GP1

It can always get worse. You can take your suggestion and stick it up your . I'll spend my time the way I want to.

I don't know if removing Getsy from QB is going to make a difference. I do know this. He has not played the same since injuring his hand against CMU. Jabari is not the answer. I'm sick of his lazy performances at WR and I don't want him at QB. Ferg? Well, if we want to go from a QB with little mobility to one with zero mobility, that is the answer. Getsy is all we have for now. Get over it. One thing I noticed last night was that the robotic nature of our offense does not allow our receivers to improvise once the pocket breaks down. I went to about five Pitt games Brookhart's last year there and Rutheford (sp?) had the same problems scrambling Getsy does now. Our receivers do not have the natural ability to get free as we have seen in the past. Maybe if they would stop jogging around when the qb scrambles, we would be better off. Speaking of jogging. We seem to have two speeds as of late. One is jog, the other is walk. Our offensive line jogs onto the field to get in the huddle and walk to the line. Let's start moving a little faster guys. Akron needs to change the pace when their offense is having trouble. Why did we not go to a hurry up offense in the middle of the third quarter when things weren't going well? That is always a good way to pick up the pace of a team. I think the reason we don't do things like this is the coaches are as robotic as the offense. They spend an insane amount of time looking at film hoping to figure out that one play that will get them two yards on their own 30 yard line, they forget about the big picture or even the human factor. Maybe some of the younger guys can answer this question, but why is our blocking technique one where the OL blocks with their shoulders perpendicular to the line? This appears to be a horrible technique because it allows bleed through. You don't see this technique on Sundays. We should be doing what they do on Sunday. It's no wonder we can't get our running game going. We don't force our will on others. When we went for fourth down when we were down by ten, were we on the 25? Hard to tell from the beer garden. If so, I had a flushback to the Owens years. We needed to break our cherry and get on the board. Maybe that would have given us some momentum. Someone brought up the Owens years. I have no doubt the Zips would have scored under Owens last night. I also have no doubt that that loser would have found a way to lose that game like almost every game he coached. Enough said. There has been a lot of talk about leadership on this board and I think a lot of misguided opinions about what leadership is. It starts with giving 100% effort every play from a few of your best players. Until that happens, guys can walk off the field screaming and throwing helmets all they want, but they are not showing leadership until they give 100%. I'm not even certain we saw great leadership last season as everyone likes to think. It was good, but not great. Great leaders lead from the start of the season, not six games into it. I think our schedule was more easy after the first five games and we won five in a row and then lost to a better team the final game. Nothing magical about that. I had a chance to catch up with a bunch of players from the early Faust years last night and to a man, they were offended by the effort the players were giving. We may have had half our team in jail by mid season, but at least the other half out on bail was giving 100%. Man am I really pissed at myself today . I went with "somebody" and picked the Zips to win last night forgetting what I wrote after either the Buffalo or Miami game. I said then that I thought the wheels were about to fall off the team. I had a feeling then and should have stuck with it. The wheels are completely off of this team. I think losing the remainder of the games is not out of the question (Oddly enough, we could still win the MAC East, but that won't happen). We should really be talking about how many points the team will score. My guess is less than 75 the remainder of the season. If we lose out and win only three games, it will have repercussions for years to come. I see trouble on the horizon. One last thing. I was talking with a prominent business man from Akron who is also a graduate of the University after the game downtown. He said he would love to go to some games and would even buy season tickets if they had a stadium on campus, but he refuses to go to the Rubber Bowl. We need a new stadium NOW. I don't know how much longer I can take going out to that dump and have the team lose. It would be easy to swallow if the stadium was in a decent part of town and I did not have to walk through mud to get to my car after the game.

No.

The Horseshoe was contracted by the University and built by qualified contractors. The Rubber Bowl was a WPA project during the 1930's built by a bunch of guys who were wondering what to do with the hillside they created from the dirt from building the runway. Private employees build the horseshoe, public employees built the Rubber Bowl. I'm surprised the Rubber Bowl has lasted this long. Wrecking ball please.

Did you also say to yourself, "Self, how come every bobble head doll looks the same?"

