kreed5120

He appears he has quire a few D1 offers and I'd say Akron is probably his best offer with either Sam Houston State or Louisiana Tech being the next best. http://www.verbalcommits.com/players/kenneth-lofton-jr

According to this we're going to be in the Global Sports Classic. It's a 5 team field, however, only 3 teams have been selected thus far (Akron, Louisville, and NC Central). https://www.bloggingthebracket.com/2018/10/24/18020280/2019-20-college-basketball-early-season-tournaments-events-mte-neutral-site-showcases-thanksgiving

St. Bonaventure, Rhode Island, and St. Joe's are all bigger basketball brands than Akron, but none of them are big enough that I'd say we'd have no chance of beating out for a recruit. In fact, to improve in the college basketball landscape these are the type of programs we need to beat out in recruiting battles to move up.

It's still to be seen if it translates to wins, but it's nice having a recruiting staff that can actually get players that other programs want.

That looks like a pretty good offer list. I haven't seen any tape on him, but from this list it would seem he would be a hell of a get for us.

Toledo's AJ Edu tore his ACL and will miss the entirety of next season. Last season he led the MAC in blocked shots and made the all-freshman team.

The football program still loses money, but mainly from Infocision, which we would have to continue to pay regardless.

We were in those games in large part because Riak was the leader and anchor of a top 25 defense. He's also as I understand it set to be a senior with Reece and Sayles both being juniors. You're right that bigs take some time to develop that's why we need at least one this class that way they have a year to develop behind Reece and Sayles.

I have no problem with an athletic 6'8 or 6'9 big. This issue is by 2021 we'll have no player 6'7 or taller under scholarship and so far it doesn't seem like we've made an effort to recruit any. Maybe Groce is planning on using a grad transfer to fill the void when the time comes, idk. If that's the case that would be a pretty optimistic view considering it would require both a MAC caliber big wanting to transfer and said player wanting to come to Akron when there might be better options elsewhere.

According to verbal commits Riak, Reece, and Sayles will all be juniors this year. We absolutely need at least 1, preferably 2, bigs this class. I don't want to have to start 2 true freshmen in the post.

Buffalo did quite a bit of reloading. I'd say Buffalo, Toledo, and BGSU would be the favorites right now. I don't see any of those teams being that far ahead of the rest of the pack so I wouldn't be surprised if one of the other 9 MAC teams wins the regular season title or tournament. Edit: As I whole I expect the MAC to be down compared to the prior two years where it was one of the premier mid-major conferences.

If only the opposing defenses in the MAC were this bad...

I think it will be LCJ, Cheese, Banks, Williams, and Riak to start the season. These new guys are going to have to show they're willing to put forth the effort on the defensive end to earn their minutes. This probably won't end up being the starting 5 once conference play rolls around.

There is a reason K-Lac ended up at malone or whichever non-D1 school it was. It was obvious D1 was too fast of a game for him. I'd take playing a 6'6 or 6'7 forward at C any day of the week if it meant keeping K-Lac on the bench.

As Hilltopper and I have both already mentioned, football pretty much pays for itself. It probably generates something between 70%-75% of the athletic departments revenue. I've listed the various revenue sources. It's the 13, soon to be 15, non-revenue sports plus bloated admin costs that's responsible for the large deficit. The real cost savings from Akron or Kent cutting their football program would be from them also being able to cut ~85 scholarships worth of non-revenue women's sports. Edit: By revenue I mean money brought into the department unrelated to student fees & general fund support.

I have no interest in adding UMass or UConn. That would just be 2 extra mouths to feed as both football programs stink and won't really boost revenue whatsoever.

4 million of that 10 is something referred to as a sunk cost. We could disband the football program tomorrow and we'd still have to pay that for the next 20 years. Hell we could demolish the stadium to build a new dorm and guess what? We'd still owe that 4 million over the next 20 years. The real cost savings of cutting football entirely would only be the $6 million/yr. Here is some of the revenue streams that football generates. 2 paycheck games - ~2.5 million total MAC TV Deal - 800k College football playoff pool that G5 teams split - ~$750k-$1.5 million depending on how MAC performs relative to other G5 conferences That right there is ~$4 million dollars and that doesn't factor in parking, ticket sales, concession sales, advertising, or donations as frankly I have no idea what those are. If we were to cut the football program the time to do it would have been before building Infocision, not now. I'm well aware the athletic department lives off of student subsidies. I'm not exactly sure what you're trying to argue here with me? Look back at my post history. I've advocated for us cutting some non-revenue sports. I was outspoken against adding baseball and woman's lacrosse. I said we should play fewer SWAC and NAIA and instead collect 2-3 additional ~100k paychecks in men's basketball. I've probably been one of the most outspoken members on needing to make the athletic program more fiscally responsible. I'm just going to call out incorrect information when I see someone post saying the football program is losing 24 million a year. We don't need the spread of false information. I understand it was something that you misread and that's fine. It happens to the best of us.

