kreed5120

It's 14 sports to be D1, but FBS requires 16.

You're overlooking the fact that each student pays x-number of dollars in student fees that are to help cover the cost of athletics. If we have fewer students, we're collecting less in student fees. I'm not saying we should have cut athletics spending 23.7% just because enrollment fell 23.7%. I'm saying I don't feel we should have increased it 9.4%.

I'm obviously a fan of athletics. That being said I can't disagree with everything those academia faculty are saying. Had we kept athletics spending in check the last 15-20 years, we wouldn't be in a position to make such drastic changes now. There is no way we should be supporting 20 D1 sports when we're only required to support 16.

The private schools will never let NIU in. They would just be an extra mouth to feed and would be an anchor to a basketball conference that is wanting to return to being a multi-bid league.

What FBS conference is a better regional fit for NIU?

We'd come out way worse. Right now athletics generates ~10 million in revenue. If there are no games then we get none of that. We'd save some costs on travel and game day staff, but not $10 million worth. We'd still have to pay coaches, fund scholarships, and pay for facilities financing and upkeep costs.

For Akron who's kind of in the middle probably not. If Buffalo has to travel to NIU that probably requires chartering a plane, which can be costly.

We'll continue to play everyone at least once, like we do now. We will play 9 teams 2x and 2 teams 1x. Edit: I'd kind of expect them to still preserve division style schedules where we'd play Buffalo, Ohio, & Kent 2x. If the MAC is looking to do whatever it can to reduce costs it makes more sense for them to have Buffalo play Akron 2x instead of having them play NIU 2x.

The AD has already started to begin to schedule 2 payday games per year. Look at the 2018, 2021, & 2022 schedules. The people saying that we should be playing 2 payday games per year aren't the same ones saying that we should disband the program.

Was there anyone who seriously thought we'd be dropping out of D1? There are schools that spend under $5 million/yr and 'compete' in D1. Even with a 20% reduction to athletics spending our budget would be $27.9 million. That would still put us ahead of what NIU and BGSU are currently spending. All these other schools are going to be making cuts as well so we'll still end up being somewhere in the middle of the MAC spending wise.

With baseball the program was terminated immediately a few years back. The university did agree to honor any and all scholarships if players decided to stick around. I imagine they would do the same now. Most players transferred anyways as they wanted to continue playing baseball.

Akron's financial crisis agenda.

The scholarship cost is greatly inflated IMO. Akron has the extra capacity in its dorms and classrooms to absorb the students. Particularly now as we over expanded thinking enrollment would balloon to 30k+, but now it's down to 20k. Sure, it costs money to feed them and they use electricity so I'm not saying there is no cost associated with them. I just feel it's much less than the stated cost. Being able to eliminate and/or reduce travel costs and other coaches/admins would IMO be what actually substantially saves the university money. Edit: Perhaps the university should look into selling off Polsky or lease out a few floors for office space.

I'd imagine the overhead is quite low once you get past the initial start up costs. Not sure we'd be saving much by cutting it, but I could be wrong.

He seemed to have some pretty decent offers when he was coming out of high school (VT & Saint Louis).

I didn't see 100k people packing stadiums for XFL games. People watch OSU and Bama because it's OSU & Bama. Those schools in their 100+ year history have built brands that are bigger than any single player. By the time a fan gets attached to a player he's already graduating and the next man is up. If it was possible to monetize a semi-pro league, the private sector would have already done it. Hell the NBA is trying to do it with the G-League, but people still care more about NCAA basketball. Edit: I've already said I have no problem with players making money on the side for their likeness. I'm just sick of seeing everyone act like the college system gives nothing back to the players. Frankly 95% of these kids will never go onto play professionally and I don't see anyone in the private sector offering these kids more than what the NCAA does. For many of these kids the only way out of poverty is through using their athletic gifts to get a degree in something that pays a liveable wage.

That's the same position the program was in when Groce inherited it. It would probably be a slower rebuild next time as I doubt we'd spend to get someone who has the proven success that Groce does given out financial situation.

Whatever they do the schools should almost certainly have some sort of partnership. It doesn't make sense for Kent to try to waste money trying to build an engineering program to try to compete with Akron as Akron already does it much better. It doesn't make sense for Akron to spend money to try to market and improve a journalism and education departments when Kent does that way better. As our national rankings improve for those programs that we're already good at, the more students with those majors will want to come to Akron. We'll be able to attract an quantity amount of quality students. If the universities do consolidate, they would combine for something in the neighborhood of 45k-50k enrollment. That would put it on par with Cincinnati. Personally, I don't see it happening soon. Their is just way too much politics behind something like that happening. Look at Chicago State. The state of Illinois is nearly bankrupt and that university makes Akron's financial problems seem minuscule yet they refuse to close the school.

Not really much of a surprise. I'm pretty sure the last I saw Ohio was in the bottom 10 for spending on higher education per pupil. Ohio has never really prioritized education. We seem too focused on trying to preserve the decaying manufacturing sector. Meanwhile, everyone getting degrees in things like computer science are fleeing Ohio for states like Texas, Washington, and North Carolina as those jobs aren't here.

Nobody at Akron is going to make that kind of money. Players at schools like North Carolina, Kentucky, and UCLA are already getting it under the table. Look at the most recent Nike/Adidas scandal.

If an athlete can get $300 from a car dealership for doing a radio add, I see no problem with it. I just feel the university shouldn't be the ones paying players, especially since we're not actually profiting given our deficits on athletics. We're a place for higher learning, not a semi pro club.

Groce was never going to be here for 10+ years and if he was that would mean he'd have a Mr. Pinky like tenure, which I wouldn't want. Personally, I expected him to eventually leave for a job at a place like Depaul. I doubt he leaves for the ETSU job, but that would be a pretty big blow if he does. At least when Dambrot left for Duquesne he left for a better conference even though Duquesne really wasn't as good of a program at Akron at the time. The MAC top to bottom is better than the Socon although the top 3-4 teams in the Socon have been pretty good the past 2 years.

Men's basketball IMO should be the safest of all the sports. It's way too expensive to try to keep up with the Joneses in football. Even when we tried to with Infocision and Stiles, we got a pretty poor return on our investment. At least with basketball we've shown we can get pretty decent value for the amount we put into it.

Even in the article that @Captain Kangaroo shared their coach made $400k in base pay plus an additional $250k in bonuses. That's $650k total so the same amount that Groce is making now. I'm pretty sure his contract is fully guaranteed so not sure if the university has any leverage to make him take a pay cut. That said perhaps they told him they will be reducing his staff budget and/or cut funding enough that he's not sure Akron will be able to compete moving forward. ETSU is a public school with even a smaller enrollment than Akron. It's not like they're immune to this covid-19 stuff. I can't see them making the same 7 figure offer that Duquesne did for Dambrot.