GP1

I would say they are lacking in 11 elements to run anything successfully right now.

You can't fake it if you don't set up the fake. Here is a great primer on the bubble screen. Good teams can run any play in their book. Average teams are good at running some plays. Bad teams aren't good at running any plays. We are a bad team right now. Struggling with the basics of football. Run, catch, throw, tackle, block, get off of blocks, cover, etc. We can change formations and try to trick our way to victory all day long. If we can't do those basic things, we can't win.

Good post. When given easy opportunities, too many guys are not completing simple tasks. I hate the bubble screen, but it is an effective body blow to a defense. It allows players easy opportunities to complete and catch passes so confidence is boosted. It also forces two parts of the defense to do something they don't want to. Forces corners to get physical and take some hits which they really don't want to do. Also forces defensive linemen to run a distance they aren't built for or want to. Beating up corners makes them tired late and opens up big plays. Tired linemen give up a lot of yards rushing. It's a play that makes me want to fall asleep, but is needed right now.

I agree. I mean, we were in horrible shape when he went down for one game with concussion symptoms. I can't imagine us being in a worse spot than having won 8 of 11 with him and being 4-2 with a win against a BCS team and having maybe the most favorable schedule we have ever had. Terrible position to be in.

If the expectation after six games and a 4-2 record with a win against a BCS team and a QB who had gone 8-3 in his previous 11 was we would lose six straight, then we are well on our way to meeting those expectations. My expectations after a 4-2 start was for us to go at least 4-2 in the remaining 6 for a 8-4 record. Maybe I expect too much. Maybe if I expect that and it will never happen, then I'm wasting my time following the Zips and I should just become like the other 99% of the alumni who could really care less.

I don't believe it had everything to do with it, but I do believe it was the beginning of the end for a program that is as fragile as ours is. Pohl was at least good enough to win with some help when the team was riding high. If they won not running the system Bowden wanted to run, then I was willing to wait until he had someone he wanted to run the offense run it. I like winning over system validation. The Zips program is fragile like a fine wine glass. The late game loss at OU cracked the glass. The absolute collapse at Ball State shattered the glass. After a collapse like that and with our history of losing, it is very hard to put the pieces back together by the end of the season. It just doesn't happen for programs like ours. An incident happened in the game Tuesday that illustrated how fragile we actually are. When did the first crack in the glass happen? With 4:55 to go in the first quarter, they run Bickley and he loses five yards. Next play, a WR drops a pass thrown right to him which would have gained the Zips at least 7 yards making it third and eight or maybe less if he picked up a couple of extra yards. Third and 15 we run the ball for a gain of one, but third and 15 is almost impossible for anyone to get let alone how our offense has performed lately. So we punt and Buffalo scores on the next drive and they don't look back. A novice observer of the Zips might say the game was over when Buffalo scored. Experienced observers of the Zips understand that the game was over when Bickley lost five yards on the previous drive on first down...that was the first crack...the second crack came on the next down and the glass was beyond repair. The rest of the game is just the the same old nonsense I have been watching for almost 3 decades now.

Wild Wing Cafe is good, but not great...sort of like Hilton Head itself. Interesting fact, the HH WWC is the original WWC. I would forego wings at WWC for this. As an added GP1 recommendation, I'll give you folks the ONLY reason for going to HH. There is a night club called The Jazz Corner. It is typically rated one of the top jazz clubs in the country according to the people who rate those kinds of things. There is a guy who plays there every Sunday night with his band called Deas Guys and his name is Reggie Deas. He plays R&B, Motown and some popular stuff you would hear at a wedding receptions (During wedding season, he does three weddings a weekend for around eight to ten thousand a gig.). It is really a great event and mostly locals show up. He also plays once a month at the Hammock Shops on Pawley's Island around 7-8 times a year. That's when Mrs. GP1 and I like to go watch him. You could download his Live at The Jazz Corner recording off of I Tunes. If you saw this band at the Jazz Corner, you would have a great memory for the rest of your life. One last thing about HH. Actually, it really isn't about HH, but about people from Ohio going there. If you want to go there on vacation, it's your money and you can waste it as you wish. However, folks in Charlotte need a break from the one thing that Ohioans do on their way home from HH on Saturdays. Some of us who live around Charlotte like to go into the city on Saturday nights and it is extremely hard to get there because of the amount of car wrecks people from Ohio get into on their way home on I-77. Every Saturday, there is a car with an Ohio license plate in a wreck on the side of the road in Charlotte causing large traffic jams and unnecessary delays getting into the city. If you go, please do not get into a wreck. If you know people who go to HH, please ask them to not get into a wreck driving through Charlotte. If you want to wait until Statesville to get into a wreck, that's fine, but please stop getting into them in Charlotte.

