GP1

The schedule is what it is. As far as I am concerned, the most important thing the Zips have to do is win the MAC East. This schedule is favorable for them running the table on the MAC East, which helps with tie breakers. It starts the heart of the MAC schedule with a a week off prior to playing Miami and then a series of home games with traditionally good teams and bad teams on the road. It's all about winning the MAC East.If we are going to have a difficult schedule, let's have one in a year when we have a lot of veterans who can rise up to the challenge of a tough schedule. Historically, veteran teams do well in the MAC and I think our experience is going to benefit us greatly.As far as Pluto, he write three types of articles: 1) The story about the little engine who could, 2) A feel good story about a crappy team/player we should all like because they are good people, and 3) A column where he babbles on and on with himself trying to talk himself into liking a team or player that falls into story 1 or 2. Since the Zips are no longer a crappy team and he was not having a fictional conversation with himself, this story falls into category 1.

It depends on how you frame your marketing pitch. If it is framed in the purpose of buying books, you would be right in saying that it will not work. If it is somehow framed in the purpose of helping students graduate from UofA, then it has a shot of producing good results.

That's the spirit zippy42! One of the diffculties UofA faced in the past was summer scholarship money for the student athletes (Frye even talked about this at the golf outing). I don't know if this is still a need or not, but don't think for a second that an inability to fund summer scholarships, or any other potential need, could not be used against Akron come recruiting time. Competition is tough out there and we need money to compete.You're exactly right! The Athletic Department runs on money and this is a great way to help raise it. Residential fundraising campaigns traditionally have done very well for charitable organizations. For years, The March of Dimes has had their number one fundraiser being the Mothers March, which is this type of campaign (assuming this is the same type of residential campaign). Some of you may have participated. It was so successful that many other non-profits successfully attempted these types of residential campaigns. I like the idea of changing the name. If people know exactly what they are giving to, they are more likely to give.Please participate if you can.Hats off to the Athletic Department for trying something new. I have a feeling this is going to work out.

Who thinks this way? The season hasn't started and a fan doesn't want to win the MAC championship? The MAC champion plays in the MCB and the GMAC gets a MAC or WAC team to play a CUSA team. There could be a scenario where the MAC champion plays in another bowl but has that happened? I want Akron to play in the MCB untill the league kicks us out from sheer frustration. msopher has had too much atmosphere, someone give him oxygen. ps. Why doesn't the mac champs emoticon work? It sends out errors. Are you sure the MAC Champion automatically gets the MCB? I thought they did not send a MAC team two years in a row, but I'm not certain.

Jackson, MS? Why not just rob a bank and go to jail? He would be in a better place.The only thing worth going to in Jackson is a restaurant called Schimmel's. It's a really nice place right next to the Egg Bowl. Second best red snapper I have ever eaten next to Earnest's Orleans in Shreveport, LA.I should start doing a restaurant review for the cities UofA travels to so the fans on ZipsNation know where to go to eat a good meal. I sure do like to eat a good meal.

We need more fans like you Capt.

OK, you guys are starting to sway my opinion. My biggest problem is that my wife is an accountant and it is almost impossible for her to take time off during year end. I'd still rather play in Detroit or Toronto anyhow.I don't know how much interest there will be on NFL Wild Card Weekend. The NFL seems to suck the air out of anything going on around it.

I didn't know that we had such powerful people posting on this board, but I understand with us playing 2 games in Detroit this past year. It is obvious to me that GP1 is really Bill Ford Jr. Let me extend you an invitation to the Michigan Chapter of the Akron Zips Fan Club! If I was Ford Jr., I would say something similar to "We are now going to build cars people want to drive."(I'm not sure if he said that or the GM Chair, but either could have said it.)It would go something like....."We are trying to build a football team people actually want to go see. So pack your bags and move to Cincinnati and help build the next Gremlin."I'm actually getting warmed up for my post following the next person to leave for Cincinnati. It will be particularly mean spirited.

They're after everything else we have around here. Oct. 7 we'll have something for them! My advice to anyone working in the Athletic Department that would rather be in Cincinnati than Akron is as follows. It is the same advice I give to the people who work for me.On Monday.....no, today, polish up your resume, pack up all of you sh!t in your office and get the Hell out. If you don't want to be here, we don't want you here. Those of you who want to be here, thank you for your dedication.