As confident as I was last week that we would get blown out, I am that confident this week we will win. Lee Corso has been talking all year about that "somebody" who picks games in Las Vegas. Akron is favored by nine points by "somebody" in Vegas this week and I'm going with that "somebody". The gambling experts have too much information after six games to get things wrong. Our offense continues to struggle and the defense or special teams scores one of the touchdowns. Akron wins 20-10.

I think the University would like to keep the City out of it if they can. If the City gives money, they can have more of a say over where, what the stadium will be. If called upon, I do think the City will respond favorably. The economic boost to the city would be good if they would use the stadium more than just for football. For example, how about some of the summer concerts that go to Blossom? Blossom really does not like to host many of the concerts they do and UA could benefit from it. Big stadium=big crowd=more money=big acts wanting to play the venue to make more money. The University must use a stadium to make money with higher education funding now being what it is.

The land is bought. My understanding is the sewer and water system around the area they want to build on can not support a stadium and they will have to pay to have that redone prior to buildiing a stadium. It would take over a year and a half to do that. That would put us into 2008 before they could start the new stadium. No way is there a stadium this decade. I would like to hear what the mayor has to say about this. If they build a stadium with bars around the stadium, it could hurt the businesses on Main Street. I wonder if they mayor does not want that to happen. One consideration has been having a bar IN the stadium that can be entered from the outside. That would be real nice. I would bet the University does not make an official statement about a new stadium until next fall. Still a long way to go.

http://www.ohio.com/mld/beaconjournal/spor...es/12958812.htm Guys, This article was in the ABJ this morning. At no point in this article does this board member say, "We will have a new stadium on campus." This worries me. He talks about repairs to the Rubber Bowl. Why? The place is falling down. He gets the question about what if the Rubber Bowl has to be closed as a safety hazard and he says, "Let's not go there." No, let's go there. Answer the question. It is a real possibility. Maybe it is the only way to force the University into real action. How embarrassing would it be to have to play games in Canton or worse yet, Can't? Really, let's not go THERE. I've heard that getting the Rubber Bowl condemned is one of the strategies they are considering to force action. Maybe they should just do it. I've always told you guys we are a loooooong way off from getting a new stadium. This article reinforced my opinion. A MAC Championship will not be enough to move the idiots on the Board. We will not have a new stadium this decade. How sad......

In order to throw money around, one must first have money to throw around. MAC schools simply don't have the money to throw around. Low attendance is one reason for that. If a MAC school gets 20,000 for a game, it is a huge crowd. If Cincy gets 20,000 for a football game, it is a disappointment. Be thankful for what we have. We play in a good conference with good competitive players. We may not have the big crowds yet, but I could really care less how may people are there as long as I get to see a good game. I don't even think the MAC will ever draw good consistent crowds. It just is not in the culture of the people in the midwest to support MAC schools on a mass basis. I don't even mind Akron being a spring board for people to go to another program. I like people who want to do better in their lives. One question the candidates should be asked is, "Where do you see yourself in seven years?" If that person answers anything other than being at a large university with national recognition as an athletic director, Akron should not hire the person. Mike Thomas can leave this program with his head held high. Prior to him, we had a bunch of paper pushers in the position lacking any philosophy about what they wanted the program to look like. Anyone who thinks he did a poor job is just being foolish. Looking at the big picture, he rescued football and m basketball from the throws of mediocrity and the programs are moving forward in a positive direction. Look where the other "football" team is now....#1 nationally. Baseball now has a coach with a direction and with the old coach last season they made the playoffs for the first time in several years. In the classroom (even though I could care less about this issue), we compete with the rest of the conference for the top position from a position of last when he started. Cincinnati made a good hire. You can't sneak your way around a hiring board at a school like that. As far as how he fired Owens, I could give a how he did it, as long as it got done. I doubt he left a note for the guy. If I was the AD after the Can't game in 2003, I would have fired that guy walking off of the field. One question, and I've always been curious about this. What the Hell were the players praying about after that 2003 Can't game on the field? I can only imagine the following......"Dear Lord. Only through divine intervention could we have lost this game today. Thank you for showing yourself to us on this field of play. We praise your most holy name. Amen." If you think about it, it would have been the most fitting prayer.

