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Smaller, Leaner athletic program...


zip81

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25 minutes ago, DannyHoke said:

I push no narrative, I give you facts.  

 

The University of Akron paid for its $34.9 million sports program last year in large part with a $24.3 million university contribution from non-athletic sources, the school reported in its financial filing with the NCAA for the 2017-2018 school year.

 

The subsidy was reported as “direct institutional support.” This includes, according to NCAA reporting requirements, any support the school provided to the athletic department from state money, tuition, tuition discounts, federal work study programs and more.

 

The subsidy amounted to 70 percent of Akron’s sports budget.

 

Based on Akron’s total enrollment, the $24.3 million subsidy amounted to $1,359 per student. Ohio State is the only public university in Ohio that operates its athletic program without a subsidy from non-athletic sources.

 

No matter how you spin this Akron Athletics is losing money, has been losing money since the move to Division I, and without this ATHLETICS TAX on the students there would not be enough money to fund the program at the current levels.  If you cannot see this, you are blind and cannot add and subtract. Low ticket sales and low donations = low interest.  Truth hurts.

 

 

 

Actually I love this discussion from all points of view. Admittedly when I attended U Of A, 1974 grad.I didn't think too much about 'student fees' supporting athletics. I went to football and B.ball games,showed my ID and got in 'free'. NOT REALLY. Even back then I and all other students were 'paying for' supporting athletic programs. Akron was competing at the College Division level back then I believe. Anyway,whatever it was called the football and basketball teams were quite successful. Over the years the University has decided to 'move up' in competition. With that has come more costs,more expenses. I wonder how much the REAL in flow of revenue  generated only by the Athletic Dept.has increased over the years(in inflation adjusted dollars)? One problem is that the cost of education now seems to require a larger percentage of one's income than it did way back then. When fees that are paid by students go to significantly supporting sports that are nowhere near being self supporting some very difficult choices have to be made. Is attracting more students and educating them the highest priority. Or does the University continue to divert resources from the education component toward other endeavors? Eventually one has to be concerned that Akron and schools like Akron might price themselves out of the student market. We are seeing consistently declining student enrollment numbers which means fewer dollars from those 'fees' which help support athletics. The article sighted above from cleveland.com is enlightening. I saw numbers similar to those before.

I would be very sad to see major changes in football,basketball,soccer etc.But as I said earlier,the current health crisis may have simply accelerated a process that was already in place.

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19 minutes ago, Spin said:


Competition has hurt too. Having a community college “right next door” (and in Barberton) has done a number on enrollment. Both for the two year programs, and for four year students looking at a more cost conscious first two years (I went to Wayne and Medina to save money).
 

These students who go to Stark don’t feel a bond with Akron like Wayne/Medina/Polsky students. KSU and CSU are just as much in their decision making as Akron.
 

 

 

All schools at this level are hurting. You are correct about the kids now attending at the Stark State,Cuyahoga Commuity College levels. Shoot kids are taking college credit courses in high school. ITS CHEAPER. More going there fewer going to Akron,KSUUU etc. etc. No fees to support other activities.

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A topic worthy of a GP1 post. This is an important issue for changing times.

 

Now is a critical time for college athletics. I would encourage the University to act boldly but smartly as it looks at these decisions. Tinkering around with the budget is necessary and hard decisions are required, but look towards the future of college athletics and what may take shape. Schools like ours can help shape our future or have the future shape us. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’ve had a lifetime of the changes in college athletics shaping us for the worse and would like to try something different where we shape our own future.

Whatever UofA decides to do, it cannot be done in a vacuum similar to when the school made a unilateral decision to go D1A. History shows this doesn’t work for us. There is strength in numbers (as long as the numbers don’t sink your ship) and we need to partner with our conference and the other G5 conferences to hammer out something better for ourselves. If we do not, we are just picking around the edges of failure that will be worse for us than the current environment presents.

