LosAngelesZipFan

That's what she oh forget it

The track thing seems cra-cra-- Akron has two jewel program in mens soccer and track and field...the latter is consistently nationally ranked and the latter has produced Olympians. So they are skimping on track and field and adding other sports??

Kreed- could you re-post that analysis on football revenue vs expenses. I'd honestly be surprised to see if at BE or better, but interested to see the data. Yes, the savings would be from having a single coaching/support staff and eliminating the 75 or 80 scholarships- having one program would immediately save at least $5M. And after the initial period when the few die-hards would reject this, I think if the team wins you could end up w better attendance, meaning more revenue, more support from local corporations, donors, etc. Also, the story itself would garner national interest (think of the coverage UAB got when it eliminated football, only to reinstate it because the local community stepped up to support it) which could provide a shot in the arm for recruiting and with some success and momentum, could put the program in line for a more vibrant conference affiliation. I also think that idea of having a true "Northeast Ohio" program to rally around would make an impact- which is what has driven my reasoning about an Akron-Kent combination since I graduated from UA in '89. TBH, the 4 schools in NEO plus NEOUMED should be combined into a single university system (which would have about 80K students on 9 campuses throughout NEO). I think that would solve the Cleveland news bias issue. I mean when you really think about it, Akron's media market is not only subsumed into Cleveland (which as a major league town, is biased to cover major league sports and that means Ohio State gets the college sports coverage), but UA splits that subsumed Akron market with Kent State. Neither Akron nor Kent can dominate even the Akron media market, let alone making the case to be the dominant college sports player to the larger Cleveland market. But, I think a logical start would be confederating the football programs, neither of which are thriving or have a history of thriving. Neither program has a donor base that could invest in it to get it out of doldrums. Neither has a dedicated fan base that would consistently bring 25K or 30K fans to games (and really, to be successful, the team needs to be able to draw more like 40K+). It'd be a good news story, really, where universities are creatively grappling with budget realities to the betterment of their students and communities.

I'd like to re-up a heretical suggestion I've made in the past... one massive hurdle we face that is immutable is that we are splitting a stagnant market with another shitty football program and Ohio State. Even if we rattled off year MAC championships and bowl wins, I am dubious we'd be filling Info. We had the leading BB school for nearly 10 years but still didn't sell out the JAR consistently. My belief has been that UA and Kent are inevitably going to merge or confederate in some way. It just makes no sense for these 2 very similarly scaled public schools to have duplicate administration and overhead, serving the same community providing almost entirely inter-changeable offerings yet in a completely uncoordinated way. Regardless how you feel about a fully blown UA-KSU merger (and honestly the controversy surrounding the idea would be a good thing for both-- from a marketing perspective would be great to shake up the consideration of both schools in NEO), I think given the economics, UA and Kent should petition the NCAA to offer a joint football program. Not sure if this has ever been attempted or what would need to be changed to enable it, but it would make a ton of sense. Football is expensive. These programs are are nowhere near self-sustaining. They cost their students a ton of money in fees that is really an unfair burden. UA spent $7.25M on football and Kent something close to that. Akron students pay nearly $5K extra over 4 years to support this. So, put Akron and Kent football together. One set of coaches and scholarships. Instantly save $5M per year while maintaining a healthy MAC scale budget (UA's is nearly $1M below the MAC football average currently). Maybe the shake up will yield a winning program, double the crowds, and give it a shot at getting the NEO support it needs to have any chance of flourishing. And in success, maybe it paves the way for successfully creating a world class educational institution that can be an economic engine NEO desperately needs.

Wow-- this is so much like many of my posts of prior years (usually around this time of year when there's neither football nor BB). I have been a huge advocate for Kent and UA merging proactively before the state mandated it. It makes no sense for these 2 almost twin schools to exist 13 miles apart. None. UA and Kent should merge to create a NEO system, with almost 60K students, a handful of synergistic, world-class programs (liquid crystals and polymers), and a huge alumni base in NEO. And of course, one set of sports programs, administrations, etc, would immediately save more than Akron projected deficit. It's hard to make a comparison to the Cali system-- the UC schools are almost all 'better' than Ohio's best public school (though I think rankings are bunk in general). Ohio schools are more comparable to the Cal State schools. And "below" that is Cal Community College system, which is the largest post secondary ed system in the world by itself (over 2.6 million students on 113 campuses; Cal State, the largest 4 yr system in the US, has nearly 500K students across 31 locations, and UC with 240K students at 9 colleges making up the highest ranked public universities and system in the world). What's happened to UA is simply depressing. Hard to see how it's not in a downward spiral caused by incredibly poor leadership. Proenza was a fantastic president and gave UA a sense direction and movement. The 'Landscape for Learning' was a critical investment-- the campus was a total shithole eyesore and the investment in the campus at least made it passable. I can't even imagine where enrollment would be without that. UA spends over $30 million on athletics and saddles its students with over $1000 annually to support those programs. It's nuts. If the will to merge UA and Kent can't be found, they should at least become completely interconnected and federated, sharing programs and ideally fielding a single football program-- that alone would save nearly $10M a year.

