GP1

Great discussion.Preparation (intelligence) is only half of the conjunction. The other half discusses effort. JD has brought players to Akron that not only have talent, but also display a high level of effort. Hard work can not be taught, it just exists in a person who at some point in their life decided something good could happen to them if they just work hard. Likewise for talent, it just exists. Intelligence.........football isn't exactly splitting the atom. As long as the coaches can teach them the game, all will be well if the effort is there. A senior QB should not make the play Luke did Saturday, he has been in college football too long to allow that to happen.The other point above is, "Did the coach get in the way?". I was listening to the call in show last night on 1350 AM, and JD all but said he did get in the way. His point was not directed at the play call. He said something along the lines that if he does not challenge the call, the team attempts a field goal and they win the game because the INT for a TD does not happen (something like that). So here we are in the unlucky seat Mr. Rickey describes. Did "intelligence and effort" combine at their best for CMU on that play? I would say yes. Sometimes, the other team is allowed to make good plays too.

One other thing on us getting lucky in the MACC. It drives me crazy when a person claims someone had success because of luck. It took me a few minutes to find this quote in the book I have been reading, but here it goes. This is from Page 60 of David Maraniss in his book "Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball's Last Hero". It's a great book and I highly recommend it. The quote if from the great manager Branch Rickey. I'll write the entire paragraph. Mostly, the phrase "Luck is the residue of design" is all we get."All events in Mr. Rickey's world could be studied, categorized, and explained. Good things did not fall upon people, or baseball clubs, by accident. He was a man of sayings, and his most famous phrase came a the end of his thought: 'Things worthwhile generally don't just happen. Luck is a fact, but should not be a factor. Good luck is what is left over after intelligence and effort have combined at their best. Negligence or indifference or inattention are usually reviewed from an unlucky seat. The law of cause and effect and causality both work the same with inexorable exactitudes. Luck is the residue of design.'" Akron 31, NIU 30.

Bad for Akron? Absolutely. We need two more years of JD to make certain the program could be placed on cruise control while a new staff takes shape. The defense is playing much better. The offensive just needs to execute better. Two top recruiting classes in the MAC the past two seasons. The team's size and athletic ability is better than it has ever been. The players are more physical than they have ever been (probably due to being bigger and stronger). I also think the team is mentally stronger than it has ever been....we never used to come from behind in a game to win. The team is better prepared than it has ever been (remember the number if timeouts we had to take prior to JD because the freaking defense didn't know where to line up). Without question, JD Brookhart is one of the top two or three coaches in the MAC. Losing him at this point would be very difficult for the program to overcome. The people on this board have not given JD anything.......he has earned the respect of the fans after some were calling for his head when he started his first season 1-4.The win in the MACC was not luck. JD and his staff completely out coached NIU in the game last season, especially when it counted in the fourth quarter. The staff kept the team together, made the adjustments they needed to make, had all of their time outs at the end of the game, held NIU to a three and out after an INT and executed a great two minute drive at the end of the game. How is that luck? Sounds like good coaching to me.Please define backing into the MACC. We won all the games we had to win to get there and played by the same rules as everyone else. You make it sound like we did something wrong. In fact, we did everything right. Sorry you have a problem with Akron experiencing success. For some reason, there are some out there who do.

Interesting report. Great find a-zip! The guy writes, "then lost to Central Michigan". CMU may be the second best team we play all year..........much better than NC State (State is only a 3 or 4 win team), and we lost to them on the road on our third straight away game and could have easily won the game.I think the biggest advantage JD would have is his recruiting ties to Florida.The biggest disadvantage is not many coaches are leaving the MAC and experiencing much success. The guy that left for Missouri from Toledo is in a perpetual state of average. Terry H from Miami is at Indiana to break the bank at the end of his career and his program is going nowhere. Miami is going to be looking for a "sure thing". Does a MAC coach give that to you?.......I'm not sure. Will the Miami community settle for a MAC coach?........I'm not sure.If JD wants this type of job by next year, he can't lose a game the remainder of the season.

Welcome back InTheZone! I was about to put a call out to you on the board.The solution to the pass rush problem is a good question (assuming there is a problem). I think Akron has optioned out of a huge pass rush for coverage. We seemed to rush more people against PSU and by sacrificing the LBs, we gave up a lot of yardage on short intermediate crossing patterns for 5-15 yard gains really hurting our ability to stop them on third and long. The key may not be the pass rush, but better coverage creating the always fun for a TV announcer to say "Coverage Sack".While I don't really like the 3-3-5 defense because it makes a team too small and depends on some level of guessing, I can't at the same time say we don't have a solid defense. Coach Flemming really seems to be in a groove calling the defense and all is going well. If we execute better on offense, the pass rush will not be a big concern.