It's a long, boring drive and HH isn't worth the time. Its where northerners who don't know any better go. With kids, you'd be better off going to Myrtle Beach for a day.

This is my number one worry JZ84. I thought I was the only one who believes the light at the end of the tunnel might in fact be a train coming towards us. Earlier this year when Pohl went down, I mentioned it would be hard for the Zips to go 3-3 after his injury. I was anticipating one game, not to mention the second game in which he was injured even though he said he wasn't injured...people can believe what they want about that. It looks like we could easily go 0-6 in the remaining six games. Not only that, I mentioned I watched Wake go 5-7 after bad coaching decisions Skinner's senior year by Jim Grobe and how it resulted in the collapse of the Grobe years and that we could be watching the beginning of the end of the Bowden years. I believe that more than ever right now. The next two weeks are critical. Going 5-7 again is easy to sell against if you are a competing school for a recruit. How many losing seasons in a row would that make? Going 4-7 after going 5-7 the year before is a disaster for recruiting at a school that hasn't posted too many winning seasons. Why is this the case? I've mentioned the last two weeks that the program is "fragile". Most schools that don't win find ways to lose unless they can convince themselves they are better than they really are (confidence and momentum). It doesn't take much to break that illusion of being better than you really are. When that happens, all the reminders of failure come rushing back and ways to lose become implemented. More than most sports, football is a game where lesser teams can use emotion to produce better results than their talent should allow them to produce. If the other team can just squash the emotion, it spells trouble. Back to recruiting. Watching the game last night, it was clear that there was a personnel gap between the schools. The gap isn't there when the Zips emotions are riding high, but strip away the emotions and the gap is there. Buffalo is not the best team in the world, but they had bigger/stronger players and were able to push us around the field on both sides of the ball. There are a lot of complaints on this board about play calling. I don't like our play calling either, but I don't think it is the difference in us winning and losing right now. We all know the old saying, "You don't win with Xs and Os. You win with Jimmies and Joes". ......"But GP1, we beat Pitt so we have to be good!"....Attention Zips fans, Pitt is a terrible program with a coach who is coaching a 1980s offense. They only have one win against a team with a pulse and as it turns out, VA Tech's pulse was not that strong to begin with. It doesn't matter what plays we call out of what formations right now because without better talent none of them are going to work in 2014 when teams run 65-80 plays a game. Buffalo just wasn't a couple of plays better than us last night, they were four quarters better than us. I don't feel like I am sounding the alarm about not just this season, but the next few years because if you aren't alarmed at this point, you aren't paying attention, or you choose to see something that doesn't exist. Waiting until the off season to make changes will be too late and it's too late to make any changes this season. This program is in a horrible position right now. Going 1-1 in the next 2 isn't good enough. They need to get to 6-6 for the program to have any real positive momentum going forward. Going 2-0 in the next 2 is critical.

I'm going.

Buffalo outscored both Toledo and Northern combined last night. Three teams in the MAC had something to play for last night. Two played hard. One didn't. Toledo fought and lost. No shame in that. We didn't fight. They should be ashamed today.

Well, the Zips scored more points than I thought they would.

Aaaaaand good night friends.

On the bright side, Brown will have the entire second half to study for his physics exam.

Please throw passes over the middle. Too many deflections because plays predictable.

The players execute.

Play calling has been fine. Execution terrible.