 

Power 5 schools/conferences are going to take advantage of this downturn to examine their business framework and make changes that are only going to benefit them, and they should. The truth is they are being held back by the NCAA and the rest college athletics, which simply does not match what they are trying to accomplish. Years ago, I brought up G5 schools divorcing themselves from the P5 schools before THEY divorced us and start our own division. This week I was watching ESPN and the issue of P5 conferences using this downturn to set up their own “division” or whatever you want to call it was being discussed. There has never been a better time for them to do this. In fact, they have ZERO to lose. I would go as far as to say the framework is already there and all they need to do now is give a boot to the NCAA and take control of the 40% cut the NCAA gets out of the $700,000,000 produced with March Madness while not having to share the rest with G5 conferences.

 

Captain Kangaroo is correct. There is a lack of leadership at UofA. Leadership starts with a vision and bringing that vision to life. Starting a D1A football program in 1987 while playing in the Rubber Bowl of all places with a weight room in the bottom floor of the basketball arena and limited scholarships does not show good leadership. Building a football stadium is a good resume boost for bureaucrats, but not a vision for the future unless you believe in magic. Playing games on Tuesday and Wednesday nights in front of empty stadiums on national TV to get the TV revenue is a boost for the bureaucrats who run athletic departments into the ground and somehow their resumes benefit from this, but it has had disastrous consequences for the MAC. The MAC is a shell of the football league it was before this nonsense started. This is our history and the facts are painful. Good leadership would accept those facts, stop the magical thinking and look for a better way forward.

 

So how do we get from here to there? Crawl-Walk-Run. At some point, some president of some G5 university needs to call for the organization of some kind of committee to examine the future of college athletics for their schools/conferences without P5 schools and chart a course forward where G5 conferences can find success at their level of ability. The committee should have many more business and community leaders than athletic directors. Harness the brain power of these people for crying out loud and stop listening to the athletic directors with Sports Administration degrees. I would discourage any current athletic directors from being on the committee as it is obvious these people do not act in the interest of their schools and are little more than bureaucrats solely interested in maintaining the power of their bureaucracy. Have some former athletic director because they will be the ones who know the dirty secrets, but don’t have too many of these people and don’t let one run the committee. There are over 60 G5 schools, which would make for a great college football division where fans and alumni could go to games, retouch their universities and see those schools as a source of enjoyment/entertainment. Examine everything including the reckless behavior exhibited by conference leaders that will harm the conferences in favor of bringing in another nickel.

 

As far as the rest of college athletics, they are on their own and we should not concern ourselves with them. There will be a ton of private schools that simply are not going to be able to financially survive this period. I don’t mean the Harvards of the world with their giant endowments, but the smaller OAC type schools with small endowments charging student loan requiring high prices for unimpressive students to attend their schools to get unimpressive degrees from learning from unimpressive professors. This game is coming to a quick close so they should not be included in our future because their future is bleak.  Want to increase UofA enrollment?  Pray for the quick demise of these schools and the dorms will be full of these students. D2? Whatever, they are on their own as well.  FCS? Good luck to them and I mean that, but they should not be our worry and we should not go down the road of bringing them on board just to have a big division. There are far more Southern Utahs than North Dakota States.

 

“What got us here won’t get us there” is a good business leadership statement and the misconception is it applies to successful organizations, but it applies to all organizations. If we and the rest of the G5 schools continue to do what we have done in the past, which isn’t working, we won’t get to where we need to be.

 

Find a different road.

 

Stay safe and go wash your hands.

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One thing I think many have failed to acknowledge is that this day has been coming for some time.  It has only been accelerated by the COVID-19 crisis.  We can debate the cause of the problems and the finances all day every day, but the reality is that these are all issues that have been on the horizon for some time but that have aggravated and exacerbated by poor leadership and planning by those in power at the university and the NCAA.

 

At this juncture, the university has to chart a course without regard to the territorialism of the respective sports programs and stick with the plan in the face of the inevitable protests and whining.  The plan also has to involve making difficult objective choices rather than just cutting the low hanging fruit. 