I think 25 is too small and 30 will be too big.One thing a smaller stadium will do IF they are selling a lot of tickets is force people to buy tickets for late season games. I don't like the old Acme Zip idea of having one big attendance game a year and then absolute crap the remainder of the year.Someone also brought up the idea of a bigger conference and the need to build a big stadiium for the future. Does anyone realistically think a bigger conference would want Akron? We have about a 2,000 person football season ticket base. What do you think the fan bases at Big East schools like WVU, Pittsburgh, Louisville and Connecticut are? We are fine right where we are now.Remember, once the new stadium is built, it must be maintained. The bigger the stadium, the more maintenance is required. We don't want to burry the athletic program/University in operating costs for a giant stadium that sits half full on game day.

I convinced my family to get a family pack of tickets this year, for the first time ever. They bought it last week, and we were informed that we would be receiving a free stadium blanket. That's great for me and my family, but then I realized that means that less than 1500 season ticket packages have been sold up to last week. I had heard they were over 1,500 already a couple of weeks ago. Not 100% certain though. 1,500 is still about 250 more than last year. Tha blanket give away is just a fire sale they are having to clear inventory.

No!What fun would that be?

Jerome Bettis once told Willie Parker, "If you try to run outside, you'll never get there. If you run inside, you'll get outside." Watch NFL games, nobody tries to run outside anymore, and when they do it doesn't work. Most good running backs in the NFL now start outside and cut back between the tackles where there are less defenders and the offensive line has the advantage. Because of the nature of defenses now, running backs are forced to the outside where all the bad guys are waiting for them. They do the same thing in college.The point being that bad shoulder or not, if DK doesn't start to run inside more, he is missing out on a lot of yards. I don't think he has 60 minute speed. Football is a physical game and should be played as such.#29 doesn't seem to be afraid to run inside. I'm not saying he should start, but maybe a little competition is good for the soul (like eating grapefruit and chewing Juicy Fruit). It's a long season and he has proven he can perform when asked to do so. Maybe he has earned more playing time.

I'm not worried about Luke. He is not playing nearly has horrible as he did midseason last year and I stuck with him then and I'll stick with him now. We just finished playing possibly the three most difficult teams on our schedule, all on the road, and his numbers are pretty good. We won the championship with him last year with almost exactly the same statistics. 2005 he averaged 265 yards per game and completed 53% of his passes. 2006 he is averaging 259.3 yards per game and is completing 50% of his passes. He has NEVER had sexy numbers.A team lives and dies with the play of the QB. Luke must play better on the goal line.Our league is horrible this season (anyone see how bad Miami and Can't looked on Saturday?) and we should compete for the MAC East championship with this team. The late season string of home games will save us. See everyone in Detroit.

http://www.cmuchippewas.com/ViewArticle.db...6&Q_SEASON=2006I hope he employs the same defense he did at Akron. I like our chances even better now.

Home field advantage usually gives a team 3.5 points when betting. Somebody out there knows something we don't know. "Sombody" is usually right. I worry.

Bingo!

Good report. Be careful not to trick the masses CK. They will start to tell us that the $3.00 game day parking is too much. Just so you guys know, not all parking there is free. I know many of you think it should be free, but it wasn't. A large part of their fans actually pay through the nose to park.The tailgating was good. I had a real nice guy sitting behind me who explaind how seating and parking works there. They have it all figured out. He told me that people own their own individual spots and gave a lifetime donation for the spots. The people there also purchased something similar to a PSL that gives them lifetime access to their seat. It was $2,500 per seat for the PSL. All of the black chairback attachments for the benches were people who dontated $2,500. There were thousands of these seats set up. That's how they helped build all that nice stuff around the stadium. Akron could do something similar to this on a smaller scale when the time comes to build a new stadium. People could have their own spot for basketball and football games. My guess is State does this same thing as their basketball arena is the hockey arena next to the stadium.There are parts of the stadium that have seats, not benches, like an NFL stadium. Another great idea if we ever get a new stadium. Very comfortable.Carolina pulled pork sandwiches in the stadium............mmmmmm pork.I don't know how many of you had a chance to look at the pressbox closely, but only a small portion of the box is used for the press and coaches. Everything else is like club seating. And I don't mean a small section either. This pressbox was HUGE.Could the grass have looked nicer? It looked like an astroturf field it was so perfect......even at the end of the game it looked great.One guy has a parking spot very close to the stadium that has a slight downhill grade to it. He built a small deck as wide as the spot and about ten feet long so he can back his truck up to it and tailgate on a level seating area. This level of dedication to tailgating deserves a .My only complaint about the stadium, and it really isn't the stadium, is that I have never been in a stadium where there is such a constant stream of fans walking up and down the steps. They were all State fans too. Akron fans seem to go to a game to watch the game. State fans seem to go to a game to be seen walking up and down the steps. For a while I thought it was only our section, but it was happening everywhere.

http://www.ohio.com/mld/beaconjournal/spor...es/15506455.htmDLM has a good article about our early season sack problem. IMHO, the sacks are not as bad as the penalty problem we are having. Opinions?

