GP1

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.

This kid will be going to a MAC school other than Akron.

I think I know where you are going with this, and I agree.When I was growing up, there was a certain group of people at my church and school that would say, "If you took the best Catholic kids around the country and made a football team out of them, nobody could beat them." Translation: "I'm uncomfortable with the amount of black kids playing football because I'm a narrow minded hick, so I've made up this fantasy in order to feel better about my racist views without having to outwardly express them." I'm not pointing the finger at anyone on the board, but if the shoe fits......I found it interesting that Harvey was the first player on the board that I can remember to have himself AND his family attacked on this board. Shame on the board!Whatever happens to Harvey happens. I'll be at the games regardless. Let's hope he returns to the team to be a productive player though.

I don't want to speak for CK, but if you read his post closely he is not saying the Athletic Department should initiate talk about problems. They are actually doing the right thing by addressing Harvey problem without really addressing it. It is the media's responsibility to investigate these types of problems, demand answers and then report those answers to the public. That is not what is getting done.I've had the chance to meet several football players in person. To a man, they appeared to be good people. For every one Harvey, there are probably 20-25 good guys who cause no problem what-so-ever. Personally, I don't think that one off the field fight that happened early last fall signals a team wide problem.

While I don't agree with everything he wrote, it was kind of funny at points. If you can't laugh at yourself, who can you laugh at?I had forgotten about Charlie Frye Day . I guess that's what happens when you try to block those years out. I guess I'm not the only person who thought we could have started just about anyone his first two years and won 8 games (1 of the 8 was against a I-AA team).

Dru is an exceptionally hard worker. Because of this, he will do well in any job he takes after college, with the exception of being an NBA player.Send me your resume DJ, there are always companies looking for someone like you.

One of the big things about spring practice is the change of some players from being average to being able to become good productive players. Mr. Harvey had better watch out, because some young guy might step up and take his job away from him (if he has one left).With the exception of a death in the family, or a severe sickness in the family, there is no reason for him not to be at school. Unless he wants to transfer.Harvey is an important player to this team and JD should give him until the beginning of May to register for summer classes. If he does not register by that time, JD should tell him to hit the bricks.Stop feeling sorry for yourself Mr. Harvey, nobody else feels sorry for you.

I have heard the same thing. If it happens, Frye will become the #2 QB and Anderson will be cut. They will pick up some complete scrub to be #3. Also, if it happens, the evidence is complete that the head coach is desperate to win next season, just look at some of the dinosaurs he has picked up the past two seasons. I don't know exactly how it works, but somehow if the Browns cut Frye and another team picked him up then they would lose a draft pick.?.?. If the Browns cut him under those circumstances, I believe they don't think anyone would want him....bad news for Frye.Those who think the story on Frye is incomplete are mistaken. Frye is a sub .500 QB with a suspect arm, accuracy and intelligence. He is accurate when throwing 5 yard passes, but inaccurate throwing long passes. NFL games are won with big plays and he is not the guy to help Cleveland win. The best thing Frye does is scramble...it's too bad it is always with his back to the line.The good news for Frye is that mid season next year when Green goes down for the season, he will be the starter again if he is still with the team. Some of you have to admit that the thought of Frye starting another season for the Browns does not excite the media or fans of Cleveland.

I heard the same thing. They are raising the drinking age from 14 to 16. They figure if you are old enough to drink, you should be old enough to drive a car.

Owens was born to be a football coach indeed.........a bad football coach.How does someone like Owens even get to come within a five iron of a place called Hall of Fame?

I have to respectfully disagree. DK catches the ball in the flats, but too frequently misses with his straight arm to be an effective back out of the backfield.

Excellent statistic CK! I wonder what his yards per carry average would have been if they included the yards running toward the sideline.In terms of long runs, he does nothing to set them up. They don't just happen. If he would spend more time running between the tackles, he could break one outside once he either gets to the second level or outside.