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Takes a pandemic to bring me back for a bit I guess .. or the Great GP1. I do think that saying "no" is a largely undervalued skill these days. What is the big picture? GP1 makes some interesting observations. What's the actual objective of adding a non revenue sport to the athletic department of an (awesome) midwestern university? What's the objective of adding a sport which is at a distinctive disadvantage to southern schools in a sport where the weather is a problem in the north, and leveling the playing field requires substantial travel budget or indoor facilities? I'm not sure .. other than perhaps pacifiying some medium (deep) pocket vendors who played UA baseball or have an affinity for it. This is interesting to me as I'm in a funny spot with baseball. Years ago, I really had a disdain for MLB after the strike shortened MLB year, and the fake manufactured season of Sosa / McGuire. Now that my kids are playing lots of baseball and softball, I really enjoy the summer evenings at the ball field. But it's the ball field with my kids playing on it .. there's no real or imagined sense that anyone out there will ever make any money playing the sport .. they're with their friends and having a good time, and hoping they can get the win before Bossie's ice cream truck shuts down at around 9PM. We like an MLB or MiLB game here and there, but it's based on the fact the kids are playing the game. Opportunity exists in chaos. And opportunity to reshape the athletic department exists in the current situation. The current climate calls for real and substantial efforts in belt tightening by the current UA Administration .. the same type of belt tightening that was called for by Scarborough (and hampered by clumsy PR) and attempted by Wilson through better administrative approaches. Understand that the lens through which I currently view sports is one defined by what my kids are currently interested in. Winter church league basketball is one of the main reasons I'm not at the JAR as much as I'd like. The simple fact for me is that a 5th grade girls CYO game on a slippery lineoleum floor in Parma at noon on a Saturday is the best use of my time and energy. As much as I love the Zips .. I love CYO hoops more. It's not close. A recent thing I've gotten exposed to due to our boys' interest is rugby. Our youngest picked it up last year as a 6 year old .. and it led our oldest picking it up as a freshman in HS. It's a fascinating sport, with its own unique culture and history. I'm certain that the biggest thing I'll remember out of this pandemic shutdown is the lost season from our oldest as he was carving out a spot contributing on his HS team. Not much exceeds the joy in seeing your kid find a sport he / she likes and gets after while also finding supportive and demanding coaches to push them. Why do I mention this? It occurs to me that if you want to add sports to an Athletic Department, you'd pick one which is a growth opportunity. What sports are growing in the US on a participation basis? Baseball sure isn't one of them. What sports are there that are currently niche sports which not every university has but are among the fastest growing in the US (look it up)? And what sports are growing in the region of the University which might be quickly adopted by the region if a University nearby fielded a team? Finally, what sports could be added which require minimal capital investment for facilities or training ground? If you ask these questions .. there are only a couple of sports that fit the bill. Sad to say, I don't think baseball is one of them. Lacrosse does seem like it's a growth opportunity. Tons of kids (boys and girls) are chewing up their parent's hard earned quid to play this now. I think they got it right in adding Women's Lacrosse. I'd also submt that rugby would be another to be considered. It's a winter / early spring sport and could leverage First Energy Field at a time that doesn't conflict with Soccer. Northeast Ohio is one of the bigger youth and HS Rugby areas in the US .. and a couple of teams in the area are among the best in the nation annually. And not a lot of Universities have it, especially locally. UA could be the regional leader in multiple GLOBAL sports .. not just an also-ran in the usual menu. While now isn't going to be a time to add sports .. cuttiing and sensible budgeting are the order of the times, I wonder if the Athletic Department has a broader view of the horizon which includes more than "what we've always done at Akron", or "what the rest of the MAC does" .. or "what we need to have to be attractive for some mythical future realignment frenzy?" Shouldn't UA be asking more fundamental and existential questions of it's Athletic Department now? What is the real objective of the department? What are the real goals? And what sports should be sponsored to help reach those objectives? A pissing match between fans who see UA as a football school vs. hoops school or vise versa isn't productive. I guess I went ful DiG here .. thanks for sticking with me. Hope all of ZN.O is safe and healthy. Go Zips!

These came today. Very nice!

Didn't UAB cut football for a year and then bring it back?