Good for him! Mike is a real nice guy if you have ever had the chance to talk to him. I'm sure the money alone would be hard to turn down. They also need someone down there to turn around the basketball mess. He did a good job of that here. The good news is that the Dow was finally up yesterday 128 points. I'd rather lose an AD in lieu of money. We'll be OK. I don't think this will hurt the stadium plans. They have too much momentum already.

Good info. CK. I was worried about them until I looked at your post and some of the information made me confident. I really don't know much about them, but you did provide some telling information. First, CMU played them a week after they played us at Army. Back-to-back games on the road make it difficult to win and CMU still won. I would bet CMU would blow them out in Mt. Pleasant. It could be that they have a poor pass blocking offensive line. I would expect a team to have more yards passing with a losing record than 200. Passing to catch up should allow a team to drive up their passing yards. Army is loaded with upper classmen who were recruited to play an option offense. I'm not confident they can pass on us even with our recently poor defense. Even our defensive line will be able to get some pressure on the QB. The 150 yards per game rushing is the only part of their offense that scares me. They have the players to run the ball. If it rains Saturday, and it is going to, rush defense could hurt us. On both sides of the ball, I would bet they are less athletic than any team we have played thus far. Remember, good players win games and we may have better players. In the past, Akron has outmatched much better record military schools and won games with about the same talent we have now, if not less. Losing to UCONN badly is always a bad sign for a team's ability to win a lot. I know someone will bring up their discipline because it is their strongest trait...and it is. My only question would be: Where was the discipline the first six games? I doubt they are mistake prone, and if they are not and they still don't win, it looks good for us. Finally, I like to write about winners. 0-6 is 0-6 is 0-6. These guys don't win games. Period. The more you lose, the more you lose. I'm sure these guys already have their sights on Navy (Leaving out the tradition, Army vs. Navy is the worst nationally televised game of the year). We have at least shown an ability to win games. I understand all the concerns. I still have some concern as well. The Zips have played poorly the past three games and still have won one of the games. We lost to what is looking like a very good CMU team and a Miami team that is just better than us at almost every position. Just remember, the Zips do play well at the Rubber Bowl and I expect them to play well Saturday. Thanks to the Army team for their service.

This isn't just a theory, it's a fact. Nice post. It cuts right to the heart of the Zips problems.

I'm not concerned as much about the coaching staffs ability to make adjustments as I am the teams ability to execute the game plan. Our talent level is so low that it drives down our margin for error. When we close an exposed weak spot, it just opens up another huge weak spot. I actually think our defensive coordinator is a good one doing what he does. My biggest complaint about the defense is the style we play. In a post Marshall MAC East, this type of defense is not needed. Our players are not good enough to play the 3-3-5 they want to play. Execution is killing the defense as well. I'm not certain this style of defense will succeed in the MAC. It's great if you can score 40 per game. We don't have that type of team. We need a 3-4 to stop the run. That one extra LB will give us the size we need to be successful. All an average offensive lineman needs to do is get in front of a DB and maintain some contact and he will at least win a draw (offense wins in a draw). This isn't so easy with a LB. Our offensive line was doing fine at the beginning when we were throwing short passes and getting the ball to multiple receivers on first down. Biggs had a huge first half. In the second half, we saw the trying to win the lottery nonsense. The next thing you know it was 51-23. I would be disappointed if we have four freshmen starting next season. These guys had better be damn good to start as freshmen. If not, it will be a wasted year. The topic is a summary of the first six games. I think we are right where we thought we would be this time of the season. Have we gone backward since the beginning? Of course, but some were predicting a 3-8 or 4-7 season. I'm confident the Zips will have at least three more wins. If they can get things together in a hurry (I have my doubts about this) they can win six. We should win this weekend, lose to BG, beat OU and Can't....maybe. Ball State will be a toss up. Beating Ball State could give us seven wins. Seven wins with this team would be better than last year and the talent level this year is much less than last year. It would be impressive if they won seven or even tied the total wins from last season.

