Darian Hicks (Solon CB)

[GP1]

Only playing devil's advocate here...

6 winning season, 3 under Owens (7 total)... Owens didn't get to a bowl, didn't get to a championship game, and those winning seasons in D1/FBS go count how many wins are against D1A/FCS schools.

I think GP1's point stands.

Agreed.

Owens was a second place coach at best. He is still a second place coach. He recruited second place talent. He still recruits second place talent. He has tons of second place trophys at Ashland to prove it....what?...They don't give trophys for second place and that's why he didn't leave anything behind. There is an old saying, "Always a bridesmaid and never a bride" comes to mind when I think of him....followed closely by a vision of him and Terry Pluto walking arm-in-arm down a beach together...sick, I know, but I keep seeing it over and over again.

If we want to be an elite MAC school, we can't let kids like Mr. Hicks get away or we fall into the Owens trap. One game can be the difference between first and second place. How many times did we lose key games to Marshall when Owens was the coach? How many times did we lose a game by a play or two to them because they had better talent or our talent couldn't make the plays. They had first place talent and we had second place talent...nice local players, but the real talent had already gone to other D1A schools. A great player here or there is all the difference between first and second place in the MAC. Some of you may be happy with second place, but I demand first place.

TB knows this and has made it a goal of his to get elite players. That's why I'm excited he is the coach. He isn't just saying we can win with local players. It's much deeper and intelligent than that. He is clearly saying we need the best of local talent in order to be an elite MAC school. What he isn't saying, but if one is smart enough to read between the lines, is there isn't enough depth of talent in NE Ohio to have an elite team if you lose out on too many like Mr. Hicks. He is 100% correct.

[wadszip]

Agreed.

Owens was a second place coach at best. He is still a second place coach. He recruited second place talent. He still recruits second place talent. He has tons of second place trophys at Ashland to prove it....what?...They don't give trophys for second place and that's why he didn't leave anything behind. There is an old saying, "Always a bridesmaid and never a bride" comes to mind when I think of him....followed closely by a vision of him and Terry Pluto walking arm-in-arm down a beach together...sick, I know, but I keep seeing it over and over again.

If we want to be an elite MAC school, we can't let kids like Mr. Hicks get away or we fall into the Owens trap. One game can be the difference between first and second place. How many times did we lose key games to Marshall when Owens was the coach? How many times did we lose a game by a play or two to them because they had better talent or our talent couldn't make the plays. They had first place talent and we had second place talent...nice local players, but the real talent had already gone to other D1A schools. A great player here or there is all the difference between first and second place in the MAC. Some of you may be happy with second place, but I demand first place.

TB knows this and has made it a goal of his to get elite players. That's why I'm excited he is the coach. He isn't just saying we can win with local players. It's much deeper and intelligent than that. He is clearly saying we need the best of local talent in order to be an elite MAC school. What he isn't saying, but if one is smart enough to read between the lines, is there isn't enough depth of talent in NE Ohio to have an elite team if you lose out on too many like Mr. Hicks. He is 100% correct.

I'm not trying to come off like I believe Lee Owens is in the same breath as Nick Saban, Les Miles or Urban Meyer. He's not even in the same class at Terry Bowden, but considering where the program was when he arrived and what he was up against in recruiting, I think he did a pretty good job. It's true that he did recruit second rate talent, but no coach could've recruited anything more than that at a time when the school had no indoor facility and was still playing in the Rubber Bowl, with no InfoCision in sight. Owens was never given the opportunity to recruit with either the indoor facility (which opened right after he was fired) or InfoCision. Who really knows how much he would've been able to upgrade the talent level. Though it's reasonable to assume he would've done a lot better than either Brookhart or Ianello (of course, that's not saying much).

Overall, I thought the school should've given him one more year, but he was dead in the water after the opening night meltdown in the RB against Can't. That sealed his fate. Still, that team rebounded pretty well. They were within 34-31 against Wisconsin the following week with the ball inside the Wisconsin five midway through the fourth, but Hendry was stuffed on fourth down and then Lee Evans had a 99-yard TD to seal that game. They also lost a heartbreaker at Connecticut on a field goal with no time on the clock. The other two losses were at Miami (and nobody in the MAC was beating Miami that year) and at a pretty good Marshall team.

It was a 7-5 season, but only a couple plays away from 10-2. Outside of Can't (which was a debacle), the other losses were because of what you are saying. Those other teams simply had more talent, and made a couple of plays (or 10-12 in Miami or Marshall's case) to beat the Zips.

What I'm saying is that the Zips didn't have the same kind of talent, yet, were so close that year to having a very good year (unfortunately, it was never going to be a title season because Miami and its rapist QB rolled everybody). But if Lee was given another year (this time at least with a completed indoor facility to recruit with), he could've added some more talent to the program. Considering the Zips lost every bit of momentum they had built up once Brookhart lost most of the players Lee Owens recruited, I don't think a 2004 team coached by Owens would've done worse than the 04 team coached by Brookhart, nor the 2005 team (though I know that is debatable and depends on how much of the "success" that year was simply due to Luke Getsy, who wouldn't have been at Akron if not for J.D. ). Anyway, who's to say that if Owens didn't stick around and the Zips won the league title in 2005 under him, with a stadium now on the horizon, that he couldn't have vastly upgraded the talent level? It's all conjecture on my part, I understand that, but it's not as far-fetched conjecture as some may believe.

Overall, while I'm as pumped as anybody about what Terry Bowden can do for this program (and yes, I'll take Terry Bowden any day of the week over Lee Owens), I still think Owens wrongly gets lumped into the list of Zip coaching failures (and I'm not even just speaking of people on this board, but people I talk to on the street) along with Brookhart and Ianello. When it just isn't the case. He did more with less than Brookhart (yes, I believe his two winning seasons were a direct result of Owens' talent) or Ianello combined.

[GP1]

What I'm saying is that the Zips didn't have the same kind of talent, yet, were so close that year to having a very good year

You just described 2-4 MAC teams a year. Talent is the difference in the MAC. The MAC is littered with second place coaches. Coaching is an extremely close second. We now have the best coach in the MAC and one who knows how to bring in talent. Our future is bright.

[33Akrondad7]

Here is a video of Darian Hicks running at reginals lane three... 13 second mark

. http://oh.milesplit.com/meets/114959/results/203696

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