I went to college during the Ianello days so I use to pregame for the games then leave near halftime when I sobered up and realized we were down 4 TDs. The football team hasn't improved much, but at least they serve beer in the stadium now. If I was a student now I may have actually been able to make it through all 4 quarters.

Questionable book keeping. My issue is not a soccer v football or a basketball v football issue. My point about the AD and his associate is that bad decisions, which have caused the athletics budget to grow and take more from the general budget, continue with no known repercussions to those who make them. The athletics budget has to be looked at as a whole. $1M should never have been spent to buy out 1 remaining year of Bowden's or Arth's contracts. Wait one year to get rid of Bowden and hire Arth and save taking a $1M from the general fund. tOSU uses football and basketball money to fund most, if not all, of their other sports. I know that UA can't do that, but football revenue, basketball revenue, soccer revenue all has to be pooled across the athletics department and not looked at as one sport or the others treasure trove. (Please notice I said "revenue" not "profits".)

Not that it equates to a lot, but the UA students as a whole could get a little more of their money's worth by taking the opportunity to go to the damn games for free. Back in the dark ages the excuse was that it was a commuter school and students weren't on campus to go to the games. That's not the case any more. Those kids are living in or around campus and there can't be that much else to do.

I've seen a couple of the graphics guys I follow on twitter say they're moving onto other things. The guys that make the templates recruits tweet out on committing or visits and obviously more than that but.. I'm assuming support positions like that and who knows what else are casualties of this.

Thanks. I only read it once. As with many of you, things have been very out of the ordinary on my end.

First, glad you’re back ZW. You just asked the most important question. Reading the drivel from so many fans, it seems the only important thing a college program can do is win games. If you can’t win enough games, cut the program. Now. There wouldn’t be any sports left... Others think it’s about drawing fans. If you can’t draw “enough” football fans (even though it sells as many tickets as the rest combined), cut the program. How many is enough? Is paying many of its own expenses not enough? Gotta cut the program!! Funny I thought all these years school sports at all levels built student confidence, teamwork, leadership, setting personal goals and accomplishing them, being a part of something. Putting it on your resume. Maybe, going on to. Hall of Fame career in the pros. Not to entertain some ungrateful alumni who will try to cut your program if you have a losing record.

I suspect that the odd distribution of cuts was brought to you by Title IX.

The loss of men's golf, men's cross-country, and women's golf is about as good as the UA community could have expected. Though I feel for the individuals who are affected, historically bad decision making led us to a course that was already unsustainable. I wonder though, why not cut both men and women's cross-country OR men's and women's golf rather than one gender from each sport? And how in the world do those 3 programs cost $4.4 million per year?! In general, I feel that Dr. Miller's messaging has been favorable, especially relative to what we've been used to through recent history. Let's hope he chooses to not renew Williams' contract next year and that the academic changes will be equally as reasonable. I wrote to him to advocate for some specifics related to the latter.

They were trending towards being a decent MAC team at that point. Rembielak was finally getting some traction with decent recruits in the area. I didn't say they were historically good, but competitive in the conference at 13-15

