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It absolutely amazes me that, with one sentence, Scarborough has completely deflected the blame for an empty InfoCision from where it actually lies (Wistercill/Ianello/1-11's/weekday November games), to -- "That stadium should never have been built." Now, the guy's off the hook for any attendance liability. HE would never have ok'd this stadium, so it isn't HIS fault. Wistercill was hired to fill the stadium and get the football program rolling. That was his #1 priority. He instead he spread napalm over Summa Field. I'm seeing too much damage control and negativity, and too little positive crowing about having the best football facilities you'll find short of the P5 programs. InfoCision and Stiles are absolute gifts to anyone with a freaking clue. Bowden probably can be included in the "gift" category too. UA needs to fight the association of Zips Football with the low attendance with aggression and facts. We hired the worst coach in college football history, and let that guy gut the program. And if you were dumb enough to want to watch it, you needed to do so at 8pm on a Tuesday night, vs. some of the worst opponents in D1-A. UA needs to OWN the fact that it made horrible football hires at a critical juncture in the Program's history. Not spin awesome facilities as some sort of liability. Stop whining and deflecting blame. Be proud of our football program. Take advantage of the riches you possess. Win games. Put butts in the seats. Scarborough didn't hire THAT AD who put us in this hole. But he can hire HIS AD, and get us out of it. Do it.

Lots of amusing comments following the story, but this one is the best. Until the league office wakes up and stops signing the ESPN contract for these awful weeknight games, attendance is going to suck. Although the party line spoken by the commissioner and parroted by the MAC coaches that the exposure is an invaluable recruiting tool, I call bullshit. The best FCS schools recruit at a MAC level and are hardly ever on television. That kinda shoots holes in the whole argument. What the best FCS schools have is a fan base that cares. Students, alumni and the community. Anybody remember Game Day at NDSU? I'll wager that kind of atmosphere excites a potential recruit more than seeing Akron vs. UMass on ESPN3 in front of 150 fans.

Haha .. That looks brutal. Lazy guys kidding themselves that they are getting better.those guys should be embarrassed. Bird Wilkins ?yeah.. Maybe Larry and Dominique's fathers playing pickup.

I'm in the same boat with everyone else -- left to speculate because the short quote has inadequate context with which it can be intelligently interpreted. I don't know how many quotes the reporter was given to work with, whether there were any followup questions and answers, whether the reporter deliberately or inadvertently omitted important context, whether an editor cut words out to fit available newspaper space or what. I believe there is much evidence to support that Dr. Scarborough does give a damn about Akron athletics. At the dinner for the men's basketball team and Zips fans attending last year's Charleston Classic tournament, I asked Dr. Scarborough in front of that audience about his perspective on college athletics, and he spoke openly to everyone in the room as I noted in an earlier post: Dr. Scarbough's interest in college athletics is clearly stated in his bio on the UA website:

This was a good one too: "It would be better if the President said - hey we have the BEST facility in the MAC and we need to fill it up".

Wow! I really hope that BJ article wasn't 'news' to anyone. And all the woulda,shoulda,coulda questions are really meaningless at this point. The new Prez has realized as others did several years ago that this fball program did not have the support to warrant an expenditure of this magnitude on this type of facility. It didn't really take him very long to figure it out,to his credit. Only question now is what to do with that elephant in the room. The article in the BJ was pretty damning. When the university has to buy its own tix just to stay DI eligible it means the program is not DI caliber. And, it doesn't matter what Can't and the other MAC schools do. What matters is what this Prez is going to do to stop the bleeding. The dominoes have started to fall with the ouster of Tom W. Thats not a coincidence. Unless the fball program under Bowden miraculously starts to put butts in the seats there will be more changes. Hopefully!

Part of the "shit sandwich" Proenza turned over included TW. I wouldn't expect TW to publicly call himself out in public (c'mon man)….If the AD created the holocaust, why didn't Proenza fire him?! Dr. Scarborough did and it appears he has a big mess to clean up. My opinion is that Dr. Scarborough's comment about not building "that" stadium has more to do with the size and cost of it. Yes he has the advantage of hindsight but I for one would love to have seen the market studies that justified it all to begin with. Maybe he has seen those, who knows. There were comments about the previous administration being somewhat of a dictatorship. The "Landscape for Learning" and the "Info" sure are nice to look at but if nobody lives in the dorms and nobody goes to the games - that is bad business. Seems like Proenza was pulling a little smoke and mirror job. The Info IS a GIANT sixty five million dollar 30,000 seat luxury box turd if nobody goes to it and you can't pay for it.