Final home game vs. UMass

[ctmjbowes@sbcglobal.net]

With your quitting mentality, I take it you are a quitter in life.

With your logic, why dont we just drop to d3? That way we wouldnt lose a game for the foreseeable future?

Quitting mentality? Go to Wikipedia, look up the Zips record since 1987, and then come back and let's talk about whose mentality is based in the real world. How about that?

I want success for the Zips, at whatever level they can maintain success. Do you?

[ctmjbowes@sbcglobal.net]

LA zip fan, Zips game never on TV? I watch 2 or 3 a season. Toledo-Akron will be on ESPN2. Get your facts straight. STO televises a couple zip games a year. Its easy to pile on right now. We need to be patient and no we are not going back to 1-AA. We have competed and won the MAC in the near past, be patient, we will get there again.

Here are the facts. I live out west in Ventura County, California these days. I have a Verizon FIOS TV package that has about 1,000 channels of football (exaggeration) going from Thursday night through Saturday every weekend. For every Zips game this year I have tried to find them on the tube, to no avail. Many of those weeks I was able to watch online via ESPN3, and most of those weeks ESPN3 listed the Akron game as "exclusive", meaning it was being shown nowhere but on ESPN3, only online. During those weekly attempts to find Zips games on the tube I was surprised to find FCS and D-III games galore, but very few MAC games and never the Zips. On more than one occasion the Mount Union Purple Raiders were in my channel lineup on the west coast. Let that sink in a little. Want to see Colgate play Yale? check. Mount Union? check. UA Zips? Nada.

We all wished Akron would make it in FBS, including me. I bought season tickets and did the tailgate thing, and before that I had season tix at the last Rubber Bowl season. I believed. I wanted it. As it turned out the only fun part was the tailgating, and those lot 9 tailgaters who read this know that's the truth. Perhaps because of the distance I now maintain, geographically, it's just easier to face the facts. This program is not an FBS program in any way other than name. The refusal to admit that fact by UA is at least partly to blame for local fan apathy, bordering on scorn. Before we moved in 2011, I couldn't understand why so many locals not only didn't care about the Zips, but heaped scorn on the team. You will note that doesn't happen with the other athletic programs. I now believe that many locals understand that the Zips as "big time football" just doesn't work. There is no history there. The Zips were always local football, Acme-Zip and whatnot, and the jump to "big time" only lends itself to increased scorn the longer the program continues to fail. You may hate hearing these things, but once you take the emotion out of the conversation and stay fact-based, it's difficult to argue that I'm off base. I want to see the program do well, and it's not going to happen at this level of play.

[footballzip]

Here are the facts. I live out west in Ventura County, California these days. I have a Verizon FIOS TV package that has about 1,000 channels of football (exaggeration) going from Thursday night through Saturday every weekend. For every Zips game this year I have tried to find them on the tube, to no avail. Many of those weeks I was able to watch online via ESPN3, and most of those weeks ESPN3 listed the Akron game as "exclusive", meaning it was being shown nowhere but on ESPN3, only online. During those weekly attempts to find Zips games on the tube I was surprised to find FCS and D-III games galore, but very few MAC games and never the Zips. On more than one occasion the Mount Union Purple Raiders were in my channel lineup on the west coast. Let that sink in a little. Want to see Colgate play Yale? check. Mount Union? check. UA Zips? Nada.

We all wished Akron would make it in FBS, including me. I bought season tickets and did the tailgate thing, and before that I had season tix at the last Rubber Bowl season. I believed. I wanted it. As it turned out the only fun part was the tailgating, and those lot 9 tailgaters who read this know that's the truth. Perhaps because of the distance I now maintain, geographically, it's just easier to face the facts. This program is not an FBS program in any way other than name. The refusal to admit that fact by UA is at least partly to blame for local fan apathy, bordering on scorn. Before we moved in 2011, I couldn't understand why so many locals not only didn't care about the Zips, but heaped scorn on the team. You will note that doesn't happen with the other athletic programs. I now believe that many locals understand that the Zips as "big time football" just doesn't work. There is no history there. The Zips were always local football, Acme-Zip and whatnot, and the jump to "big time" only lends itself to increased scorn the longer the program continues to fail. You may hate hearing these things, but once you take the emotion out of the conversation and stay fact-based, it's difficult to argue that I'm off base. I want to see the program do well, and it's not going to happen at this level of play.

[Dave in Green]

@SeeTeeZip, I feel your pain as much as I feel the pain of every Zips fan. The point you are trying to make is worth considering at some point. But I don't believe that now is the time. It would be totally unfair to Coach Bowden and his assistants to give them only one year to turn around what has arguably turned into one of the very worst D-I programs in the country. While the Zips football program has never been great, it was at least competitive for a number of years before being driven totally into the ground, and it could become competitive again even if it never becomes a perennial D-I powerhouse.

Coach Bowden is the best chance the Zips have to become respectable again. He deserves at least two full seasons to show that he can start turning around the won-lost record. If he can't get the job done and UA can't find anyone better to replace him, then more Zips fans might start thinking the way you do. But it's still too early for that.

[zestycoyote]

Coach Bowden is the best chance the Zips have to become respectable again. He deserves at least two full seasons to show that he can start turning around the won-lost record.

Hell, I'd give Bowden five years. I think the program is in that bad of shape. Like you said, if he can't turn it around, no one can. Might as well let him go for a while. I don't want to hear any "one more year" talk about Bowden until 2015.

[johnnyzip84]

Hell, I'd give Bowden five years. I think the program is in that bad of shape. Like you said, if he can't turn it around, no one can. Might as well let him go for a while. I don't want to hear any "one more year" talk about Bowden until 2015.

Even though I've had my share of doubts over the last few weeks, I believe you are correct with this notion. That's the most disappointing part of the 2012 season to me - the realization that even a coach the caliber of TB won't be able to get this thing totally corrected any time soon. A five year window seems to be pretty realistic at this point.

There IS a potential silver lining with this situation, however. IF somehow TB had been able to get the Zips to (say) .500 this year, the odds of UA being able to retain him much longer would have gone down considerably. The "turnaround" would have likely been mostly on the surface, without the long term staying power needed to lay a solid foundation for a consistent winner. Now it appears TB won't be getting these looks from other schools, so his only option over the next few years (aside from giving it up entirely) is probably limited to Akron, Ohio. Now if the turnaround eventually occurs, it SHOULD be longer lasting and perhaps by then he would be at an advanced age to simply want to remain here and keep the program going indefinitely.

I also need to comment on the premature FCS talk. The most likely FCS conference affiliation for the Zips would be the MVC (former Gateway). Most astute college football observers realize that, in a typical season (the MAC is having an otherworldly successful run at present) there really isn't much difference between the MAC and the MVC. So dropping "down" to the MVC really doesn't offer a much easier path toward gridiron success. If you're going to bother to try to get competitive within the MVC, you might as well stay in the MAC and try to be competitive there first. Another option could be to go independent in FCS (to lessen the strength of schedule), but I think this would be a disaster for the overall athletic program (we know how great that worked in the '80s).

We need to suck it up and have some patience, no matter how bad it is right now. Anything else is a knee-jerk reaction, IMHO.

[Dave in Green]

I'd also give Coach Bowden five years as long as he continues to show progress. The progress shown in this first season is that the Zips can actually move the ball on a pretty consistent basis and score a lot more points than the previous two seasons. Unfortunately, that progress was not enough to make any change in the won-lost column. If team performance continues to improve in Coach Bowden's second season, it's hard to imagine not winning more than one game. Another 1-11 record next season would destroy many more fans' hopes that the program can be turned around.