Owens, Stacy at Heart of Zips' Revival

[Johnny Utah]

An article in todays Massillon Independent:With the success the Akron football program had this past season, it’s easy to forget that it was former head coach Lee Owens who helped set the stage for the school’s dramatic Mid American Conference championship against Northern Illinois or its first-ever bowl bid.It was Owens who recruited most of the Zip players that started this season. More importantly, it was also Owens who is largely responsible for the school’s biggest recruiting gem – the $40 million, on-campus fieldhouse.“No question, coach Owens played a big part in that being built,” said current Massillon head coach Tom Stacy, who was the Zips’ offensive coordinator from 1995-2004. “The people (at Akron) may not want to admit it, but the guys who worked behind the scenes know the real story. It was something he planned and he worked hard to get done. It became a reality because of Lee Owens.”Owens, also a former Massillon head coach, fought for an indoor fieldhouse when he was hired as Akron’s football coach in 1995 after a stint on John Cooper’s staff at Ohio State. At the time, the university was in the process of more than $200 million dollars worth of renovations, but none of the money was going towards upgrading the athletic facilities.“When I was hired, Peggy Elliott – who was the president at the time – pointed out the window and said that’s where the indoor facility is going to be built,” Owens said. “It was in the same spot it is now. But it took nine or 10 years before it was built. The school was going through some things with the administration where there was three presidents and three athletic directors during that time. I had to fight just to keep it on the agenda.”The indoor facility was finally a reality in 2004, but Owens was fired before he could reap the benefits. The Zips replaced Owens, who compiled a 40-61 record in nine seasons, with Pittsburgh offensive coordinator J.D. Brookhart.Owens doesn’t hold any animosity over the firing and is rooting for Brookhart to continue to build on what he started.“When you put as much time in a program, it’s hard to remove yourself from it,” Owens said. “The last two years, I’ve really been proud of what they did. At the same time, I feel alienated.“The best way to say it is that I can’t tell you how proud I was when Domenik Hixon caught the winning touchdown in the MAC championship game. We have a relationship. At the same time, seeing the team do so well is almost like looking at my family through a window celebrating Christmas without me. I look at (the Akron team) as if that’s my family.”

[zipper]

Well, Lee, half the guys on the team now don't know you, and of the other half that do, they've happily adopted a new "daddy." Several of "your guys" can't stand to be in the same room with you. And that fieldhouse was DOA until Thomas and company arrived on campus. I'll give him that he probably had to keep it on the agenda for several years, but until the BOT and the prez had faith in the leadership over there in athletics it just wasn't going to happen, no matter what LO says.Stacy was in my mind always a class act around Akron U. He deserves every bit of success he achieves.

[InTheZone]

Give credit where credit is due. Owens did a lot for Akron. Heck, he was fired for going 5-3 in the MAC. Wasn't that the same record we had this year?? Don't get me wrong. JD's a great coach and I'm glad we have him. I just don't understand the anymosity on this site towards Lee Owens. He was as much responsible for this season as JD Brookhart.

[liljc]

Well, yes and no. Lee Owens was fired because the Zips blew a huge 4 th quarter lead against Josh Cribbs during the '03 home opener. True enough, they rebounded to go 5-3 in the Mac, bur that loss to Can't had already sealed his fate.

[Zips Win!]

ITZ- Are you kidding me? Owens did a lot for Akron! He won 40 frickin' games in 9 years....4.44 games per year.....Sure we "only" went 5-3 in the MAC and 7-6 overall......but it sure beats going 4-8 every year.....Where is GP1 when you need him?

[zipsbandman]

How about a nice cup of who cares? The guy is long gone and we already established the fact that his teams underachieved. In the meantime, Yay for MAC championships! :macc:

[Zipsrifle]

I thank Lee for what he did for the program. I think he took us up from the bottom to the next level, we were just got stuck at that level. I also believe that LO had a lot of input on the fieldhouse. IMO, LO couldn't hold a lead, or win when it counted. Maybe that's his fault, or maybe it's the players. All I know is that JD has flipped that coin, we are winning games we never would and we now are a team that can comeback on people. In the end, we're MAC champs and we went to our first Bowl, I'm happy with those results!

“When I was hired, Peggy Elliott – who was the president at the time – pointed out the window and said that’s where the indoor facility is going to be built,†Owens said.

I find this very hard to believe. Peggy couldn't get the concrete steps in front of the student center repaired for an entire YEAR, let alone get a $40 million fieldhouse built. Besides, anybody would plan to build a rec center/fieldhouse next to the ONAT! Proenza is the man! He's the dude that asked for all or nothing at the Ohio Board of Regents. He's the guy who hired Thomas. Proenza is dragging an entire city to bigger and better things.