I'm concerned with EVERYTHING right now.

Good use of statistics! The most disappointing thing for me is our defense did not do what it needed to do to get the offense the ball. The only purpose of the defense is to get the ball back and we can't seem to do that.

I know you guys hate it when I use statistics, but here it goes. The point that the defense was constantly on the field is simply not true. There was only a three minute difference in time of possession Saturday. Three minutes is roughly only five or six plays. To say we gave Miami great field position early is simply not true as well. Akron scored early and their kick offs were in the end zone. Even the interception in the end zone gave Miami the ball on the 20 and they marched right down on our defense, after a long rest, like they were the scout team. If the defense would hold the other team to three and out more than once or twice per game, they might get more rest. Akron's defense gave up 248 yards rushing and a 6.7 yard average. That's horrible at best. Akron's defense gave up 580 yards total and 7.7 yards per play. That's horrible at best. I'll say it again. With the exception of Biggs and Kiki, Miami has better players at every position. Akron lost because the talent level is not where it needs to be to win the MAC. It never has.

If the only point of reference is the Miami game, then nothing. However, we did see him play well early in the season and have limited mistakes. If a person does it once, he can do it again. Second, he did play better against Miami than against Buffalo or the second half of CMU. The ability is there, he just has to do it. Again, Miami scored 51 points. How is that on Getsy? The defense was just bad Saturday.

I think Getsy will be fine as long as he can limit his mental mistakes. Remember, this guy is a first year starting QB. He sat the bench his entire career at Pitt. Turnovers and a lack of defense killed us yesterday. Let's assume Getsy throws the ball away in the first half which he should have done. It would have been third and long and probably a field goal try. Explain how we overcome 51 points. Getsy should not be blamed as much as he is, but he deserves some blame because, as I said before, the QB is the one person most able to impact the outcome of a game. Also, don't put much weight into what French says. If the 3-3-5 defense is designed to stop passing, how come Miami converted third and long at will yesterday? I'm sorry, but the defense played horrible yesterday. How many times did Miami have to punt yesterday? I can only remember 4 or 5 at the most. They missed two easy field goals, they should have had 57. The offense is only to blame? The bottom line is the Zips lack the athletic ability of the upper level MAC schools. This has been the case since the school entered the MAC. Getting our asses kicked by Miami did not start with Getsy. It has been going on for many years. Why would it stop yesterday with a young team. Also, there is not enough depth on this team,or any other MAC team, to start making wholesale changes. The Zips are what they are and if they want to win, they need to start getting the players to play better. One last thing. I saw a lot of crying from posters on this board about not going to games if they don't beat Army. What the Hell else do you have to do with your time that you can't go to a game?

Here is what I think is wrong with the program......right now anyhow. I certainly don't think the program is in serious trouble, but the season is in serious trouble. 1. History of losing is hard to break. One shared MAC east championship is the only thing the program has won since 1987. 2. We play with an undersized team. When speed is equal, size will win out. We need an offensive line at least as big as Miami's and NIU's. We need receivers as tall and lanky as Nance. Miami has several tall receivers, we have one. 3. We are playing with young players. Experience is a huge factor in college football. Just look how well the QB from Norte Dame plays when people were willing to leave him for dead early in his career. You can't coach experiece. It just happens and sadly enough we have to wait for that to take place. 4. I think we have a good defensive coordinator, I'm not certain I like this 3-3-5 defense after watching it for a year and a half. Too much guessing. I don't think we have the athletic talent to play that defense and I don't think those kids exist in the mid west where we get most of our talent. The defense does not allow us to stop the run well enough. I like to stuff first down and then go to five db's if necessary on second and third. These are just some general thoughs about the program. I'm sure we could go position by position, but who has the tiime. Question for ITZ and I've asked this before, but you don't respond. Maybe you know him personally and don't want to respond. If so, that cool. Why isn't Heim playing this year? I thought he would play for sure being a senior.

