Not sure where to post this, so I'll just put it here and let the mullahs move it if they deem it necessary.

  I heard Ohio University's own Thom Brenneman, during the Reds telecast last night, use the word "Za" when speaking of a ticket deal for a Reds game where $48 gets 4 tickets and a voucher for a LaRosa pizza. It made me wonder if this is a pizza term he picked up while he was a college student in Athens. I don't think I've ever heard this except when I was a student hanging out with SBH, cc cat and others or the rare occassions these days when we get together. In fact, three of us got together a week ago in Cleveland and considered getting a "Za" before the Bruce Springsteen concert. We even had hand signals for "Za" dating back to when we were freshmen in Reed Hall - signals that SBH has taught my 5-year-old son to use to indicate he is hungry for pizza.
 
   Any thoughts on the origin of this term?

Heard it on "Family Guy" a few yrs back.

I thought Thom used it in reference to what cowboy had made a large version of "gone" the previous night. 

There was a guy who did high school football coverage for the NBC affiliate here in Cincinnati that used it back in the mid to late 90's.  The winning team of the  "Head to Head" game of the week, as he would say  "won a free 'za party-courtesy of  Papa John's.

Don't think its unique to Athens. A fairly wide spread shorthand

Maybe not that wide spread. I never heard of it until just now.

LJA?
 
Linguistics Journal of America.

Sadly was not.  I think Broo was in a different market at the time.  He is on NBC 5 now though and gives frequent props to the Bobcats.  He does the same on his program on AM 700 WLW.  

Randi Rico, a former Bobcat Softball player, is also the channel's morning weather personality.

It was a guy named Matt Miller who did work opposite George Vogel.  Miller came and went in about 2 years and Vogel is an long-term member of the team at 5.

 Is that why the famous DJ Dick Biondi, WLS in Chicago circa 1960s, used to refer to Ohio University as "American Pizza University"?  This was a station listened to by teeny-boppers throughout the Midwest.  He took request calls from all over his listening audience area.  When someone would call and say they were from Athens, Ohio, he'd say, "Oh, the home of American Pizza University."  He would then sometimes say that Athens had more pizza places per capita than any other place in the nation.  Where he got that I do not know.  I think he just made it up.  



I didn't know that Al Gore was in Nelsonville at that time!