It would be easier, but far less gratifying. Besides, I think it is considered a mercy killing. Going to K ent is like being hooked on cocaine. It will kill you eventually. But I suppose the coke head will at least have his/her pride. Mercy killing is good.....I was thinking more in terms of anticipating the punch line of a good joke. You know, the Can't student/graduate is walking down the steps one by one slowly, thinking this may be the one time it really makes it without falling........and then BAM......it falls and cracks it's head on the steps.

http://www.al.com/sports/mobileregister/in...5760.xml&coll=3Since our conference and all of us may be impacted by this, I just wanted to post it. Is there anyone out there excited about a January 7 bowl game? I'll throw a fit about this later after I see all of your imput. It makes almost no sense on almost every level.

Does anyone have this ESPN.com article and the ability to post it on this board? For whatever reason, I can't get into it. Thanks in advance for any help.

Balki,I just noticed the Can't comment on your signature. Why shove one down the steps? Wouldn't it be easier and less incriminating to wait for them to fall on their own?

That's the spirit Z-P.If the rest of you want a good program, want coaches to make good money and you want more than one Championship you have to give to the school. You can't be cheap and have nice things.

ESPN.com says that Getsy has 17 school passing records. Does anyone know what they are or even some of them? All records are important, but are they meaningful records? For example, most times sacked in a game = bad. Most passing yards in a season = good.Let's see if we can keep things going in a slow summer.

I'm glad to see this for Luke. I never gave up on the kid even through the bad times.....and there were really some bad times last season. Yikes! It's too bad this board gets so silent when his name comes up. He has EARNED many well deserved pats on the back. 17 school records in one season is impressive. The guy won when we needed him to win and results are all that matter.

If you don't have it yet, a letter arrived yesterday correcting the price of the youth ticket to $6.00. The ticket office took a lot of heat here last week because of the letter. We should at least give them a thumbs up for responding to this quickly.. Just a quick note to the Athletic Department. Gary Taylor is a well known UofA alumnus in the area and owns InfoCision. He is one of the biggest employers in Summit County. Recently he gave a huge donation to the Business School to start a direct marketing studies curriculum and he attends alumni golf outings. Clearly the guy cares. Mr. Taylor is to direct marketing what Galileo was to Astronomy....Einstein was to Physics....Adam Smith was to Economics.........and quite frankly, what GP1 is to web posters (I couldn't resist). It wouldn't hurt to ask him to review your direct marketing pieces over lunch. I bet he would take a little time to give some advice. The guy is too smart at direct marketing not to use his knowledge if you can.Have a good day everyone.

I could care less what you and Mike say, I stand by everything I wrote.

Certainly the ultimate responsibility falls to the athletic department when the buck stops, but I do find it interesting that the athletic department could organize a trip with little notice that went off very well, while the Alumni Association had more time to organize the bowl trip yet screwed it up so badly. I wish there was better oversight there, because it was a real black eye for UA as a whole.Hopefully we won't see the outside provider jack prices up in subsequent years, especially for students. The free/cheap rides and tickets for students (made possible by sponsors) really helped draw crowds for the last 2 games of 2005. I'd hate to see our fickle fanbace decimated by a perceived large increase in price. I guess that's what worries me most.... I think we mostly agree. The reason the Alumni Association screwed up so badly is that it is not the job of the Alumni Association to move people to and from games, so they have no experience in doing so. That responsibility rests exclusively on the shoulders of the Athletic Department. To move that responsibility out of the hands of the Athletic Department to another area was a bad decision.The travel agency will always be able to put packages together at lower prices than what people can do on their own. For the same reason Wal Mart sells product at lower prices, they can sell trips at lower cost. Their volume helps suppliers (airlines, hotels, etc.) move product quickly and in return the suppliers give the travel agents lower prices. Let others worry. Just consume what the Zips have to offer and the program will be better for it.

It was the decision of the Athletic Department (UAM) to allow the Alumni Association to organize the MCB trip. Delegation of authority does not eliminate responsibility.Worrying about price increases is a natural response to one because doubt is a human emotion. In most cases, they don't matter. If worrying about price increases held prices, we would all still be paying ten cents for a quart of milk. When value is added to a product, people are willing to pay more for the product (at my company we use this cost-value-profit method of pricing and it works). I think this travel firm adds value to the fans and should be used if needed.What if using the travel firm freed up Athletic Department staff to go out and fund raise or sell more advertising than what they would have had they not needed to organize a trip? Why does every other school out there use travel services for away games and bowl games except us? Were we the only one out there getting it right?I'll be right back. I'm going to figure up some costs real quick.I'm back.The airfare travel package is $445 per person which includes plane ticket, hotel, tickets to the game, shuttle. If two people go, it is $890 to have someone take care of everything for you.I just priced out airfare and hotel for the game and here is what it would cost the same two people to organize the trip themselves. Two plane tickets = $230 each, $100 per night for hotel, two tickets cost $70, without the shuttle it will cost around $20 to park, rental car will be roughly $100 for the weekend, cab rides since you don't have the shuttle $50 and the game day give away will be around $50. For these two people it will cost around $900 for the trip (in reality it will probably cost more). For those Can't State graduates out there, it costs more to organize the trip yourself than to call the travel agency and have them do it for you. Don't be stupid everyone, call the travel agent and get a ticket. All things accounted for, it's just what you all want......CHEAP!