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3 hours ago, zips1989 said:

Can someone answer this.. can you play Football at DIv 2 or 3 and till play Div one in all other sports?

Generally no. By rule, all sports must be played in the same division. There are some exceptions, but they are few and far between (most involve being grandfathered into the exception to the rule somehow). Its theoretically possible that the NCAA would allow it, but there is no reason to assume that they would waive the requirement.

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6 hours ago, Lee Adams said:

Actually I love this discussion from all points of view. Admittedly when I attended U Of A, 1974 grad.I didn't think too much about 'student fees' supporting athletics. I went to football and B.ball games,showed my ID and got in 'free'. NOT REALLY. Even back then I and all other students were 'paying for' supporting athletic programs. Akron was competing at the College Division level back then I believe. Anyway,whatever it was called the football and basketball teams were quite successful. Over the years the University has decided to 'move up' in competition. With that has come more costs,more expenses. I wonder how much the REAL in flow of revenue  generated only by the Athletic Dept.has increased over the years(in inflation adjusted dollars)? One problem is that the cost of education now seems to require a larger percentage of one's income than it did way back then. When fees that are paid by students go to significantly supporting sports that are nowhere near being self supporting some very difficult choices have to be made. Is attracting more students and educating them the highest priority. Or does the University continue to divert resources from the education component toward other endeavors? Eventually one has to be concerned that Akron and schools like Akron might price themselves out of the student market. We are seeing consistently declining student enrollment numbers which means fewer dollars from those 'fees' which help support athletics. The article sighted above from cleveland.com is enlightening. I saw numbers similar to those before.

I would be very sad to see major changes in football,basketball,soccer etc.But as I said earlier,the current health crisis may have simply accelerated a process that was already in place.

 

In 1974 men's soccer was in D1, all other sports were in D2.

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I was surprised to hear from GP1.  I always looked forward to reading his comments.  He is proposing to get business minds involved with helping G5 schools figure out a way forward.  Lets say a G5 school can average 25,000 fans for 6 home dates and get $35 a ticket.  That would be fantastic!  What business man would pay the CEO a half a million to run a business generating 5 million dollars of revenue?  If the football program generates other value, the program should benefit.  Enhancing student experience?  Not much  to add there.  Enhanced student enrollment?  Na.  Where is the real value that should have a big chunk of that revenue chart above?  NFL!  Without colleges providing a fantastic pipeline of players, where would they be?  Covid 19 may play havoc with them, but the NFL just put on a much watched show in spite of our lock down.  Were there any draftees that didn't come from the Minor League, aka NCAA?  Maybe now is the time the NFL starts to chip in.

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13 minutes ago, Ham said:

Maybe now is the time the NFL starts to chip in.

Good ideas. If we wait for the NFL to help, we'll all be fossils dug up by future geologists before that happens. Besides, I don't know there would be difference between us making bad decisions in the name of getting a few bucks from the P5 schools so the taxpayers have less red ink to cover up for us or getting bullied around by the NFL. If the P5 schools are bad, that would be a nightmare. The P5 schools are looking for easy wins. The NFL would be looking for a farm system. Not sure how that equates to G5 schools reaching their full potential. We really need to find our own path, whatever that may be.

 

When I say bring in business leaders, the first idea people have is bringing in Fortune 500 CEOs. In my opinion, we need business leaders who have had to own or manage small, scrappy businesses. How do they succeed with less? We should be open to any and all ideas.

 

I am so f-ing bored.....

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6 hours ago, Zipmeister said:

 

You should write up a testament to the NCAA.

How's the luckiest women in the world holding up?

I'm looking forward to writing an obituary for the NCAA.

 

Mrs. GP1 is as blissfully happy as ever because of being lucky enough to be married to me.

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I think Dr Miller is following the advice of Winston Churchill,  "never let a good crisis go to waste". Akron has been kicking the can down the road for years when it comes to deficits in the athletic department budget. Now under the cover of the Covid crisis it is the time to make a major course correction. Hopefully the rest of the MAC sees it the same way. GP1 makes a good point about the G6 schools breaking off and doing their own thing. They may not have a choice if the G5 thinks old Winston had a good idea.