Good questions. I would change them to not just UofA asking these questions, but G5 schools getting together and deciding exactly what in the heck they are doing with their athletic departments. I'm interested you use the word "sponsored" in your post above. In my opinion, this word is not used enough in discussing college athletics. In reality, schools are not sponsoring college athletics, the taxpayers are. Most schools do not make a dime with college athletics so the taxpayers are sponsoring the sports. G5 schools need to get together and decide how much of a burden they are willing to put on the taxpayers of their states and what those taxpayers get in return for their sponsorship. The people who sit around on this board arguing about the price of tickets are nuts. It will NEVER be enough to cover the costs. This is an intellectual hurdle G5 fans need to get over. G5 schools are part of larger communities. Hopefully, those schools are taking the opportunity to expose what their students do in the form of arts, engineering competitions, community service and yes sports among other things. Is the engineering team making money for these universities? If you read much of this board, if the engineering team isn't making money, it shouldn't exist. That line of thinking is complete bull crap and contrary to what the purpose of the university is, which is to develop the human mind and spirit. How many university mottos are, "Pecuniam Facere Moriatur" (Latin for Make Money or Die)? I don't know, but probably not many. With the right focus, the G5 schools can provide a lot to their communities and make the taxpayers more tolerant of and maybe feel good about where their money is going. What if all the taxpayers want is a nice day at a sporting event and this experience made it OK for them to rationalize some of their money going in to college athletics? From personal experience over the past 13 years, I have learned I will pay roughly $1,000 per year to watch football at a mid to low level ACC school with a 27,000 seat stadium that in every measurable way is not as nice as The Bid Dialer. My games involve the following: Two tickets sitting on the 48 yard line in a nice chair back seat that is in the shade because the sun falls behind the giant pressbox behind me by 12:30 on a fall afternoon. Parking less than 200 yards from the stadium in a clean lot with porta johns that are perfectly serviced for each game. 3-4 food trucks in the stadium in addition to the normal concession stands. Beer sales. Clean and ample bathrooms. Short lines to get in the stadium. And oh by the way, competitive games. After the game we go uptown in a city roughly the same sized as Akron, have some more fun and spend the night (tying the university to the greater area). Am I asking a lot?... Of course not. It's actually very simple. There is nothing going on at this place that could not be done at Akron or any number of G5 schools. They don't have bouncy houses for kids, fireworks or any of the other happy horse crap minor league baseball teams pee away money on in an effort to draw fans. The have a grass hillside people with small kids can buy tickets to and let them explore around if they want. How dare they offer simple, good clean fun as a solution! A friend of mine transitioned his career from working for a manufacturer to a distributor. A well respected roofer in the Carolinas told him, "David, All you have to do is not suck and you will be better than most". There are too many G5 schools that suck at what they do. It shouldn't be this hard. G5 schools have been going down the wrong road for years and this insanity has to stop.

https://suriverhawks.com/sports/football/roster/coaches/thomas-woodson/382 OT: Woodson QB coach in PA.

I would have thought Trevor Brown, Alvin Davis and Lako would have received some sort of camp invite by now?

