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What I stated was football generates more revenue than soccer and men's basketball combined, which is true. I provided the detail to support it. Larry Williams is on record stating football costs 6.5-7 million to operate. Don't believe me you can go look through the forum as it was just posted a day or two ago. Football pretty much pays for itself. Any money Akron loses on football is from Infocision, which is a sunk cost. Cutting football makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. It's really the only sport that's capable of turning an operating profit. The 12-13 non-revenue sports is why our athletic deficit is so large as we're paying for coaches, travel, and scholarships, but getting pretty much $0 revenue from them

On behalf of the posters here, thank you

Reading all of this, I have come to one simple conclusion. That conclusion is not that football is too much of a financial drain or is financially unfeasible. Rather, it's that $6.5 to $7 million dollars is a lot of money for awful football. It's the product that needs improved. I heard Urban Meyer on a radio show this week and in discussing assistant coaches stated that college football really all comes down to recruiting. It's all about talent on the field. Get kids that are better than PCCC's, OU's, Toledo's....and you will finally see a return on the investment. It's the administration's job to find the leaders that can accomplish that task

Billionaire? Bullshit.

I don’t see how “he” failed. He didn’t recruit the seniors, juniors, or sophomores. We’re not going to see his recruiting until maybe 2021. Knee jerk reactions to how Bowden’s third to last recruiting class played will only ensure we stay in last place. The financial side has already been thoroughly covered.

I appreciate that analysis but the other factor I hear being brought up a lot is the amount of non revenue women's sports scholarships and expenses that are required due to football that would probably go away without it. Irony 1 is that women's sports fans should therefore also be big supporters of the men's sports especially football. Irony 2 is that those who want football scaled back would be the same ones bitching when women's sports get scaled back accordingly.

Speak and though shall receive. https://www.thestate.com/sports/college/university-of-south-carolina/usc-football/article221772820.html I've heard from other sources this deal was back loaded as it was a 10 year extension on a deal that had 3 years remaining, but feel free to use $670k instead of the previous $833k that I previously quoted https://www.sportsbusinessdaily.com/Daily/Issues/2014/08/20/Media/MAC-ESPN.aspx For 2019 MAC schools split ~16 million 12 ways. That works out to $1.33 million per team http://businessofcollegesports.com/2019/12/28/college-football-playoff-payouts-for-2019/ 2 buy games at 1.3 million + 633k for tv + 1.33 million for CFP money = $4.59 million. That's not getting into ticket sales, concessions, parking, sponsorship, and donations. The article you posted showed athletics costing 35 million while only producing ~10 million in revenue. I'll hang up the phone now and wait to hear your response on how soccer or men's basketball generates more revenue than football....

Arth has a lot of potential, and I have faith the new president will sort all of this out. Right now Miller has to reorganize academics and get kids back on campus. Williams did what he was told to do for now. Williams and company could certainly be on borrowed time, but I'm willing to keep buying my season tickets and keep donating and keep being a huge Zips fan.

There is certainly room for men's basketball attendance to improve, but out of curiosity what numbers would you be happy with? Right now we typically average 2800-3000 for the season and ~3500 for MAC play. With the bump to 20 conference games I'd expect attendance numbers to improve. I'm a season ticker holder and Zips basketball is by far and away my favorite Zips sport, but even I have trouble justifying making the time commitment to watch Akron basketball play random MEAC/SWAC/NAIA teams at home during OOC. There is no way I'd pay $15 for a single game ticket to one of those games.

It's dead because the Great GP1 has not been around to spread some whit and wisdom. With South Carolina opening up, it will slow down again because the great one will have more to do/bars and restaurants to drink and eat in.

Producing the first winless FBS team since UTEP in 2017 is not a failure? Good lord i give up

I'd agree any real cost saving would be by us being able to eliminate other sports. That being said, D1 (non FBS) requires us fielding 14 sport teams. We're currently at 16 now so dropping football means we could cut 1 women's non revenue sport. Eliminating 1 women's sport may save us 600k-1 million depending what they cut. It really doesn't seem to be worth cutting football over that.

Sure, but it's not just us. It's boiling over all around us at many, many schools like Akron. Pathetic indeed..... I applaud many of the moves made by the MAC and other schools/conferences like ours. It is an unusual display of self-awareness.

Don't your insider friends share that with you?

And that's a perfectly legitimate opinion to have; but it doesn't excuse the the waste of money on an already strapped program that came after that.

I think this whole situation says a lot about the leadership of the athletics department, specifically in terms of external things. Marketing is a disaster as we all can see, and it has been since the current "rock star" of a director was hired. And fundraising is a joke too. How do I know? Matt Kaulig is a BILLIONAIRE, yes, with a B, and the only time I ever see him is in commercials during the local news. Name the damn athletic department after the guy, do whatever you have to do to get a piece of his fortune. Hell, he's a former athlete!!!! He seems passionate about UA athletics and the University as a whole, take advantage of it! Sorry to all the athletes and people that will be affected by these cuts. At the end of the day, someone had to make a very hard decision and deliver some difficult news, nobody wins in these situations. Go Zips everybody! Hope your MAC Champs shirts show up in the mail soon!

This picture is pregame, it filled in nicely, it’s the best crowd I’ve seen there in my 3 seasons of going

We lost a few in recent days - one to Ball State and a few to Kent State. If the Universality's financial troubles were constantly on blast, the financial commitment to the football program was regularly under public scrutiny, and the school is cutting athletic programs, would you want your kid going here to play if there were other options? The program has enough systemic challenges it has to deal with on it's own. Piling on only makes it more difficult for the student-athletes and coaches currently here busting their asses to have success.

By the way, Jared was a part of the team he inherited for 6 of the 7 years before he inherited it. Also, 3 final four appearances in 7 seasons at the helm and 6 of those 7 in the NCAA Tourney; seems like we might want to cut him some slack on one season.

Your mentality of questioning people who give a damn is why UA is as jacked up as it is now. Oh how dare I give a damn Defenders of mediocrity need to go. YOU ARE THE PROBLEM

When your biggest cash burner is Football with all the custom jerseys, gold helmets and we do this BS And the end result is Akron Football deserves all the smoke they are getting especially from those and supporters of the cut programs. The Leadership has been an utter disgrace. Our interim president back then look like he was in his own Pandemic in 2018

34 year old habits are hard to break.

Outside of Akron, the newest MAC football stadium was built in 1993. I'm pretty sure the only stadium that has seen a meaningful renovation this century is the Glass Bowl. We pour more money into football than our peers, but get worse results. I hate to admit, but maybe Kent was onto something by just punting on the sport to focus on its other sports.

The anti-football crowd has some similarities with the football crowd- they are both small and a minority.

Kind of hard to defend football when we bought a mediocre coach to come in and win 0 games

First, $4.4m is not 23% of the budget. unless our budget is $18m. Second, I'd love to see the financials of how women's tennis, men's golf and men's cross country add up to $4.4m. Third, this is no where near a prudent action that sets Akron Athletics up for long term success. This is not the last of the cuts, maybe not this year, but in years to come as the overzealous spending for no return is going to continue to be an issue.