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20 hours ago, NWAkron said:

Being a D1 school is a selling point.   

 

To who? The students who are Ohio State fans? Or could care less about sports?

 

I'm a firm believer it's more exciting, more interesting to play to your level. I come from a Division V high school football program, Doylestown/Chippewa. I have never heard fans say "Man I wish we were getting smoked by St Ed tonight" or "We should be playing in Massillon!!"

 

I personally had a lot more fun watching the Canton Charge than the Cleveland Cavaliers this season. 

 

I would rather see a competitive, fun football team. At whatever level we eblong. 

 

I enrolled in Akron in 2007 (non-traditional student) and in that time I've seen the program go 49-110. .308 winning percentage. ONE winning season. We're talking the MAC, not the SEC. Sure the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl victory was fun, but overall THIS SUCKED. Season tickets? Not anymore.

 

Criticize me all you want about not being a "real fan" anymore, I won't cry. It's time to be realistic here.

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5 minutes ago, Spin said:

 

To who? The students who are Ohio State fans? Or could care less about sports?

 

I'm a firm believer it's more exciting, more interesting to play to your level. I come from a Division V high school football program, Doylestown/Chippewa. I have never heard fans say "Man I wish we were getting smoked by St Ed tonight" or "We should be playing in Massillon!!"

 

I personally had a lot more fun watching the Canton Charge than the Cleveland Cavaliers this season. 

 

I would rather see a competitive, fun football team at a 

 

I enrolled in Akron in 2007 (non-traditional student) and in that time I've seen the program go 49-110. .308 winning percentage. ONE winning season. We're talking the MAC, not the SEC. Sure the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl victory was fun, but overall THIS SUCKED. Season tickets? Not anymore.

 

Criticize me all you want about not being a "real fan" anymore, I won't cry. It's time to be realistic here.

Go Chipps!

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D-I schools

Schools must field teams in at least seven sports for men and seven for women or six for men and eight for women, with at least two team sports for each gender.
 

We should hear something soon, from what I’m hearing there are several programs on the block.  Throwing it around about dropping to FCS because we won’t meet the standard above.  Many students athletes that have summer school classes & housing covered may lose all that.  This will have huge impacts on many student athletes.  Especially ones close to graduation.

 

Very unfortunate, if it has to be done it has to be done but it will have a huge affect & a lot of student athletes 

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14 minutes ago, Spin said:

 

It's time to be realistic here.

It sure is and it's not just us. First thing first. How did the MAC and conferences like ours get worse over the past 10 years at least? I would love to see any committee answer this question first.

 

"Con men"?  What does this word actually mean?  Well, it is short for "confidence men". Confidence men say things and posture themselves in a way that make those vulnerable to their ideas believe the con men are capable of accomplishing what they say they can do even if it is complete BS. Lends itself to magical thinking disguised as "big ideas". "If you build it they will come" falls in to this category. This works if you build a baseball field in Iowa with ghosts walking out of the corn in a Hollywood movie staring two great actors centering the story around Baby Boomer angst. It pretty much fails everywhere else though. Even Ohio State and Notre Dame of all places have failed to sell out games in their palaces of stadiums in very recent years, probably because people don't want to watch the game from a seat that makes the game look like you are looking at a satellite image. Vulnerable is the key word above. Schools like ours were very vulnerable to the magical thinking of athletic directors (con men) years ago. New stadiums, bloated athletic department and more stadiums bankrupted schools in the hopes they could field teams that could one day compete against the big boys. When that failed, they moved to TV contracts promising "exposure" which has turned out  to be a disaster. Man did these cocktails taste good at the time, but now we are sitting around with one of the biggest hangovers in history and the ADs who caused it aren't even around anymore to hand us a glass of water and some Advil.

 

But, here we are. Let's face reality and get moving forward. Most importantly, let's not make the exact same mistakes again.  

