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I've been following this debate and wanted to chime in. It's a very pivotal time for Akron, and I'm not opposed to the renaming if it's part of a more holistic approach at improvements. What I have a problem with is this notion that following the Arizona State model is some magic path to success and increased relevance. Arizona State has become something of a joke and a diploma mill. Their increased size hasn't done anything towards making them more competitive with the U of Arizona. Size alone will not bring quality. OSU and Minnesota have been larger than Michigan for generations, but it's never been some magic formula for either school to equal or surpass Michigan in stature. Hell, MSU is considerably larger than UM, but it doesn't translate into MSU being an equal much less assuming the "flagship" mantle. And MSU is a university with a billion dollar endowment and AAU membership. Quality (and the financial resources that fuel it) competes with quality, not size. Here's an interesting and very thoughtful discussion on the Texas A&M board about their new Chancellor's goal to become an 80K undergraduate diploma mill. There are a lot of direct comparisons to Arizona State, and nobody is looking at that as a positive development. http://texags.com/forums/5/topics/2624036/1 And here are some numbers relating to the economic resources of a merged NEO megacampus, and how it would compare with the rest of the state. Endowment per student (undergrad and grad) at main campus OSU: $61,000 UC: $36,000 Miami: $32,000 OU: $16,776 Akron: $8,373 Now add Can't State ($3695) and the amount for the combined campuses is $5615. You have a very large and very poor university. Throw in YSU and CSU and you add another 32,000 students with another $250M (shocked that YSU is equal to UA) in endowment, so the combined megacampus has an endowment/student of $5852--A third of OU, a sixth of Miami or UC and less than a tenth of OSU. Akron becomes less competitive from a financial resources standpoint through a merger. Is the merged campus going to do better at fundraising from alumni? Probably worse in the short run as many are alienated by the changes. Is an 88K megacampus going to suddenly start attracting National Academy level faculty and more, higher stature research. Better students? The experience of ASU would say no. Their rush to become a 90K campus hasn't moved them up in rankings. It hasn't made them the campus of choice for the state's top 10% students vis-a-vis the U of Arizona; their recent freshman class profiles are about the same as Cincinnati's. And it certainly hasn't done anything to move them up into the upper echelon of PAC 10 research universities with the California schools and Washington. They haven't been accepted into the AAU and most likely will never be accepted into the AAU. Their endowment/student is worse than OU's and will get worse as they grow towards their goal of 90K students--and money is what buys quality whether it's an endowed professorship or a scholarship to keep that kid with the 32 ACT from leaving the state. Consider too that--unlike Cincinnati--the Cleveland political and business establishment has always been very comfortable with OSU assuming the state "flagship" role while focusing locally on Case and the Cleveland Clinic. This notion that the NEO establishment will rally around the merged universities in a manner that they have NEVER done for the individual universities is a lot of wishful thinking. I am actually somebody that believes it was stupid public policy to have saved Akron as a stand-alone campus in the late 60s. It should have been merged with Can't State at the time. If that had been done, we very well might have something today similar to UC, but that ship sailed long ago. Today, there is fifty years of history of Akron as an independent public university. And while it faces serious problems and challenges, I am very skeptical that forming some merged 88K student diploma mill is the answer.

Of course, I've always thought about the 51 years as such a long time without a title when you have 3 major sports teams, but someone really put it in perspective yesterday when they said that the Bay Area of Calif. has had 16 TITLES in that same period of time. I love that the U of A is using this situation, and used a picture of LeBron with Zippy to make an Akron connection. Now there's a #TeamOhio connection that makes sense for us.

My five minute Keener inspired attempt. Speaking of beer, did anybody go to the Lake Erie Crushers ten cent beer night yesterday?

Fred's got to have some UA supporter friends. Someone needs to talk him into doing a Zips themed beer.