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I've wondered this as well. I feel like he was pretty visible around the program for a few years and not so much anymore.

Fill the Hill

Big Ten Tournament Champ UCLA goes down to automatic conference winner.....Grand Canyon Big Ten Tournament runner up Michigan.......goes down to the highest RPI non automatic conference winner Pathetic results for the Big Ten. Yet, Indiana (5-5 in that mediocre league).....gets the overall #6 seed in the tournament...... The mighty ACC is also not shining..... Number 37 RPI Syracuse controversially got a home game against number 27 RPI Hofstra Hofstra smoked the ACC team.....2-0 Western Michigan with the biggest upset of the day.... Western Michigan came into their conferencee tournament with a 5-9-3 record.... they won 2 games in regulation and one on PK's....in conf. tourney 7-9-4......coming into the NCAA's Mighty Clemson was 29 in RPI The NCAA committee gave Clemson a super favorable draw...... play 7-9-4 Western Michigan in first round..... Winner faces the highest seeded team....Number 16 Furman by the placement in the draw....NCAA committee said that Clemson was one of the 4 best non seeded teams Western Michigan beats the over rated ACC team 1-0 Number 50 RPI North Florida is about ready to go to 2nd overtime with #28 RPI North Carolina Go, North Florida !!!!

Beating these three comparable mid-majors (Yes, OSU is now considered a hoops mid-major) only solidifies Akron as a top tier mid-major. It's not fair, but it is reality. Beating all three teams by double digits will not erase a 15-20-pt loss to Purdue in the eyes of the selection committee. And yes, the Zips looked very good even in that Purdue loss. I'm willing to bet there will be at least one B-10 team that loses to Purdue by the same margin, that gets an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament. Any takers!!! FWIW ... Oregon State (Kenpom 135) is ranked lower than Miami, Kent, Florida Atlantic, Illinois State and others. Iona (Kenpom 169) is ranked lower than at least four other MAC teams. Not saying these are bad teams. I'm saying winning these games do not move the needle toward an at-large bid.

E ESPN+

President Nemer did a promotional instagram post for the mens soccer game on Sunday https://www.instagram.com/p/DRSpiDwkqdo/

that was a beautiful game winning goal by Marcus Caldera. Hat trick for Caldera tonight.

MVC last couple years have gotten screwed with some very good teams missing

UNC beats UNF on seven rounds of penalty kicks. UNC had missed their sixth but then UNF also did. UNF definitely deserved the game had two goals called back and ended up tying the game with one second left in regulation. Both of UNF's goals were scored by a former tarheel.

JDs first year. Charley's last season. Winning record but no Bowl invite. Lee Owens recruit's mainly. I believe they may have beaten Marshall? etc. etc.

We have always had too many people posting here who don't know a damn thing about Akron football from more than 10 yrs. ago because they are too lazy to look it up. There ain't no revelations here that haven't been out here for years. Maybe that's a reason the program is where it is. A bunch of latecomers to the ball!

I never said George was a bad hire. I said it's still too early to tell, which I stand by.

Unlike Western Michigan, at least Clemson, Michigan, UNCG, Seton Hall etc. have lights.

We pick him off the scrap heap after Pitt ditched him and this is the thanks we get... If I want to say something nice about him - he played hard against BG. Guys like Mumpfield and Norton completely tanked their last games before hitting the portal.

Has Matt Kaulig sunk into the woodwork since JoeMo's been here? I'm in no inner circles, but I haven't heard from him in a while. Is he not a huge JoeMo fan?

It's impossible to compare our football to our basketball program. Thanks largely to Bud we're the 2nd best funded MAC basketball program (only behind UMass). Akron football is the bottom of the MAC in funding. If we didn't have the money to retain Tavari, Lyles, Scott, Young, not to mention sign Evan, Akron basketball would also be struggling. Maybe not to the extreme football has, but we wouldn't have had the success we've experienced either. In basketball if you find a diamond in the rough or one just happens to show up unexpectedly at open tryouts (Freeman) that dramatically raises the ceiling of your program as you only need 2-3 players to carry a team. That doesn't work in football where you have 11 starters on offense and another 11 on defense. Not to mention a few specialists. Even if you found 1 absolute star at QB he wouldn't have the same impact that a Steph Curry had at Davidson.