[Quickzips]

Owens was fired before he could reap the benefits. The Zips replaced Owens, who compiled a 40-61 record in nine seasons, with Pittsburgh offensive coordinator J.D. Brookhart.

[mwilly]

Boo hoo hoo. Lee felt left out when the Zips were winning the MAC title. F him and the nag mule he rode in on.Owens was a cancer to his players and to the Akron campus. Ask any of my boys from the 1999 and 2000 teams, especially the defensive captain, and you will get the real story.Outside of the division one wannabes that he recruited the last 4 years he was at Akron U no one was sad to see him leave. During his time the Akron teams could not win big games and never, ever came from behind against decent competition. There is no way that an Owens coached team wins the MAC title OR comes back against Marshall in 2004.Outside of Hixon the Akron Offense of 2005 was pushed by MVP Brett Biggs and Luke Getsy, both Brookhart recruits.Do I even need to bring up the history of the Lee Owens' led defense? Last in the league almost every year and a endless run of crappy coordinators after he ran off Dave Snowball. Owens had no idea about how to hire a defensive staff or anything about defensive football at the division one level. Hell, only one member of his last Akron staff could even find a job in Division One.Owens was big on talk and short on delivery. He loves to take credit for things that he had nothing at all to do with. Check out his Ashland press release where he took credit for bringing Jason Taylor to Akron. Funny thing Jason was a junior when Owens got to Akron. Owens must have been recruiting for Zip football when he was an assistant coach at Ohio State for John Cooper. Maybe that explains why Coop could never beat Michigan, his staff was too busy recruiting Pittsburgh home schoolers for Akron to prep for the Wolverines.No one is giving Paul Hackett any credit at USC for helping Pete Carroll build the Trojan's program back to respectability. Owens helped recruit a few of the main players for the 2005 Zips but the team exhibited none of his classicly flawed characteristics.Lee Owens is like a jealous ex-wife who is always whining for attention. Good riddance division II boy.

[AkronURocks]

“The best way to say it is that I can’t tell you how proud I was when Domenik Hixon caught the winning touchdown in the MAC championship game. We have a relationship. "

The best part of this quote is Owens recruited Hixon as a DB, not a WR. Hixon did not make the transition to WR until JD (well known for coaching some top WR's) took over as head coach and saw an opportunity to get the best production from a player. Owens could have coached another 10 years at Akron and he would have NEVER had a MAC title or bowl game appearance. J.D. makes the most of what he has and makes winners out of his players. Owens is a loser and his record reflects him. Enough patting Lee on the back already. MOVE ON!!!!

[Captain Kangaroo]

seeing the team do so well is almost like looking at my family through a window celebrating Christmas without me. I look at (the Akron team) as if that’s my family.”

That statement calls for some:

[Z-P]

Mods!Please kill this stale ass thread! It embarrases us in a visitor eyes.

[Captain Kangaroo]

Mods!Please kill this stale ass thread! It embarrases us in a visitor eyes.

I have to disagree. I think it is a good example of how Owens is blindly revered in Stark county and how the local papers schill for him. That pisses Zips fans off. Here is the place we can "vent."Shocking that Todd Porter played for Owens in high school. You'd never guess it from his columns. They're always soooo objective.

[InTheZone]

Alright guys, I couldn't be more pleased that we have a coach like JD Brookhart. My only point is that it is absolutely embarrassing to me that some of you guys bash a guy like Owens that poured his heart into our program, whether he was as successful as we would've liked or not. Also, I find it strange that we worship JD over this season and called for Owens head after 2003.Consider- 5-3 in the MAC. 5-3 in the MAC.We bash Owens over blowing games against Can't State and UConn, but JD in his career blew a game against a sorry MTSU team in '04, and this past year we lost to freakin BALL STATE and were SHUT OUT by Army. Let's be honest here. We were an extreme beneficiary of luck and circumstance in getting to the MAC Championship this year. The stars aligned. Some of you who are in here praising JD now were wondering whether or not he should go after Army and Ball State. You were on here giving the throwup Smilies about this team. Just about all of you after Ball State said we were done and way to blow our chances blah blah blah. Hypocrisy is running rampant on this thread. I know that pisses a lot of you off, but so be it. It's the truth. We're lucky to have JD, but why bash Owens?? Doesn't make a lick of sense.