100%. Adding back BASEBALL was a totally irresponsible decision on the part of the University of Akron Department of Athletics. For Gender Equity reasons outlined above it makes no sense. It's never been a revenue sport, ever, and never will be, but what it is doing is costing the Department money. Staff Salaries for coaches, added workload for sports medicine, facilities staff, academic personnel, etc... Facility cost to renovate a field for a sport that will never, ever bring in a single dollar of fan revenue. Even look at all of the new gear that this team was boasting about on social media... 5 different uniforms, custom gloves, bats, 5 different hats. That "million dollar donation" to restart baseball has been spent multiple times over on just the new field alone, which cost a minimum of $2,000,000. Everything else - salaries, travel, operational costs for a 30+ member team add up. In accounting terms, that's (-$1,000,000) from day one, season one. GP1 movin' on up resume builder material here. An outdoor sport that starts in February, played in Northeast Ohio, that this past year featured Cross country trips to California and Texas were not free and are necessary to play games in the first 6 weeks of the season. This was a 100% vanity project for the head of athletics fundraising as he was a former baseball player. A personal agenda making long term moves that are irresponsible. But he got to book a $1 million donation that looked good on his GP1 movin' on up resume. Scholarships are funded privately at Akron, which is another drag on the fundraising priorities for a program that is already not pulling it's weight in this area. Hard to fathom that the men's cross country team (which is 100% part of the men's track and field team) and the women's tennis team (10 girls) and the men's golf team (10 guys) are costing anywhere near what was billed as millions of dollars. That was total bullshit. Baseball is such a growth sport that Bowling Green just cut it and the MAC did as well. The cost-cutting measure is part of Bowling Green’s plan to shave an estimated $2 million off the annual athletic budget. Baseball accounts for approximately $500K of those costs. (-$1,500,000 on the tote board) Maybe we should have a telethon. Someone earlier talked about how well the team was doing before the virus hit. Laughable. They did win 100% more games than football did, and almost had a Zips Football record at 1-12. That's a .077 winning percentage with the 1 win coming against a 5-10-1 team from Marshall. Mediocrity. Don't give me the "it was their first year BS either" as Akron Baseball has never been good, even when it was "funded". First Year of Baseball:............................................. 1873 Seasons: .......................entering 117th season in 2020 All-Time Record: ............. 1411-1496-19 (.485) (116 yrs.) All-Time MAC Record: ................241-377 (.390) (22 yrs.) MAC Tournament Titles:.....................................1 (1996) Over 117 Seasons of Sustained Mediocrity Schools that have cut baseball... and kept it cut - BOLD = cold weather schools American University (discontinued 1986) Boston University (discontinued 1995) Bowling Green State University (discontinued 2020) University at Buffalo (discontinued 2017) University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (aka "Chattanooga") (discontinued 1982) Cleveland State University (sponsored 1932–2011) Colgate University (discontinued 1996) University of Colorado (discontinued 1980) Colorado State University (discontinued 1992) DePaul University University of Denver (discontinued 1999) University of Detroit Mercy (sponsored 1941–2004) Drake University (discontinued 1970) Drexel University (sponsored 1929–2003) Duquesne University (discontinued 2010) Eastern Washington University (discontinued 1990) University of Wisconsin-Green Bay Hampton University (discontinued 1972) Howard University (discontinued 1999) University of Idaho (discontinued 1980) Idaho State University (discontinued 1974) Iowa State University (sponsored 1892–2001) IUPUI (discontinued 2001) Loyola University Maryland (discontinued 1979) Loyola University Chicago Marquette University University of Missouri-Kansas City (aka "Kansas City") University of Montana (discontinued 1972) Montana State University (discontinued 1971) Morgan State University (discontinued 2001) University of New Hampshire (sponsored 1911–1997) University of North Dakota (discontinued 2016) University of North Texas (sponsored 1920–1925; 1984–1988) University of Northern Iowa (discontinued 2009) Northern Arizona University (discontinued 1981) Portland State University (discontinued 1998) Providence College (discontinued 1999) Robert Morris University Saint Francis College (NY) (discontinued 2006) Saint Francis University (PA) South Carolina State University (discontinued 1974) Southern Methodist University (sponsored 1919–1980) Southern Utah University (discontinued 2012) University of South Dakota (discontinued 2004) Syracuse University (discontinued 1972) Temple University (discontinued 2014) Tennessee State University (discontinued 1993) University of Tulsa (sponsored 1965–1979) Utah State University (discontinued 1968) University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP; discontinued 1985) University of Vermont (discontinued 2009) Weber State University (sponsored 1962–1974) University of Wisconsin–Madison (sponsored 1918–1991) University of Wyoming (discontinued 1996)

Fan is short for "Fanatic". All "Fanatics" do is complain. Welcome to fandom. Yup. Idiot ADs that fired a Bowden with two-years left on a contract. Utter stupidity. Yup. I mean the Zips make it pretty damn hard to remain a fan. And not; posters like Hoke, dre, me, Balsy etc... are't negative to be negative. We give-a-damn. We're just as much a fan as you. We're just tired of people defending objectively stupid crap. They really DON'T get it. They cheered as we fired a Bowden; while throwing money a mediocre dope.

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.

This is exactly the PROBLEM. For 34 years people have said let it go, but it doesn't go because stupid leaders continue to make stupid decisions with no repercussions. Why do the Athletic Director and his associate cohort still have their jobs after wasting so much money?

Best wishes to those athletes affected and thanks for representing. Hopefully they can either finish out at UA or find another program they will like.

Thanks Danny for the post. For me it’s not a soccer v football mentality. I’m just tired of the stupid decisions. $650k for Bowden not to coach and $350k to buy Arth out of his contract. Then the cost of Arth’s salary on top of that. All for a 0-12 season and an unwatchable product. Who approves these stupid decisions? People laugh at Joe Dunn recalling Gerry Faust and the football team interrupting Bob Huggins’ basketball team’s practices. To me, that’s a tragedy. Demonstrates how screwed up UA’s priorities have been. Treat a winning coach and his team like crap in favor of the one that has little chance of doing anything. Ugh. How about the golden ticket raffle too? It appears that to date 55 tickets of 700 have been sold. (645/700 remain if you click purchase). Given the prize, how much does UA stand to lose? i hope COVID will help them out and allow them to cancel that apparently money-losing, ill-conceived venture.