Leaderboard

I'll predict that one of the guys coming off the bench will start playing well at some point during the season. A ZN member will suggest that the player should be starting. A ZN member will argue that it doesn't matter who starts, and that player provides a spark off the bench. He will probably cite some sixth man of the year stat. Another ZN member will argue that if that player starts, he would score more points to help the team. Another ZN member will argue that even if he starts he isn't going to get anymore minutes.

Noah is looking to play around conference time, hopefully at Buffalo. If he is not healthy enough by that time, he is okay with sitting out the season. Regarding the freshman, Peter and Emmanuel will be red shirting. Utomi, is a question mark regarding what he will do. He nor do the coaches know whether he is red shirting or not.

Hopefully, beyond the fact that this problem happens everywhere, people realize that it happened in Akron 6 years, and two coaching staffs ago. My son is entering 9th grade. Very nice school system...one of the top 5 public schools in Ohio. He had a meeting for Freshman baseball last Sunday where the guest speaker was a kid from the class of 96. Starting QB. Played college baseball at Walsh. And he spoke about his severe addiction issues over the past 18 years and the havoc it's wreaked on his family and life. I wish the lessons of what happened to Campbell and Jacquemaine weren't tied to UA, but what can you do? Hopefully by their parents tirelessly spreading the word over the past 6 years they've prevented some kids from following the same path.

You are what you make yourself to be. Want pathetic student attendance? Treat them like they don't matter, giving them broken chairs, and blame them for the broken chairs instead of the clear lack of maintence that's been done on the building. The chairbacks are broken because of the students? Please. Thy're broken because they're crap that hasn't been maintained. I'm not sure what students your watching during the game, but see more fans above the age of 40 behaving inappropriate in their chairs than the students. Treat students as if they matter, because they're kinda the reason a college exists...and they kinda foot the bill for athletics than all of us on this board do combined. Show young people some respect and maybe we can start turning this university around.

What's it matter? By January we'll have 11 guys playing 18 minutes a night

What you describe below is more reasonable than what I hear coming from Scar & Co. Take the historical strengths of the school, the bond with the local and regional communities, strengthen those and only then add around the margins. Scar describes a national vision, he almost-universally alienated those at the school and in the community, overemphasized budget issues and (IMO) manufactured a crisis that provided cover to fire a lot of people and free up cash for that "national" vision. If he were taking the emphasis on recruiting to a larger regional level that might make sense, and it would help if he possessed reasonable people skills and engendered support from the community. He appears to be failing on all accounts and I am one who believes that he essentially lied to all of us, creating a false sense of urgency to ram through his "vision" so far. Read some of the excellent articles about his administration on thedevilstrip.com and you'll get a better sense of what appears to be going on. Scar hired cronies from Toledo, paid them much larger salaries than those who they replaced, he unceremoniously dumped baseball in the worst way possible, he fired dozens of people who directly supported students and infrastructure, all because of a budget crisis that apparently isn't so severe as to keep him from additional pet projects like a "grand entrance" from Exchange. He obviously has made no friends among the media. I could go on but he's clearly well on his way to a failed leadership post at Akron, from which he'll depart to go somewhere else while the community and university are left holding the bag. I'll leave you with perhaps the most visible sign that Scar doesn't get it, nor do his minions nor the board: the expensive creation of a Corps of Cadets. There is absolutely zero logic behind creating one in a place that has no history suggestive of support of a Corps and that already offers a small but excellent ROTC program. Silly, embarassing, out of touch with the community, created by somebody who doesn't get it.

Ranked schools? I've lived in the professional world long enough to know without a doubt that unless you graduated from Harvard or a "regional Ivy", the school you went to means very little. A "name" school and connections made there will open certain doors the first time out of school but it's on each individual thereafter. Also, the cost of education these days is staggering, obscene really. UA will never compete with the "name" universities in the ways you describe. Why not be the practical, affordable university that strives to provide high quality education to local and regional students, along with working adults?