losers. We tend to have players, I don't care what side of the ball they play on, that don't perform late in games so we lose. We will be losers until the players decide they want to be winners and do all the right things at the end of the game. There is a fine line between winning and losing and we almost always seem to be on the losing side.

Actually, the adage defense wins championships exists to make the kids who play defense and not good enough to play offense feel good about themselves.Offense is the key to any sport with the exception of baseball where one player, the pitcher, can dominate a game. Offense puts pressure on the other team to score points if they take a lead. Offense puts the other team in bad field position. Offense breaks momentum with big plays. Offense gets the lead early and then holds it with a good running game. Offense puts a team in the lead and then forces the other team to have an unbalanced offense leaning towards passing which makes the defense look good because they know what is coming.If a team can run a balanced offense, even an average offense can make a good defense look bad because the defense has to guess at what is coming.Michael Irvin said it on his radio show not long ago. "People can say all they want, but points win games."The Steelers had the best defense in the NFL last year and it fell apart in the last five minutes of the Super Bowl only to be saved by the Steelers offense. It is fiction that defense wins championships. Defense wins championships if the offense puts them in a position where they know what is coming from the offense.

I don't disagree with anything you said, I just want to add to it. We need good players making big plays WHEN THE GAME IS ON THE LINE. We have good players that make good plays. I've been saying it for years, we need a winning attitude. It is now up to the PLAYERS to win some games.

Let's just hope it doesn't become SNAFU Stadium........

Maybe.... "The Executation Chamber on Exchange"....let's just hope we are not the ones being executed weekly.Or..... "The Backyard on Brown"Or.....SUFO

Yankee Stadium was called "The house that Ruth built".Ours could be called, "The house that scamming little old ladies out of $25 at a time in the name of religion built."

I was the youngest of six children. When my oldest sibling went to college, there were tears from my mother. The day I went to college was one of the happiest days of my parents life and it wasn't because they were so proud of me or even remotely upset I was leaving the nest . The car only slowed a little as they ("they" meaning my sister and my mother....Dad didn't even make the trip.....still makes me laugh today) threw me and my clothes out the door in the dorm parking lot.

What if the Cavs come back from behind and win the current series and go on to win the World Championship? I think there is still a VERY good chance of the Cavs beating Orlando in six games (even though I brutalize Browns fans because they are such a stupid lot, I really like the Cavs).Anyhow, comparing low level programs to professional teams seems desperate. Remember, eventually people are going to go watch the games. Watching the NFL, regardless of how bad the Browns can be at times, is still far more entertaining than watching low level D-1A college football. Cleveland fans are so paranoid and insecure most of the time, this marketing strategy would backfire anyhow. I'd rather see the MAC make itself more entertaining within itself than worry about comparing it to professional teams.