Just got back from Cincinnati this morning after staying the night and eating some ribs. Great feedback about the game zipboy and CK. The only thing I could add is you guys are downplaying how badly the Zips played after the interception the first half. I've never seen a program fall apart the way the Zips do after a bad play. This just isn't this season, it goes back years. With the exception of Biggs and Kiki, I can't think of another position where the Zips are better than Miami. Yesterday should be a awakening for the coaches and the players concerning how far they need to go to be a top level team in the MAC. I don't know if the team could have won the game, but the effort was there most of the time. I mentioned last week that they are calling too many plays to try to win the lottery. We saw it again this week in the second half. First play of the second half after a good return they called a long pass play and it ended in an incomplete pass. Second and ten for this team my as well be second and fifty the way they have played the past three games. Even if they complete the pass and score, they go up by one with about twenty nine minutes and thirty seconds to go in the second half. I was watching the second half of the ND/USC game, and if they can throw short pass after short pass and move the chains, why can't we? Even at the end of the ND/USC game when USC was driving, they were still throwing short timing patterns. Much better job of getting 81 the ball yesterday. The guy can play if given a chance. He can also make it easier for Hixson to get the ball. I think another thing that hurt us prior to the important first half interception was Biggs being hurt that drive. Kennedy is not ready to be a go to guy and they could have used Biggs in the red zone. I told everyone last week Biggs would have a huge game this week and he did not disappoint. he had some long runs, but they were not easy runs, thus showing why he has been the best player on the team the past two seasons. I'm sure he has that average up over four yards a carry for the season now. I just wish he was faster. I'm also losing patience with Getsy's stupidity. People can say whatever they want about football being a team sport, and it is, but let's not pretend every position has the same level of importance. The QB has the ball in his hands every play and is the one person most able to impact the outcome of a game. Getsy MUST start playing better. There is no excuse for that first half interception at that time of the game. Getsy is a good player, he just needs to stop being so stupid. As far as the defense, I thought they were a huge disappointment as well. You can't excuse away 51 points and with the exception of the first couple of drives, Miami moved the ball at will. The Zips scored 23 points and that is ALMOST enough to win a Division 1-A football game. I predicted a 42-10 game against Miami (32 point loss). We lost by 28. If the defense keeps Miami to fewer long drives, Akron has more chances to score and maybe push the score up around 30, which IS enought to win a Division I-A game. Most of you know my posts well enough to know I am not prone to hysteria, so take this in all seriousness. This team is teetering on the brink of disaster if they don't play better this week. Army is a horrible team and if they lost to them at home, they stand the chance of not winning another game. They are too emotionally fragile to bounce back from an Army loss. Let's hope it doesn't get to that point.

I don't know why I'm going this far but I am. This was sent to me today. For whatever reason, it seems to fit the topic: http://www.miamihawktalk.com/discussion/vi...pic.php?t=24613

It is "Fall Break" this week at Miami so a lot of students will go home. What the Hell is with all the breaks the students get now? We had a fall break at Akron U., it was called "The Day After Thanksgiving".

SHOCKING! But in the spirit of accuracy, it was actually 0-4. If we don't get things right on this page, we are counting on the Beacon Journal to get it right. I think JB and the boys would be upset about our inaccuracy during their game against UCF Saturday. 2001 (30-27) was the famous Big Ben play where they managed to throw a pass to the 15 yard line and have a guy run the rest of the way . 2002 (48-31), 2003 (45-20) and 2004 (37-27). Ouch! With the exception of 2001, those were some real ass kickings. I have a horrible feeling about Saturday. A second road game in a row spells disaster for NFL teams, I don't see us coming out any better. The team really did not respond well to a bad game against CMU. Poor execution. I don't think they regroup. This team is not ready for prime time yet. Marcel Weems couldn't even pull this game off. Miami wins 38-10. Butchie was the last QB to beat Miami in 2000 (37-20). Prior to that, Jason Taylor and the boys beat them in 1996 (10-7). WOW, I thought we had more wins against them than this.

Too much information is never a bad thing with these controversial and philosophical debates. I made my visit "official" after breakfast at Country Kitchen near U of A compus, a couple of beers and a trip to the Alumni basketball arena at UB.