Stunning. Gob-smacked. WTF!? Exactly the opposite of what UA needed. Seriously...WTF!?

Really glad he's staying-- UA does not need any more churn. It was definitely disappointing that he was looking to jump so soon, but his explanation of wanting to be back in Orlando made sense. However, I do hope he refrains from tossing his hat in the ring for any other positions for the next 2-3 years. UA needs that time for the 'scar' to heal...

http://www.crainscleveland.com/article/20180303/news/153716/university-akrons-polymer-college-struggles-faculty-losses

http://www.crainscleveland.com/article/20180303/news/153716/university-akrons-polymer-college-struggles-faculty-losses

Just for shits and giggle, here are some more liberal talking points: Trump's first 10 months lag Obama's (first and second term) economic performance on most measures of economic performance (jobs created, stock market performance, etc)... https://seekingalpha.com/article/4115465-trump-bump-compare-obama-effect-stock-market?page=2 https://seekingalpha.com/article/4122338-trump-bump-vs-obama-effect-part-2 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2017/12/14/comparing-the-trump-economy-to-the-obama-economy/?utm_term=.4e900fc2f087 https://www.forbes.com/sites/johndorfman/2017/10/30/trump-ranks-sixth-in-stock-market-performance-behind-obama-and-clinton/#6162b3b6644a To invert Zippy5's point, I don't think having NN in place since 2015 has damaged the internet has it? It has allowed things like Netflix and Amazon to thrive which is good for consumers (and bad for the ISPs that have big investments in TV delivery...). I agree that there is probably too much hyperbole about this-- overturning NN won't cause the downfall of the internet in the near term. But, I know I don't want my access to data and content on the internet to be metered or priced by what I choose to watch or do, which is what NN protected us from.

Just for shits and giggles, here are some more liberal talking points: Trump's first 10 months lag Obama's (first and second term) economic performance on most measures of economic performance (jobs created, stock market performance, etc)... https://seekingalpha.com/article/4115465-trump-bump-compare-obama-effect-stock-market?page=2 https://seekingalpha.com/article/4122338-trump-bump-vs-obama-effect-part-2 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2017/12/14/comparing-the-trump-economy-to-the-obama-economy/?utm_term=.4e900fc2f087 https://www.forbes.com/sites/johndorfman/2017/10/30/trump-ranks-sixth-in-stock-market-performance-behind-obama-and-clinton/#6162b3b6644a To invert Zippy5's point, I don't think having NN in place since 2015 has damaged the internet has it? It has allowed things like Netflix and Amazon to thrive which is good for consumers (and bad for the ISPs that have big investments in TV delivery...). I agree that there is probably too much hyperbole about this-- overturning NN won't cause the downfall of the internet in the near term. But, I know I don't want my access to data and content on the internet to be metered or priced by what I choose to watch or do, which is what NN protected us from.

https://twitter.com/TheOnion/status/941378281407991809

Thx for bringing this up Balsy..interesting discussion. My simplified take on this is that if your local electric company also sold lightbulbs, it would be incented to have its lightbulbs get more electricity, and thus burn brighter, giving its lightbulbs an advantage in the market. This would be fully realizing the benefits of vertical integration. It would also be an unfair business tie-up and unfair to consumers. In the absence of many competitors to provide the electricity, and thus balance the utilities advantaged position, the utility should not be allowed to leverage its position to adversely impact consumers. The role of government is to prevent things like this. I don't want to have tiers of websites like God awful tv bundles. That's where this will lead.

This is awesome to hear: https://www.ohio.com/akron/news/local/ua-welcoming-international-students-in-a-big-way-four-new-recruiters-working-to-boost-enrollment#/

Will Akron BB maintain a connection to LBJ? He is committed to the school via his foundation...let's hope the bb connection continues...

Oops on location of Xavier... so SW Ohio is supporting Cincy (9415 avg), Xavier, UD, Wright St and Miami (and only Miami has crappy avg at 1426...how's that for a stmt about the MAC). I wonder if a deep run is transformational-- Kent did and didn't sustain a big bump in attendance. I wish we had some baller alums that would step up to pay enough to get 2 high quality, big name BB opponents and 1 big name for FB every year. I wonder if OSU is as dominant in SW Ohio from a mindshare perspective as it is in NEO (obviously not as big a factor in BB as in FB).

