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I can't believe the rubber bowl wasn't full with North Texas in town.

It is honestly insulting.

Akron is still considered a commuter school by many. For the most part kids aren't coming from far away on mom and dads dime for school. Bring back the Acme-Zip game. Promotions do help.

Able to borrow 3x as much, but based off my numbers college costs have rose 14.5X between 1979 to 2015... A 20,000 starting salary in 1985 equates to $44,380 when adjusted to inflation. There is no disputing the fact that today's college kids come away with way more college debt than kids of past generations even after adjusting for inflation. I was making $12/hr my 5th year, which my scholarship didn't cover, working 30 hours a week and I still had to take out a good amount in loans. PS. The point shouldn't be to maximize debt borrowing. It should be to minimize it.

PFF ranks him in top 10 rookies, so far: https://www.profootballfocus.com/pro-top-10-rookies-through-nfl-week-3/?utm_content=buffer98bda&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=nfl

I think in a 25,000 seat stadium you'll find a few thousand that have work commitments, But that leaves 20,000 sitting at home playing X-Box. Have an X-Box competition at halftime. Have a competition among students leading up to game day, and the top 2 get to play each other on the InfoCision Jumbotron at halftime. Or have representative kids/teams from the various sororities and dorms play. Make it a season-long tournament. Their friends would probably show in decent numbers. Find a game with an association to whatever the band's playing. Try SOMETHING...

When I was in school, Greek Week was a big deal. Independent student associations were involved. Why not get some type of competition going with these groups around Homecoming? If we get them in the stadium even for one game having fun, some of them will catch the bug and come back. If the AD staff started soon, next year's Homecoming could start us in a new direction.

The university will not solve the student attendance problem until they change the culture, the hardest thing to do in any organization. They keep trying stop-gap measures which don't get at the heart of the matter. There should be a coordinated and concerted effort to let students know from the moment they step on campus that they should be involved in sports and extracurriculars. That effort should continue throughout the year. Students will come to games if they feel they belong (I'm home) and they have a sense of ownership (this is my school/team). I agree that the games are horribly managed from an event point of view. But that can change. One simple goal should be held for all involved, make the games fun and students will show up. I agree that students need to be given more input on how to mange the game day experience. Some of my best memories of life at UA come from things the students created not one administration planned. We thought if we built a nice stadium they would come. They didn't. We thought if we built more dorms they would come. They didn't. We have the parts to solve this issue but no one is putting them all together. Matt Newhouse brings hope but he can't do it alone. The university needs to have a total commitment to engaging, educating and empowering the students to attend games. Sure we are still suffering from Ianello and the Scar, two total incompetents. But we have to move past them and say it's up to the university community to bring the students out. All on this board want that but we can't do it alone. See you in Detroit.

Our home opener was a 6:30 game. It's not a new phenomenon that college students have jobs. I did too. And I can't recall missing many home football or basketball games when I was around in the early 80s. Are all of these Students working both Saturday during the day and Saturday at night? The football games aren't always at the same time. And mysteriously, plenty of them still find a way to walk into the gates to collect their free tee shirts. Maybe at times, there are conflicting schedules. But if "Saturday jobs" is the excuse, why are they also mostly absent from those weekday evening football and basketball games? We're talking about a University of 25,000 students with possibly only a few hundred going to a sporting event that's FREE ? There's no excuse for that. I don't dispute the fact that things can be done to attract more students. But conflicting schedules with their Saturday jobs doesn't account for the 99% of the student population who's not participating. Even if HALF of them have Saturday jobs, there's still 13,000 students who are not participating. It's beyond pathetic.

Bringing back some good memories. That was my sophomore year and I made the journey to Kent. Storming Kent's field after the miss was probably by all-time favorite Akron sports fan moment as an undergrad. I may have ended up in Akron's drunk tank later on that night, but that is neither here nor there.

To your points - 1.) No doubt it would be a better game day environment if more than 76 students filled the student section. I think the section could be full one day. It was around 2008 when UA filled up several student buses and essentially filled the endzone AT Kent. That student section was responsible for the Kent kicker shanking a field goal attempt in OT giving the Zips the victory. JD Brookhart made the coin flip decision to defend the Zips student section endzone because the students created such and an advantage. The point being - someone got off their butt and really rallied the students. They, in turn, got off their butt and supported the team. Hopefully Matt Newhouse's return to campus gets the student ship righted. But it won't happen overnight. At least Bowden has the team winning some games for the first time in a decade. That's the biggest hurdle. 2.) Are the DE's overrated? I know Marcus has been banged up. Pittman really hasn't done much. But I don't pin all the defense's problems against the run on the D line. LB's really haven't made an impact. There's unfortunately no more Jatavis wreaking havoc in the backfield. We'll see what happens over the next 2 weeks. App State had a great O line. Our D held them to 14 points in the 2nd half. If they can build off that 2nd half performance and spread that effort and energy over a full game, we can beat anyone remaining on our schedule. 3.) Other than the last possession, I can't complain much about Milwee vs. App State. He took what their defense gave us, and the offense put up some big numbers. It's a lot of pressure on the offense to essentially need to play perfect football against a good team. And that what they needed to do for the Zips to win last Saturday. The two Woodson INTs really put us in a hole. That said, the Zips waving the white flag at the end of the first half was a coaching decision that ended up costing us big time. On 2nd and 28 we ran clock and punted. That gave App State plenty of time to carve up our D and get a final TD before the half ended. For some reason Bowden thought it was 2015, and not 2016. And that last possession? Jesus...we had 2 full minutes left on the clock, and played like we had 19 seconds. 4.) I don't know that Amato can do more than he's doing. Any coach will tell you he'll take talent over scheme every day of the week. You can only scheme so much when the talent and/or experience is limited. We lost too much talent from last season. Hopefully we get better, and healthier as the season wears on. And there are no more weddings. 5.) The kick off game was atrocious last week. We gave a potent offense a free 10-15 yards on virtually every kick off. When your D is suspect, that is a deal-breaker. I can't complain about our punting game. It was an easy week for Michael Buddenberg too. 6.) WMU and Toledo are fairly scary propositions. Somehow we need to summon that "Marshall effort" on D. The upside for the 2016 Zips lies in the improvement the defense makes from here-on-out. If the D is maxed out, and it may be, 8 wins is still to be expected prior to our MAC Championship game. I think Bowden is doing a great job. But I reserve the right to change my mind if we finish 6-6. I don't think we will.

PFF Top defensive grades: LB Jatavis Brown, 88.0 CB Casey Hayward, 87.0 DE Corey Liuget, 80.0 DE Tenny Palepoi, 80.0 LB Denzel Perryman, 78.1 Brown a star in the making? Besting his previous snap count high of 31 by one, Jatavis Brown continues to flash the kind of playmaking ability that will make it hard for the Chargers not to put him on the field more. He turned his sack into a big fumble of Andrew Luck, added two more defensive stops and two pass breakups.