And I'm not saying George can't do well. Let's just wait until he has success before we praise him for it. We can check back in 2-3 years. Edit: As for Deion Indiana is just as hard, if not harder, to win at than Colorado. Especially since the Big 10 is vastly more competitive compared to the Big 12. The coach that deserves praise for turning a program around is Cignetti. Deion had a heisman winner and is still only 16-19 during his tenure.

All of these posts from national guys happening the day after the season ended and Franklin gets hired

Let's play Jeopardy. The answer is "2004."

A bit is made about Akron's football history with regard to John Heisman as a former coach. However, I am still amazed by how relatively under-celebrated this relationship is and how there is virtually no awareness about the deeper and more distant history of Akron sports and the University in general. I am currently reading Path Lit by Lightning: The Life of Jim Thorpe by David Maraniss, which goes through some early college and professional football history. One thing that really stands out is who the Carlisle Indians opponents around the turn of the last century were. Their opponents included Alabama, Auburn, Vanderbilt, Georgia Tech, Virginia, Notre Dame, Michigan, Penn State, Wisconsin, Ohio State, Minnesota, Illinois, Northwestern, West Virginia, Syracuse, Pittsburgh, Army, Navy, Lehigh, Lafayette, and all the Ivy League schools. There was not a single reference to Akron or another MAC-level team. So, Akron football has literally been trying to play catch up with the big boys for 125 years. We are not consistently at the level of the Big Ten, historically or now, and there is nothing wrong with that. Anyone expecting otherwise is ignoring history and not being realistic about the current or future. That is not to say we should accept mediocrity or worse in the MAC. Instead, we should be embracing the history we do have. Specifically, it is a mystery to me as to how I did not previously know that the owner of the first NFL Champion, the 1920 Akron Pros, was an Akron alum and former Akron football player, Art Ranney. He was also the first secretary and treasurer of the league and took notes of the league's founding meeting in Canton on Akron Pros stationary! A co-owner, Frank Nied was also an Akron alum and NFL co-founder. By my research, there are only four universities that can lay claim to having alums as founders of the NFL: Akron (Ranney and Nied), Dayton (Carl Storck), Notre Dame (Stan Cofall), and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (George Halas). Hence, Akron is the only university with multiple alums as founders of the NFL. Not Kent, Not Ohio State, not Pittsburgh, not Penn State, not West Virginia, not Michigan, AKRON! How is this not celebrated by the University, especially when the alumni and football program are starving for something to favorably change focus and momentum?! It makes me wonder, how many other alumni accomplishments are unknown or not publicized (and not just with regard to athletics)? How many Rhodes and Goldwater scholars have we had? https://www.sports-reference.com/cfb/schools/carlisle/head-to-head.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_Ranney https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Nied

Maybe the conversation could sound something like this. "Mr. Commissioner, you are killing us with the schedule. All we ask is to play our rival when the weather is nice on a Friday early in the season so we can have a decent crowd. You did it for the BG/Toledo rivalry and all they did was sell out a stadium and put on a very exciting game. We all know the only people dedicated to weeknight games are drunks and degenerate gamblers. Gamblers will bet on anything and drunks will drink to anything, so trading Kent for another MAC school on a Tuesday night won't matter. Would it be too much to ask for you to dislodged your head from your ass for a few minutes to schedule the Akron/Kent rivalry early in the season?" There you go. Problem solved.

No, I was making the point that Thorpe's "college" team did not play Buchtel/Akron, implying we were not considered a major football program then either, but that so many of the schools we are looking up to now were already established. We have been trying to play catch-up to the big boys since the early days of college football.

Great stuff, brother @UAZipster0305! I didn't know any of that. Are you saying Jim Thorpe's traveling football team also played Buchtel College? I was a little fuzzy at what you were getting at in your second paragraph. Great stuff about the NFL, Akron Pros, and UA alumnus Art Ranney! I didn't know any of that!