Something to really make everyone angry: http://i.turner.ncaa.com/sites/default/files/images/2016/06/09/2016_release_mens_basketball_attendance_final.pdf You mentioned Wright State drawing north of 4K on average (compared to UA's 3300)... Dayton is somehow supporting UD @ avg of 13K per game and Xavier at 10K per game on top of Wright State. Kent's average is just a little over UA's. Ohio is over 6K(!). UA just has not established a deep supportive connection with the potential ticket buyer-- even though many of them are alums. It's not winning-- no program has won in the MAC of late as we know. My pov is that unless we are playing big name opponents, we won't get that attendance, which holds for football too. Xavier and Dayton are programs w deep history that play at a very high level, so they draw 3x or 4x as much as we do even though they are a fraction of the size, with a fraction of the alumni base, and competing with each other...sucks

To clarify... "some random person"= some unknown dickwad like iCoach whose only qualification was being the buddy of the person doing the search. Groce is not that-- he's a known quantity and knows Akron well. While I wish he had an Akron connection--like Boals-- I would be totally comfortable w him because we saw directly what he was able to do down in the 'holler. My point was I do not want some buddy of Williams whose only qualification is that friendship-- been there, done that w Tom Wistrcill and iCoach.

Backlash? Really? Like the 1000 season ticket holders (for either sport) will walk away and that will really cause a big issue? I think the baseball backlash was more because of how it was handled rather than a huge constituent group supporting UA baseball (remember Scarphoon days... it was announced suddenly with no plan for the athletes and then it came out he wanted to build a walkway through the baseball field...after that it's just a hazy morass of olive jars, tweeting angry children, polytechnic and name changes, and offending peer universities and the community as a whole. Amazing what can be accomplished in just 24 months...). a-zip, your post is spot on in terms of raising this question, which is the same one I have harped on for several years-- does it really make sense for UA to spent $38 million on sports? Does it really make sense for the other 3 state universities to spend another $60 million every year? Is there ANY return on that collective investment for Akron or NEO or Ohio? Do we actually face that question, take it head on, or just keep doing the same thing every year? As I said in a post the other day, these 4 state universities will blow almost $1 billion in this decade on sports. That's real money. To what end and for what purpose? I think it has to be asked. Dropping down a division in football saves some money, but not all that much (I seem to remember someone offering up an annual savings of $2 million). So we go from $38 million to $36 million in annual spend. The only thing that changes this equation is increasing revenue-- that means either ticket sales or fundraising (and really both)--while holding costs relatively level. What would make that possible? Well, winning certainly helps, but BB shows clearly we can have the winningest team in the MAC over the last 8 (or whatever) years, and not have a big (meaning gamechanging) increase in either tickets sales or donor dollars.

If anyone is in touch with Williams in some way, will you please take a few seconds to describe the disaster that was iCoach and how much damage the one particularly bad decision made to UA which came down to one guy following his default path without really getting the tired kicked on it... And just to add some salt to that wound, imagine-- just imagine-- if we had ended up with someone like PJ Fleck instead of iCoach and pulled off a couple of amazing seasons with a brand new stadium... instead, the exact opposite happened. Oh and to add to that mix is the Scarphoon decision and aftermath... the entire UA community has collective PTSD from 2 major hiring decisions that were ill-considered and turned out in the worst possible way for UA. UA was just getting it's reputation back together with good moves by the new president, and now this... KD's repalcement just can't be some random person with no connection to UA that Williams just knows "is gonna be great"... stakes are way way way too high...

Boals did great in Chicago

I didn't mean a local Akron guy, I meant a guy with time at UA... just a reaction to iCoachDoucheBag and to the revolving door at Kent.

Yeah, I think there needs to be a strong message that we're not hiring to sustain or maintain, we hiring to slingshot ahead-- what KD did created a base and history, a great platform for the right guy to completely transcend the MAC, but our goal is not just to keep that up. We want to not just get to the tournament every few years, we want to be there every year... and each year get a little further. Starting w getting that first win. Our goal is to be a deep tournament threat every year and to play a style of basketball that is fun to watch. Is PJ Fleck available yet?

Another thought... I would be really interested in a Shaka Smart disciple that wants to bring in a different style of play a'la 40 minutes of hell, something that broke the mold of MAC basketball.

You could say that about Shaka too and would take him in a heartbeat... I don't have any first hand knowledge, never met any of them, but I remember Boals had alot of buzz when he was here and it was significant when he went to Columbus. My point is really that I'd rather have someone like that (Akron connection) then one of the (many) coaches that have cycled through Kent and then failed at another school. And I really, really don't want someone whose only cred for the job is that the AD likes him alot.