True, but they make it sound like a professional photographer took it. It was some guy sitting in the second row. People can do whatever they want with a photo. The replays on the local news down there look nothing like the photo. When he lands on TV, the entire ball is across the line.

http://www.newsobserver.com/753/story/485191.htmlIn case any of you are still wondering, above is an article about whether or not DK crossed the line Saturday. If the ACC could have cheated us out of the win on Saturday, they would have, but they couldn't after taking a long look at it.

Every sales guy I've fired had every excuse in the world for non-performance and it was never their fault. The more they make excuses, the more stupid they sound and the more in need of being fired they become.With the team Amato has, he is going to be making a lot of excuses this year. If these articles are an indication of how bad his excuses are already, it will be interesting to see what he comes up with by Week 12 when they are 3-8 going into their last game.Comments like this assume the State fan base is stupid. For the most part, State fans were nice and intelligent. They should be insulted when they read stupidity like this coming from their coach. If I were the AD at State, I would be pretty pissed at these comments. I would have a long talk with Chuck about them and start to set the stage for his firing. This joke only going to get worse.On another note, we should give thumbs up to Mack for not lowering himself to this silly level by declining comment. The silence speaks volumes.

Thanks for the nap Cracker.

I don't know how many picked up on all of the ESPN exposure, but the Zips received a ton on Saturday.First, my brother told me they interrupted the noon ESPN game to pick up the last few minutes of our game off of ESPNU.Second, Herbie loves any team from Ohio that does well, and he made Akron his "Impact Performer" for the weekend.Lastly, the talking head that does the show with Mark May and Lou Holtz gave a helmet sticker to Akron. The only problem was that they had to take a "liberty" with a generic gold helmet when putting the sticker on. My advice to ESPN would be, given the direction our program is heading, to call our media relations guy and try to get an Akron helmet. I think they will need to use it again in the future.

A cracker sitting behind me told me NC State has blocked more punts than any other school in both of the past two seasons. By their punt block performance Saturday, I have no reason to question this. I'm not concerned about the punter. When he has time he gets the ball off and makes good kicks.The PK made a 47 yard FG against PSU and missed a really easy one Saturday. The Roberto Clemente used to say, "You can't take your way out of a batting slump". When he was in a slump he used to try to swing at least three times per at bat. What does this mean for our kicker? Keep putting him out there to swing his way out of any slump he MAY be in. Once he gets a rythm established, all may work out well.

that confirms it. you REALLY don't know what you're talking about. i can't believe you actually said that. http://www.statefansnation.com/index.php/a...de-chuck-amato/I'm not the only one saying it. My guess is that Chuck would grade out with the fans at about a D+ after the first and second games of the season. The team seems to be trending downward. The fans were mad as heck on the radio after the game Saturday and the team isn't very good. Chuck is in trouble.

I had to park quite a distance from the stadium yesterday so I had a chance to spend a lot of time walking next to the funeral procession that others would call a post game traffic jam. I've never heard such silence coming from the 5,000 cars sitting in traffic. The only sound was the sound of bitching coming out of the post game radio show.Anyhow, State fans are plenty pissed off at Chuck Amato, and they should be because the team is worse now than when he took over as coach. Anyhow, I have a sneaky feeling that JD pulled the hammer back on the gun that is going to end the Amato era in Raleigh. The trigger remains to be pulled and someone else is going to have to do that, but JD did pull the trigger back.Any thoughts?

Stop kidding yourself about the "talent" State has. There isn't much. Maybe your d-line was more athletic than our o-line, but that is where it ends.Our receivers made big play after big play on your defense like they were standing still, especially when it counted.Kennedy got around the corner at will on your defense.Your fat ass o-line was too slow for our defensive line. How do you think we stopped you guys on fourth and one late.Your linebackers couldn't crack an egg.Your QB is at best a waste of a scholarship.Your best player is #22 (a future NFL RB).As far as coaching, Chuck is a joke and the only reason he still has a job is because he went to school there. JD was calling the right plays at the right time against your soft defense. If you blitzed inside, we had a play called to run outside.State would have trouble winning the MAC this year with that garbage you put on the field. It's a good thing the ACC schedule is starting so you can win some games against D-1 teams.

Best point yet about the game yesterday. For those of you who were not there or didn't get to see the game, there was no difference in size and speed between the two teams. The best player on the field was #22 for State, but that is about where the best of list stops for them. Kennedy, Getsy and others were better than what they had on the field.Another headline for the game in the paper could have been, "Zips Almost Blow Game Against Inferior Team". Honest to God guys, we are really that talented this year. The talent alone could make them the best team in school history, but time will tell us whether they can keep it together or not. I believe they can.