[KingZip]

"We bash Owens over blowing games against Can't State and UConn, but JD in his career blew a game against a sorry MTSU team in '04, and this past year we lost to freakin BALL STATE and were SHUT OUT by Army. Let's be honest here."MTSU in year one, game two was not a blown game.Ball State was a blown game and so was Army.If you want a real juicy stat why don't you chew on the number than in two years at Akron JD Brookhart is 6-6 in road games. Lee Owens went 7-18 on the road over his last 4 years as Zip head coach. Take out the 4 road wins over Can't and Buffalo and Owens was 3-18, .016.Owens only went 5-5 in his last year against division one opponents and got to add a 1-AA game after bitching out of the game at Hawaii that was supposed to open the 2003 season. Owens used the Hawaii game for 4 years as a recruiting tool, including in February 2003 when he recruited Jacob Leota from Honolulu to come to Akron on the basis that he be able to play his first game in Aloha Stadium. Trouble is, Lying Lee had already set the wheels in motion to drop the UH game because he felt his schedule was too tough. Add Liberty and you get one heck of a drop off in competition.Why bash Owens? Because he sucked for Akron, should have been fired years before he eventually got the bus ticket for Division II, and uses his media buddies like Todd Porter and Roger Brown to crap on Akron all the time. Owens was more than 20 games under .500 after 9 seasons at Akron and always found someone other than himself to blame.

[zipper]

Why?? Owens lies. Publicly. Brookhart shoots straight. Nuff said.

[KingZip]

Owens only went 4-17 in his last 5 years on the road.Brookhart is 6-6 in his first two years on the road.Enough said. One can coach, the other can claim he did things that he didn't in order to save face.

[Captain Kangaroo]

My problem isn't with Owens, it is with the premise for the column that began this thread. When approached to contribute to the column I feel Owens and Stacy should have declined. It looks like sour grapes. It comes off "like a whining woman," as someone stated above. The article was written solely because some Canton writers are abject shills for Lee Owens. They can't accept that Brookhart did in two years what Owens couldn't accomplish in nine...they can't give JD one ounce of credit. The above column was flat-out generated to make The University of Akron look bad for firing Lee Owens & Staff. Simple as that. And, it won't be the last one.Owens and staff...still bitter over their dismissal...were all to obliging contribute. That's not professional and it reflects poorly on The University of Akron. That's what I have a problem with.Hey...I post pictures of Kotex boxes so what do I know about professionalism, right?

[Z-P]

I still say kill this stale ass thread. We've been down this road enough already.Frankly, ITZ makes some great points.................but kill this thread anyway before GP1 finds it.............gawd save us from his poison pen on this topic.

[Zips Win!]

No, don't kill this thread just yet......I can't wait for GP1's reply.....Still trying to find ITZ's great points....There are two distinct issues here....Owens getting fired and J.D. success/failure as the head coach--two years into his tenure. Where is the hypocrisy in wanting Owens canned after nine years and 40 wins and a lot of complaining after Brookhart's team played horrible at Ball State and versus Army. Now, 3, 4 or 5 years into his coaching tenure and his winning percentage drops to .444 and we continue to back JD, then you can call me a hypocrite....However, neither is going to happen. BTW, I wanted Owens fired after the 1999 season where we went 6-5. That should have been an 8-3 team.

[GP1]

No, don't kill this thread just yet......I can't wait for GP1's reply.....

It was a looooooong flight to Iowa today and I finally made it to my hotel room, I'm a little tired but here it goes........Lee Owens took an unwatchable disaster of a football program and turned it into a barely watchable program. If that is the definition of success, the guy I fired on Monday that resulted in me having to fly last minute to Iowa, sprint through O'Hare (sp?) this afternoon to reach my connection because I was late because we sat on the runway in Cleveland for an hour to leave, so I could do a colossally borring presentation to a group of architects Friday, should be hired back. Owens had two years of college experience coaching at OSU prior to Akron. Other than that, he was a high school coach. In fact, he had a bunch of high school coaches on his staff. We were frequently out coached on and off the field. During games, we hung in until halftime every game because that is what bad teams do. At halftime, the other team gets their head out of their ass and beats the bad team with their bad coaches. We did it to OU this year. Off the field, if you played at a "suburban" school and were a "suburban player" you could get a scholarship to Akron. What a load of crap that was! They may have been small, but they sure were slow.The attention to detail was horrible during the Owens years. Every game, we had to use timeouts because the defense wouldn't know where to line up. Guys would drop passes right in their hands and there was no accountability. That's pathetic.As far as that offense, it racked up a lot of yards.......between the 20s and in the first through third quarter. The guy would use up the clock, get into scoring position on the 15 yard line and when fourth down came along, he would go for the first down and not make it. That great offense couldn't even get a first down when they needed one against Can't State in 2003 and they blew a huge fourth quarter lead. Please spare me the comments about what a great offense it was. With LO's offense, when it was good it was great; when it was bad, it was horrible. With JD's offense, when it is good it is great; when it is bad, it at least rests the defense and gives you a chance to win.Do we have to say anything about that defense?There is no comparison between JD and LO. JD is a professional coach who has been in the NFL and at a Big East school. For any writer or coach to say JD picked up where LO left off clearly does not know what they are talking about. LO didn't bring Biggs to Akron who was the main player in Akron's success the past two years. LO didn't bring Getsy to Akron who, warts and all, was the MACC MVP and had a great game at the MCB. LO was basically 5-5 his last year. I'm sorry, those two I-AA wins don't count for shit. JD at least knows what a D-1A high school player looks like.JD treats his players like men, LO would cry in the "room" after losing. Way to toughen them up Lee. If JD's players make a mistake, they are told they did and then they are told how to fix it. I think LO knew when a mistake was made, but didn't know what to do about it.I really don't know what the players thought about LO, but I do know that half the guys hated Faust and half like him. That's probably normal.I could go on all night, but I have to go to dinner. This post did allow me to let off some steam. Thanks ZipsWin!One last thing...don't out other guys, regardless of how you feel about them, for going to strip clubs. It's very unmanly.