We are such a fragile program.

Name a college they have better than what we have in the following areas. I'm not talking about outside perception. I'm talking actual faculty, research and quality of graduates. Engineering (I've actually never met anyone with an engineering degree from Can't. Do they even have an engineering school? We have an entire glass tower for one type of engineering.) Education Nursing (ask any doctor around NE Ohio and they will tell you how good the nursing program at Akron is) Business (Can someone point out all of the great business leaders around NE Ohio that went to Can't or got an MBA from Can't. NE Ohio is full of business leaders from UofA.) Arts and Sciences (They don't have anything resembling the Bliss Institute) How is their law school doing? The day we combine athletic programs with Can't will be the day I completely tune out. If they want to combine non research, education, admissions and athletics, then fine. Lots of states have co-op buying programs...Texas and Michigan have them and they work pretty good.

Hats off to this professor for finally bringing to light the incompetency of the leadership within the MAC. Many of us already knew it, but it brings it to light for the general public.

You're the only one freaking out.

I think MAC football and universities struggle for different reasons. Both involve resume building programs by university administrators, but that's about where it ends. MAC football "struggles" (not sure I would say it is struggling right now, but we can save that discussion for the football forum) because they want to be something other than what they are in a structure that is set up for them to always be behind bigger schools. Universities are struggling because leaders at those universities believed throwing up a bunch of play grounds for students, building stadiums, adding employees and generally making their system too big while disregarding basic statistics showing their efforts were pipe dreams. Additionally, they financed the building process through student fees that were being paid out of student loans that will be crippling a generation for decades to come. It was the key to their resume building, but not the key to success. Universities should have been downsizing crap degrees years ago in lieu of allowing things like Womens Studies programs to exist (those programs belong in Sociology Departments, not their own department). Akron can get its books in order, it will just take a lot of cutting of crap programs to do that. There are similarities between what has gone on at universities and the housing bubble. In the end, the taxpayers are going to have to bail out universities and students with crippling debt just like they did the banks. Akron is a better school than Can't, YSU and CSU. Combining those schools with Akron devalues my degree and I'm not interested. If you want a football analogy, it's like the Big Ten saying the league is better with the addition of Rutgers and Maryland. All the addition of those schools did was devalue an already declining conference.

It's all how you look at it. I look at it from the perspective of local bowl committees. It doesn't bother me one bit that a team with a better record would get left out in favor of the Zips because bowl games aren't real games except for the now playoff we have. Here is how I see it. Bowls are community events that use an exhibition football game to raise money for a local charity. Because of that it is in their best interest, and more importantly the interest of the local charity, that teams generating the most attendance would be preferable regardless of record. This is why I have a strong feeling that if the Zips can just get to 6 wins, they go to the bowl in Montgomery. Making a bowl would do wonders for the program and nobody would give a hoot that a team with one more win was left out. God knows I would have no sympathy while I was packing my bags for a couple of days in Montgomery and neither should anyone else on this board. Remember us not making a bowl game in 2004? Nobody was crying for us. Let's say one of the scenarios comes true....Akron vs. Arkansas State. Not many people in Alabama or Akron are going to be making the trip, so it puts the bowl committee in a bad situation in terms of revenue generation. Bring in Terry Bowden...Former UNA and Auburn coach...all of the sudden there is local interest and ticket sales go up. Even better, Akron vs. Univ. of South Alabama (Sunbelt Conference). Local school and the Bowden factor. Some bowls aren't about conference standings and this is one of those bowls. I would be surprised and extremely disappointed if we went 6-6 and didn't get an invite to this game.

Thank God!

This is a good point and something I think both teams should be taking a look at. It's too late in the season to experiment with anything new. When you struggle, you have to get back to what has worked earlier in the season. None of us can know if they drifted away because of choice or because situations dictated it. Either way, if it worked, find a way to make it work again. Just like a really good baseball pitcher uses the whole strike zone and changes speed, the Zips offense needs to be able to use the whole field and integrate all aspects of the offense so they work together. All of this can be accomplished out of simple formations as well as the complex.