Leaderboard

If we're talkinga bout attendance woes at Akron, how about a competition between student groups, with the prize being a donation to the group's charity. There is a lot of student groups that do charity work in the community. Maybe it would get groups to encourage their own members to attend, increase their own membership, to get points (extra points (or double points) for checking out at the end of the game (etc)). Couple that with a entries for a scholarship drawing, I think it could potentially have an impact.

I previously suggested that the cost and effectiveness of doing a deal with an "enabler" like Academic Partnerships be compared with doing it more in-house. Two nearby Ohio schools that are obvious candidates for benchmarking would be OU (using Academic Partnerships) and UT (in-house). However, that might be a little awkward for Dr. Scarborough as he was pushing Academic Partnerships at UT when they decided to do it in-house instead. Just looking at one small element, Academic Partnerships supplies "coaches" as part of its package, so UA would be paying for their services as part of the total cost. These coaches essentially perform the same duties as graduate assistants. I don't know how much grad assistants are paid. But since they're typically in the process of completing their post-graduate education, any funding UA grad assistants might lose from being replaced by Academic Partnerships coaches could represent an economic hardship. Does it make sense to send this money off to Texas when grad assistants right here in Akron can perform the work as well or better and can use that money to help pay for their UA degree work?

I don't think anyone realistically expects true high-profile teams to visit the JAR. Most fans would be happy with more medium-profile teams. It's the 200+ RPI teams most would rather see fewer of, especially the high-200 and 300+ RPI teams.

It would also help attendance if the league office didn't schedule the Wagon Wheel game on Black Friday. I'm no MAC Commissioner but I have stayed at a couple of Holiday Inn Expresses over the years.

They didn't just fail to "finish" against us. They barely even got started.