OK, I'm going to try to help everyone understand why I believe they are outsourcing the trips. They are doing it because it makes sense.Outsourcing things allows an organization to use a third party, that is better at doing something than they are, the ability to complete that task and make money doing it. I doubt it costs UofA much if anything to use a third party to provide these trips. My guess is they get a percent of what they sell. Akron makes money by not having to use it's man power to try to do something they have no expertise in doing.Last year, the University organized the MCB trip itself and it was almost a near disaster for the fans riding the bus to the game. Many showed up minutes before the game and there was a crush of people trying to hurry to get in to the game. That's no way to organize a trip or to treat your fans on game day of a bowl. The buses should have arrived in plenty of time for the fans to enjoy time at the casinos, or bars, or whatever else they wanted to do. There are companies like the one Akron is using now that do nothing but organize sports trips, and these companies should be used. I could go on about there being even more people who wanted to go to the game on a bus but once the buses were filled they didn't order more. A travel agent would have had as many buses a necessary because it is in their best interest to get as many people to the game as possible.Secondly, if the buses were a near disaster, the cheap cost of tickets and transportation to and from the game WAS a disaster for the University. They took a financial beating and in the process created a fan base that now thinks it should cost little money to go to a bowl. Akron is still struggling to get the people of Summit County to understand a free ticket to one game a year (Acme Zip) is not the direction that is good for the school. I understand why they did it, but it as a huge cost to pay to prove we could get people to a bowl game with no evidence people will respond in the future. Remember, it's hard to get people off of welfare once they get on it and they created a welfare state for any future Akron bowl. Athletic departments run on money and the new AD understands that. He really has his work cut out for him convincing the takers around Akron. If you want tickets only to any away game, you can get that through the University. If you want to just have transportation to and from NC State and a ticket, get the ticket through UofA and get your own plane ticket....that's what I'm doing. It really isn't difficult. If you want to have a nice weekend organized by someone else and all you have to do is show up to an airport, fly to the game, have someone drive you around while you get drunk and have fun, ride to and from the game, hotel taken care of for you and everything else taken care of for you, call the travel company. When you get back you will be glad you did. A couple of years ago my wife and I went to the Independence Bowl and took an all inclusive trip and it was worth every penny. The travel agency people could not have been nicer to us and eveyone there from both schools. Don't be cheap....it is a mental disorder in addition to a sin.The Athletic Department is doing the right thing with these trips. I know there are some out there who don't believe because they have never seen it done the right way before, but this is really the way to organize away games for fans.

Extremely well put, GP. You giving any seminars on cutting through the BS anytime soon? There's lots of folks that could use it. I'm guessing you're not an HR guy or ISO compliance officer.GP & Balki are skyrocketing on my ZN.O most eloquent posters rankings. I'm just getting in shape for the season. The form just smells of delegation gone bad.As a correction go my original post, the three errors on this form, so far, leave the 10 year average virtually unchanged.

Mine is automatic too. They could send me a note written by a first grader in crayon saying, 'Dear GP1, Your season tickets are due. Send $135 to the UAW Ticketing Office, JAR Arena, Akron, OH 44325", and I would send the money.If interns did indeed design the form, it's not so much interns designing the form as much as it is the adult supervision that should take place over the form. Back in the late 80s or early 90s, a horrible but popular book was written called The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People (or something), which was nothing more than a feel good book written by a self obsessed baby boomer. The delegation of responsibility is one of the ideas discussed, but the idea of delegator ownership over the results is never discussed. It's really a book about obsessing over process and not results. Ultimately, it's results that matter and not the process involved in making something. Unfortunately, the new AD is going to have to spend valuable time reviewing things like ticket forms until the adults under him show they can properly take ownership of the interns below them.

Look again. There are many options to select from including transportation.

I would be happy to lend my brilliance to the University.We frequently have the option of laughing or crying at the mistakes in the University mailers. Since I'm not Adam Morrison (Fear the Crybaby) in a winnable game with three seconds remaining, I choose to laugh.