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Yup - he wasn't perfect but night and day better than anyone we've had since.

Yes, you are correct. Thanks for the reminder. I was a big fan of Bowden and still oppose his firing. It's been so long that I cannot keep straight the chain of failures and, relatively speaking, when our last successful season was.

We did. Under Terry Bowden. We had an 8-5 and 7-6 seasons with him, and then fired him the year he pulled off the first BIG-10 victory in Akron's history, for a no-nothing loser from John Carroll.

Agreed 100%. All I am saying is that there was another major factor at play, which is commonly ignored in similar discussions and that is not relevant to the current circumstances.

And yet you're still here defending that Akron should be playing football, and spending tens-of-millions to do it.

True...but we made sure to better distribute those economic gains.

The iCoach years were way worse than this, but that was 15 years ago now, and I don't believe we've had a winning season since.

While well intentioned, this comment has aged like milk left out on the counter. Bring on the economics and soccer discussions.

I am all for taxing the plutocrats into oblivion to support a healthier society; however, another reason the 1950s were so prosperous is that most of the rest of the industrial world was destroyed during WWII.

The soccer Zips have a pretty consistent tradition of success for a pretty long time. The football Zips have been at best not good for a while. Also, ties in soccer are considered ok. Go back and look at the posts when the soccer Zips were 1-3-1 after losses to IU Indy and Temple last year….. I don’t think we need to canabalize Zips fandom.

Wyoming is not a "name" school, they are a g5 team that was 3-9 last season and fans are not freaking out after one game, they are freaking out after well over a decade of pure futility from a program that is funneling money into a pit. Please do not be disingenuous in your comments. If the football team had put up a tying effort against a ranked team, this whole board would be doing cartwheels of joy.

We were at the match last night and enjoyed the evening, the atmosphere, the crowd and the Rowdies. I just want to add "Thank you!" to all who post here on the Soccer Forum for being informative, insightful and civil in your posts. I'm sure all of us wanted to see the Zips pull out a 1-0 win at the end, against a ranked team, but when we didn't you're not "never buying a ticket again!!!!!!" Over on the "Football" forum they're going nuclear and want to not only fire the coach, the assistant coaches, the AD, the cheerleaders, the band (I know, a little hypocritical of me, I wanted to see Women's coach gone last season, but over there they want to not just fire him, but string him up!) drop football altogether, leave the MAC, and even drop sports altogether, after a loss to a name school. Thanks for your cool heads....

There is a 30 for 30 about the Patriots. Bledsoe had been beaten up pretty bad in his career before his injury. He became a very nervous QB after he came back and that was one factor in his benching. He just wasn't aggressive anymore. At some point, when a QB gets beat up, they sort of cross a line and never go back to being an aggressive player again. I didn't see the game, but the QB has been beaten up and maybe he isn't the same aggressive player he was before.

Finley was bad from the jump. Puzzled me as I watched. The O line didn't seem THAT BAD. something else going on there.

I watched the offensive debacle, offensive in both senses of the word. I have no idea what was wrong with Finley. He wasn't that bad last season. Something more than a sore arm going on there. With that said, that was a bad Wyomong team and should have been beaten. My comment again and again has been that if football is to continue being played at Akron it has to be at a level where the program can consistently compete. That is NOT at any DI level. Hasn't been. I watched this program in the '60's and '70s when it was ALWAYS competitive. Look it up. I would be all for dropping back to DII. I don't think this program would be real competitive even at I-AA. And at that level you are still getting players poached by bigger schools. I'd rather watch them play competitive games against the IUP's,the Ashlands, Sag States, Grand Valley States etc. etc. as opposed to the crap we see now. Maybe something is brewing with a new sheriff in town. As for the rest of this season, go to most of the games,hope they beat KSU and see what happens.

You better watch. I brought this up maybe 10 years ago and found a burning cross in my front yard.

You have identified a key problem. What if instead of a marketing problem, it was a public service problem? The public has historically stomached funding public services that don't make money because the benefits outweigh the costs. For example, the only public transportation system that makes money in the USA is the NYC subway system, at least it used to. The rest are basically welfare programs for people who can't afford transportation but need to get places such as work. So again, what if at a modest cost, the football program benefited the athletes students alumni fans and general community around Akron? What if it's as simple as playing football games on days of the week and times that allow people to attend a fun day at the University their tax dollars support?

The soccer ball in last night’s game should be super healthy. The ball recuperated many, many times in last night’s game. the announcer was laughably very bad.

I've been saying this for years also. You should go back and read all of my posts and get back to me in a couple of years.

Of course they're not. They have every reason to let students go into debt to support these programs that will never be competitive, while administrators pad their resumes, collecting 6, 7-figure salaries on the backs of student debt.

Collegiate athletics is just a marketing arm for the University. Them turning a profit isn't a necessity, but with all marketing plans you have to evaluate whether the reach it provides is worth the dollars that you're spending. Little to no good has come from football in the past 15-20 years. In fact, the negatives have only tarnished perceptions of the university. Something likely needs to done. Ideally, it would be great if the MAC as a whole decided they can no longer keep up and decided to drop down to FCS, preferably non-scholaship FCS. Trying to keep up with the Jones's, even at the G5 level, has grown prohibitively expensive.

You are defending BS. Playing D-1 football serves nobody but 6, 7-figure administrators who use these universities as stepping stones to other more lucrative endeavors; ala Matthew Wilson.

I've been saying this for years. There's a path forward. I just don't think anyone at the G4 schools is interested in looking into it.

That's a great question. I don't know what their financials are. Maybe someone at the MAC could look at it. Our basketball program is a great MAC program. Does everyone realize moving to the MVC would greatly increase the competition?

Yes, could very well be.