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28 minutes ago, 94zipgrad said:

Throwing it around about dropping to FCS because we won’t meet the standard above.  

If we drop to FCS, we're out of the MAC. There goes the automatic Tourney bids for basketball and soccer. And the manageable bus rides to/from games. Maybe the Kent rivalry changes to YSU? Yippee.

 

GP1 is correct. We need to have partners in this deal. Most of the MAC, and other G5 programs, are in the same boat. 

 

If UA walks away from FBS football alone (i.e. no like-minded partners), and drops to a lower division, I'm done with Zips football. Unless, maybe, if there was a new G5 division. And, I wouldn't care to watch the basketball program compete in a lesser conference either (like we tried with the Northeast Conference after we left the OVC).

 

There's a big domino effect if UA does something really stupid this football decision. 

 

Thanks to the Prez for his premature, negative, vague announcement that lets us twist in the wind for weeks...

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7 minutes ago, Captain Kangaroo said:

There's a big domino effect if UA does something really stupid this football decision. 

Unfortunately, the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior.

 

A committee of like in kind schools is the only way UofA can save itself from almost certain disaster acting unilaterally.

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28 minutes ago, Captain Kangaroo said:

If we drop to FCS, we're out of the MAC. There goes the automatic Tourney bids for basketball and soccer. And the manageable bus rides to/from games. Maybe the Kent rivalry changes to YSU? Yippee.

 

GP1 is correct. We need to have partners in this deal. Most of the MAC, and other G5 programs, are in the same boat. 

 

If UA walks away from FBS football alone (i.e. no like-minded partners), and drops to a lower division, I'm done with Zips football. Unless, maybe, if there was a new G5 division. And, I wouldn't care to watch the basketball program compete in a lesser conference either (like we tried with the Northeast Conference after we left the OVC).

 

There's a big domino effect if UA does something really stupid this football decision. 

 

Thanks to the Prez for his premature, negative, vague announcement that lets us twist in the wind for weeks...

I agree with you.  However, I think we are very fortunate to have Miller.  What we are all learning across the board that you hire competent, smart people for the bad times.  It's easy to lead an organization when there's lots of $ and all is going well.  First priority should be to get kids back on campus this Fall.  Get some normalcy back to the students.  Also, for the athletes, they need to know what their future holds.  Also, Donors, those who support scholarships, need to know where their $ will be going.  Akron was in the midst of a really good marketing campaign when this hit.  

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20 hours ago, GP1 said:

 

So how do we get from here to there? Crawl-Walk-Run. At some point, some president of some G5 university needs to call for the organization of some kind of committee to examine the future of college athletics for their schools/conferences without P5 schools and chart a course forward where G5 conferences can find success at their level of ability. The committee should have many more business and community leaders than athletic directors. Harness the brain power of these people for crying out loud and stop listening to the athletic directors with Sports Administration degrees. I would discourage any current athletic directors from being on the committee as it is obvious these people do not act in the interest of their schools and are little more than bureaucrats solely interested in maintaining the power of their bureaucracy. Have some former athletic director because they will be the ones who know the dirty secrets, but don’t have too many of these people and don’t let one run the committee. There are over 60 G5 schools, which would make for a great college football division where fans and alumni could go to games, retouch their universities and see those schools as a source of enjoyment/entertainment. Examine everything including the reckless behavior exhibited by conference leaders that will harm the conferences in favor of bringing in another nickel.

 

“What got us here won’t get us there” is a good business leadership statement and the misconception is it applies to successful organizations, but it applies to all organizations. If we and the rest of the G5 schools continue to do what we have done in the past, which isn’t working, we won’t get to where we need to be.

 

Find a different road.

 

Stay safe and go wash your hands.

 

100% agree that the ADs that have been at Akron have been lesser than since Mike Bobinski left.  Helsel was clueless. Thomas was looking for a job every year, as was Rhoades. Wistricil was a clown and Williams has proven to be a true phantom, likely the worst of the group. The AD is only as good as the staff around him/her, and at Akron it's been the same group of core people running athletics for the last 25 years.  