Where are you coming up with this total that Akron is spending $24 million/year on football? We're spending ~$33 million total for all sports. ~3.5 million on men's basketball and ~$2.5 million on men's soccer. No way are we spending only 3 million on all other sports and athletic department admin costs. The number I've heard that is directly attributable to the football department is ~$10 million/year. That $10M includes the ~$4 million/year sunk cost that is known as Infocision. This means the operating cost of the program is really ~$6 million. Between ticket sales, buy games, MAC TV deal, college football playoff pool G5 distribution, advertising, etc, the football program is probably pretty close to paying for itself outside of the large sunk cost. Where the athletic program is bleeding money is the bloated admin costs and all the non-revenue sports that probably cost us something in the neighborhood of $1 million each while generating us next to no revenue. If the goal is to reduce the deficit I have no idea why we added baseball and women's lacrosse. We should have cut more sports to meet the minimum D1 requirements.

We seem to for whatever reason be able to attract quality backs the last 2-3 years. We should have some very solid depth and for once our ground game should in theory become a strength. Hopefully we keep adding quality players at other positions so we can create some nice position battles.

If it's all about winning games then why take a paycheck to play at any blue blood school as that will pretty much be a guaranteed loss? Just schedule 1 FCS opponent and 3 cupcake G5s and go 3-1 or 4-0 every OOC. The reason being winning is important, but so is the money in playing those games. It's about finding the middle ground between the two that you think is the best fit. You speak of enthusiasm, but the most excited I've been as a Zips football fan in the last 10 years was this year when we knocked off Northwestern. A game that very well may not have even been played in the first place had we said we're only going to play one paycheck game this season. Personally, I think we should accept a large paycheck to play one blue blood and a slightly smaller paycheck to play at an Illinois, Indiana, Northwestern, Rutgers, Duke, etc. Those weaker P5 opponents aren't guaranteed losses and still pay in excess of $1 million. Just because someone else places a slightly more importance on the University financial well being than you do that doesn't mean their opinion is irrational or dumb.

Yes, even if Robert Morris attracted 300 more fans than Howard and each of those 300 fans on average spent $50 between ticket, parking, and concessions that only equates $15k in extra revenue. That really isn't moving the needle. YSU is probably the only FCS opponent that would attract enough fans to make a material difference and they don't seem interested in playing us on an annual basis.

It would reduce expenses some, but the revenue loss would probably meet or exceed the expense savings. Akron is going to have to continue paying ~$4.3 million for Infocision per year for the next 20 years regardless of if they stay FBS, drop down to FCS, or disband football altogether. Dropping out of FBS means we're likely to be booted out of the MAC. That means we'd see an increase, not decrease in travel costs as the MAC is a pretty compact conference. We'd lose out on ~$800k in annual tv revenue. We'd miss out on ~$1.5 million per year from the college football playoff G5 distribution. P5 schools pay G5 schools ~$1.3-$1.5 for buy games. Many P5 don't schedule FCS opponents and the ones that do only pay $300k-$600k so that's another loss or reduction to a revenue source. You can also add in reduced advertising and ticket sales. I'm sure there are other things as well that I'm not accounting for. Excluding the cost of Infocision, which is a sunk cost, the football program is most likely breaking even given all the revenue sources that I mentioned above. Men's basketball and men's soccer are probably both slight money losers as well, but mostly pay for themselves. Literally every other sport plus administrative overhead costs is where the athletic program is bleeding money.

It cost Akron $165k to travel to Nebraska, including flight. If OSU is paying us anything close to that Tulane ~$1.5 figure, we're likely netting something in the neighborhood of ~$1.3+ million after expenses busing ourselves to the game. I'm going to go ahead and pencil us in for an FCS win each year. If we can't go 5-3 in the MAC despite playing in what is by far the worst division in all of FBS, we have no business going bowling anyways. Also, I don't think we need to schedule two blue bloods each year. We can schedule 1 blue blood and another mid to lower tier P5 program. https://www.ohio.com/sports/20180921/university-of-akron-football-zips-still-awaiting-payment-confirmation-from-nebraska-athletics

Playing Dayton wouldn't make sense. In order for an FCS opponent win to count towards bowl eligibility they would need to have 57 scholarship players (90% of the 63 total that FCS teams are allowed). Dayton has 0 scholarships. I do agree we should be playing 2 paycheck games per year at least until we can stabilize the budget. While at it we should also play fewer SWAC, MEAC, and NAIA teams in basketball and in their place allow ourselves to be bought 2-3x more times per year.

We're all sports fans here, but we have to remember the University is an institution for higher learning, not a factory for producing amateur athletes. If we're needing to cut expenses to make our budget balance, cutting some of the fat out of the athletics budget only makes sense. The administration always sees more optimistic about their goals compared to what ever actually gets done. I wouldn't be surprised if this $8 million reduction in reality only becomes a $3-$5 million reduction. That would put us more in range of what Kent is spending per year on athletics.