[InTheZone]

We give LO hell about a 45% winning percentage, but for the love of God, look at the facilities he had to recruit with!! The fact that we had as many winning seasons as we did in 9 years was nothing short of a miracle. The fact that LO's staff could recruit the amount of talent that it did was a miracle. You who are so quick to bash have no idea how hard of a job Akron football was until these new facilities came about. And oh, guess what, they didn't come about until JD Brookhart got here. Would JD have won anymore games or recruited any better athletes had he been here from '95-'03? I think the answer to that is no. Would LO have had as much success as JD in the past two sesaons?? It's hard to say, but I honest to God believe we might not have been better off in the long run, but '04 would've been a better year and we may have actually won the MAC last year. You can't say for certain though.Like I've said before, I love JD and staff, but some of you need to open your eyes. LO did alot with very little as head coach of the Zips.

[GP1]

We give LO hell about a 45% winning percentage, but for the love of God, look at the facilities he had to recruit with!! The fact that we had as many winning seasons as we did in 9 years was nothing short of a miracle. The fact that LO's staff could recruit the amount of talent that it did was a miracle. You who are so quick to bash have no idea how hard of a job Akron football was until these new facilities came about. And oh, guess what, they didn't come about until JD Brookhart got here. Would JD have won anymore games or recruited any better athletes had he been here from '95-'03? I think the answer to that is no. Would LO have had as much success as JD in the past two sesaons?? It's hard to say, but I honest to God believe we might not have been better off in the long run, but '04 would've been a better year and we may have actually won the MAC last year. You can't say for certain though.Like I've said before, I love JD and staff, but some of you need to open your eyes. LO did alot with very little as head coach of the Zips.

Weren't about 10% of those impressive 40 wins against I-AA teams?I think we all understand the limitations the University had in recruiting terms prior to JD. The main point is our being continually out coached game after game as a result of the program, coaches and player, looking more like a Suburban League team than a MAC team.The only miracle that happened during the LO years was the loss to Can't in 2003. Only through divine intervention could we have lost that game. I would like to take a second to thank the Lord for showing himself to us that day. The problems the program had were legion and it starts with coaching. I don't blame the players for their lack of results. Hell, they should go to school for free if they can. I don't think LO and his staff had a clue as to the type of player necessary to win in the MAC. They could cherry pick a good player here or there with the carrot of a player being able to play sooner than later, but once you got below the top tier players, most really weren't that good.All things being equal, I'll never be convinced that LO could do as much with a program as JD. If LO was a better coach, he wouldn't be at a dump like Ashland right now. JD has been around the block and knows what he is doing and he was at Pitt when they changed their facilities from Pitt Stadium to their new stadium and facilities. He's the right guy for this job at this point. Nine years of nothing was enough for LO. He had to go.ITZ, it's nice that you care so much for LO. I can tell you first hand that hardly any of Faust's players really cared for him. With that said, you should use less emotion looking at this issue and more reason. I wanted the issue I mentioned in my first post on this topic to be different for the guy involved, but in the end, a change had to be made. There's never any long term benefit without some short term pain. LO had plenty of chances to win here and blew more than he didn't.

[GP1]

Just a couple other things, man I love this topic.Someone please go on the web pages for Miami, Marshall, Toledo, BGSU and Western Michigan and show me the indoor facility they practiced in during the LO years. Other than Toledo, is there a school on that list were the type of player necessary to win in the MAC would want to go to school? Huntington is a complete dump, BGSU is a cow town and WMU has a stadium far from campus and Kalamazoo is a dump. Everyone in the MAC has challenges to recruiting. Ours is/was the Rubber Bowl. I don't see how any problem is not insurmountable. If everyone else in the league was doing it, why couldn't LO? JD seems to be getting past the RB.

[Quickzips]

Bottom line is JD is here and LO isn't and that as a wise man once said has made all the difference.