 

An AD needs a strong University President and Board of Trustees. That has not been the case at Akron. Do we really need to address these dysfunctional further?

 

The business leader as an AD is a concept that has been pushed.  Not new.  Not successful for the most part.I have have missed some but these two immediately pop into mind.

 

Dave Brandon helped build Dominos Pizza into a top American brand.  Brilliant business mind.  He then was named the AD at Michigan and drove the program into the ground.

https://www.detroitnews.com/story/sports/college/university-michigan/2014/10/31/dave-brandon-university-michigan/18241453/

 

Jack Graham was a great businessman out in Colorado, then was the AD at Colorado State.  A few years later he was canned as again, the "Business Mind" left lots to be desired in terms of operating an athletics department.

https://www.denverpost.com/2014/08/08/jack-graham-fired-as-csu-athletic-director-calls-decision-surprising-disappointing/

 

Fred Glass at Indiana was a lawyer before, same as Larry Williams.  I'd say Fred's time at IU has been weak.  Basketball is bad and football is, well, still Indiana football.

 

Committees only work if they have teeth and are empowered by a plan that carries out their recommendations.  Without follow through you are wasting everyones time and making things worse by giving the impression that you care about change.

 

The University of Akron enrollment is on the downswing.  That's a bigger issue than anything in Athletics. Focus needs to be there, not on sports.

 

Akron Athletics receives 70% of its funding from Student Fees and other institutional support.  The people raising money for Athletics are weak, unable to focus on a long-term mission, and that's because the AD is failing at his#1 job.  Have a workable strategic plan.  Larry Williams may be a nice guy but he's using a day trade mentality. The day has come from the UA's mindset that Athletics has a margin call.  First it was an 8m cut, now it's another 20%.  As such, D1 Athletics as we know it is over.  Any student who has completed a Business 101 Intro Class could tell you that.  

 

Another poster asked if Matt Kaulig would approve of downsizing athletics?  Who cares, he's not writing a big enough check to have that veto power. The last guy who did ran Infocision, and he died in 2013. He committed contributed $10 million for 20-year naming rights for the newly constructed UA football stadium. That was in 2009, so that deal has 9 more years on it.

 

Akron is a lot like Dayton, only UD is private and UA is public.  UA should look into privitizing the school, downsizing for the current economy, and dropping football from D1 to D3.  Play D1 in all other sports like Dayton, Davidson, Drake, San Diego, etc...  Lots of D3 football in the area and no reason why we could not make basketball a true powerhouse.  Football at the MAC level with MACtion killing the schedule every year is an anachronism. Get busy with a true strategic plan and leadership in athletics who operate in a transparent nature. Larry Williams has been too secretive in his operations, or in most cases, lack thereof. Since his hiring in 2015 he has been a ghost. His leadership is no where.  Contract is about up... don't look for a return.

 

Akron needs to clean house on the athletics staff side.  These folks have all had their time and perhaps bringing in a Matt Kaulig would be appropriate.  Someone who has skiing the game and a brain for business. No one on campus now has a clue and it's time to make some waves.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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This requirement (problem) to cut spending is imminent. The question (or answer) is where to allocate reduced athletic budget resources. I can't see any other answer other than to fund revenue sports and cut or starve other non-revenue programs. In the long term, if the G5 were forced into a decision by the P5, it might play out in some other senerio, but that would require a hell of a lot of legal and financial cooperation from a lot of programs probably taking years (worth a study? - probably already happening by G5 Conference Commissioners) .        

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17 minutes ago, DannyHoke said:

Another poster asked if Matt Kaulig would approve of downsizing athletics?  Who cares, he's not writing a big enough check to have that veto power. 

I don't care if he approves or not either. I would be interested in him answering a simple question because I think it would shine a light on ideas for us competing well with what we have to offer.

 

How did you take a small, midwest company and make it one of the best and well known small to mid size manufacturers in the country?

 

He's our My Pillow guy.

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