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Hello Fellow Fans! I thought I would update you on Kwan. This past year has been crazy, but despite the craziness Kwan has became a father to a little boy named Kyler James Cheatham. He also got married on Aug 7th to Emily Rose Correal. Lastly, Kwan will be playing in Israel this season. We are so proud of the man Kwan grown into. His career as pro baller has afforded him to see the world. God is good and we truly blessed!

GP has hit on the single best way to improve football attendance in my opinion. That is to play good football. We haven't seen that is years here. Two years stick out to me in which you could say we got a glimpse of good football. Those were Bowden's first year, because he was such an improvement over iCoach and the year we went to the Idaho Potato Bowl. When it comes to football NE Ohio fans are fairly sophisticated. They know the game and know good from bad. We have not met their expectation to play a good game. Do that and we will see an influx of fans larger than any marketing campaign could produce.

Akron soccer posted this tweet today...so I figured that I would start a topic. Hopefully, these fine group of young men will get to play some meaningful games in the spring.

Even in great years, I'm guessing average attendance was in the 3,700 neighborhood. It's not a function of the team or program - it's the local sports culture and the embedded role and personality of the university within the community. UofA has been trying to be "something else" since it became a state supported urban university in the 1960s. It's time to take pride in what it is and build on those strengths.

Ok, here is the roster.....that currently shows on the website.... 28 players https://gozips.com/sports/mens-soccer/roster On February 3rd, Akron did this news release...when 4 new players joined the team (Hazem Sobhy, Ryan Combe, Jordan Seaman and Gabriel Ramos) https://gozips.com/news/2020/2/3/akron-adds-four-newcomers-to-2020-mens-soccer-roster.aspx there is a PDF you can click in in the article to see that roster ......here are the differences that I can see Gabriel Ramos not on fall Roster Kai Wagner not on fall roster Peter Zecca not on fall Roster New players Transfer - #1 Wil Meyer New Freshman #8 Jason Shokalook #23 Damon Williams #27 Paul Jones #28 Nick Scott #29 Josue Hangi Number changes Colin Biros was #8 in spring... he is #10 in fall Natnael McDonald was #33 in spring #20 in fall Hazem Sobhy #23 in Spring #22 in fall at the end of April, this is what Top Drawer Soccer showed as the zip recruiting class I have highlighted in bold...the players that have made it to campus....Remi Smith changed his commitment from Akron to Air Force. I do not know what happened with Dyson Clapier. 11. Akron Commitments: F Jason Shokalook (Internationals SC – No. 52), M Remi Smith (Atlanta United – No. 177), GK Josue Hangi (Atlanta United – No. 178), D M Ryan Combe (Black Rock FC – No. 188), F Damon Williams (South Carolina United FC – No. 197), Paul Jones (South Carolina United FC), M Nick Scott (Internationals SC), D Jordan Seaman (Internationals SC), M Dyson Clapier (Portland Timbers) Transfers: GK Will Meyer (Louisville), M Hazem Sobhy (Ottawa – AZ) The reclassification of Shokalook is a big boost for Akron’s class, which features five players from the Top 200 player rankings.

Regardless, they are losing money hand over fist. 1,000 seats at $5 each is a drop in the bucket. Give the tickets away to youth football teams that want them. The kids will load up on enough junk food to pay for themselves. Give steep food discounts for inter city teams that may not have much money to spend on food. Don't openly promote it though, just do it. Our biggest problem is we and our partners in the MAC have successfully destroyed our fan bases with the ESPN nonsense because the athletic directors/universities prioritize money over everything else. The destruction is complete. Time to build a fan base again. It's more expensive to acquire/reacquire customers than retaining them. It shouldn't matter at this point if they hand out 60,000 free GA tickets in the hopes that 10,000 show up. Remember, don't over think it.... What should be openly promoted at this point? Clean parking lots, clean bathrooms, clean temporary restrooms, clean seats, decent food/beer, good football at a time when people can attend. It is not very difficult.

Play good football in part with local kids and charge a reasonable price and there will be butts in the seats. They also need to realize that a youth team taking up seats at $5 a pop is better than an empty seat.

Of all the things I listed, good football is the most difficult part. Clean parking lots, etc. are pretty easy to accomplish if schools just enter into the right contracts with vendors. With that said, it wasn't that long ago we were a decent team. It isn't hard to win 6-7 games as a MAC team. Clawson proved at Wake Forest how easy it is in the ACC. If he goes to a bowl game, there is a contract extension for him on the horizon. We just need to get back to decent. The utter crap cannot go on. If the team was just decent and all of the easy stuff was accomplished, things would work out. I hate to say it, but once the team gets back to decent and they are doing the easy stuff, going back to the days of giving away general admission tickets might be the way to go to get people to games to see how nice it can be. An empty seat doesn't buy a hot dog or a beer or pay for parking or buy a t-shirt. It also doesn't become part of a growing fan base. Conceding the financial loss to a degree of college athletics while still having it can be freeing for many universities.

Yep you're playing gotcha allright. ?

Just what the world needs, another engineer..... Seriously though. How much different would your experience had been if they lost? My guess is a twinge of disappointment on the walk to the car followed by the joy of another beer in the parking lot. My trips to Wake Forest games have taught me a lesson, and that lesson is I'm relatively easy to please as are most people. All I need is a clean parking lot, clean stadium, clean bathrooms, clean port a johns, some decent food/beer in the stadium, convenient time and day, and good football (doesn't even have to be great). Watching the MAC implode over the past decade has been astonishing. Depending on how you define "good football", Cincinnati isn't doing anything Akron couldn't do. The MAC is entertaining enough for most people as most people in NE Ohio are entertained by high school football so the MAC would be better. Give the students, fans, alumni and community members something decent and they will go because people are easy to please. This really isn't that hard.

My son attends UC. We went down for the UCF / UC game last fall. Gladly paid $120 for a pair of tickets. So did the other 40k+ fans in attendance. We lucked into a nice tailgate lot that was only $25. Friday night game. Had a blast. Here was the crowd from my vantage point. Not quite InfoCision.? HeHere is the student section rushing the field after knocking off a Top 25 team. My son is 985th from the right.? At least I'll have a team to root for this fall.??