Leaderboard

Article about this in the Athletic One lucky Akron football season-ticket holder will get to call plays for the opening drive of a college football game. Really. Sort of. Which is a nice reminder of why we love this dumb sport. It’s a pure publicity stunt. Old-school, huckster carnival barking. On Aug. 4, the Akron Zips football program announced a promotion in which every season-ticket holder is entered into a raffle; the top prize is the chance to script play calls for the first offensive possession of Akron’s home opener against Robert Morris on Sept. 12. The winner, announced on Aug. 19, will get to spend two days hanging around practice and team meetings ahead of the game and consult head coach Joe Moorhead on the first 10-15 plays. The school dubbed it “Offensive Coordinator of the Game.” Akron’s athletic director hatched the idea. A briefly reluctant Moorhead — once an SEC head coach at Mississippi State and offensive coordinator at Oregon — warmed up to and ultimately encouraged it. Brainstorming ways to generate excitement and ticket sales for a traditionally disappointing football program will turn a Zips fan’s armchair quarterback dreams into reality. Or it might not even be a Zips fan. The promotion’s spawned enough broader interest that the winner could be a Robert Morris troll or podcast host. Either way, it worked. It’s early August, only weeks away from kicking off the season, and college football diehards are talking about Akron. It’s why college football is special. Athletic director Andrew Goodrich had the idea to have a fan script the team's opening offensive plays. It's led to a historic ticket surge. For such a buzzy promotion, it’s pretty low stakes. Robert Morris is an FCS opponent, and Akron itself is a humble Mid-American Conference squad, one most fans only watch in midweek MACtion or blowout losses against the Big Ten. Moorhead promised he won’t “let the circus roll into town” and will retain final say over the actual play calls. Akron is simply selling the experience. The sizzle. But it’s not zero stakes, either. The Zips have one of the smallest annual football budgets in FBS, yet it is still about $8 million. While that may pale in comparison to Ohio State pouring more than $100 million into football this season just two hours down the road, it’s a significant line item for a public university. Plenty of jobs and livelihoods are at stake within the Akron football program, and it’s still electing to pass the sticks to Joe Sports Fan for a few plays. That quirky fanaticism could only exist in this sport. The NFL and its professional counterparts would never allow it. Minor league baseball does it all the time, but no one actually cares about the wins and losses. College football is wonky enough to go for it and prominent enough for it to resonate. The Zips haven’t been to a bowl game in 10 years. They had a winless season more recently than a winning one. It had to try something different to get butts in seats. Still, a week after the Robert Morris game, the same Zips will play at Minnesota, a Big Ten squad with College Football Playoff sleeper potential. The sport really does contain multitudes. “Once the shock value wore away and we discussed some benefits, now you see (the promotion) spoke for itself,” Moorhead told The Athletic. It also comes at a welcome moment in the sport’s trajectory, when a bunch of not-so-fun nonsense is dragging things down. So much attention on college football is fixated off the field, or on an increasingly uncertain future. Congressional legislation and eligibility lawsuits. Transfer portal tampering. A head coach leaving his team in the midst of a Playoff run. Needless CFP expansion debates and Super League chatter. Then suddenly, the very same sport that takes itself too seriously reminds us that the fun, dumb stuff is what we love about it. An anthropomorphic Pop-Tart toasting itself. A winning coach getting dunked with a tub of Duke’s mayo. Pitbull partnering with FIU. Turnover chainsaws in Corvallis, the Sooner Schooner in Norman and Jump Around in Madison. Akron gave us a nice pop of flavor to cut through the glut of court battles. A one-off Akron football promotion won’t solve all of college football’s issues. The sport’s future remains murky. But at 3:30 p.m. ET on Saturday, Sept. 12, the Zips play the Colonials on ESPN+. I’ll be watching.

Man, I miss Charles Guthrie. Goodrich is just riding his predecessors marketing wave.🙄

this is off topic... i never heard of this young man but his story his good and he still promotes a lot of zips football.. i thought some of you may enjoy it jawon chisholm message: https://www.instagram.com/reel/Dbn-uMpRO2X/?igsh=YzYxMWc3ZnNueGE5

If he lands the jersey sponsorship deal, which would be the first in the MAC to my knowledge, his phone will be ringing pretty quickly IMO. I'm assuming his interest is already picking up with the publicity from this promo, but the jersey sponsorship would be a HUGE resume highlight. No matter what happens, he has been a home run hire and hopefully means we have a recipe for success to find his successor. In the meantime, I'm very curious to see what he has cooked up for soccer & basketball. If this is what he can pull off for a less-than-successful football program, what's in store for the uber-successful soccer & basketball programs?

I would be interested to hear how many season tickets got sold last week. I wonder if they will ever release those figures. All I've seen is we now how season ticket holders in 38 states and 2 foreign countries.

Edit: https://gozips.com/news/2026/8/11/mens-soccer-akron-selected-to-win-big-east-midwest-division-agunbiade-and-dreas-earn-preseason-accolades

Pretty incredible troll job against a coach/program nobody likes haha.

confirmed by Bud that the back of the shirts say "Creating our own luck for 126 seasons". I love that.

I hate to be that guy, but I feel Goodrich and some others might be on borrowed time at Akron. If I'm an AAC school or a bottom tier P4 and I see all this publicity I would at least consider a marketing job for them due to their ingenuity. Even if I didn't plan to implement the same promotion. It's not just this promotion either. I feel the athletic department has done a lot of great things over the last year or two. This is just one of those things where you can point to and say my promotion sold x-thousand more season tickets, sold out suites, and brought in x-number in new sponsorship dollars.

Assuming the one first place vote for Creighton is from Coach Embick, because you can't vote for yourself, that means the other 11 coaches picked Akron to win the Midwest Division!

Edit: https://gozips.com/news/2026/8/11/mens-soccer-akron-selected-to-win-big-east-midwest-division-agunbiade-and-dreas-earn-preseason-accolades

Like, no athelete at Akron has ever gone from unknown walk-on to....

I enjoyed the lengthy interview with Dave Skoczen on the G6 podcast. Thank you to whoever sent it on to us. I like Dave. I think he is a big upgrade over Frenchy in calling Zip games. I have talked with him four times, twice before football games and twice before BBall games. Each time I found him to be warm, friendly, knowledgeable and excited to bring Zip games to the public. I will not crucify him for his on the spot answers to a podcaster. Rather I find his overall assessment of the team, whether football or basketball, to be realistic and objective. We are lucky to have he and Joe Dunn bringing games to us.

The experts on Zipsnation always know better than anyone!

They really need to hire Ernst and Young to oversee this contest but my guess is the winner will be someone like Mrs. Mildred Wigglesworth from North Hill who buys season tickets to watch her great grandson Johnny march in the band and wonders why this coordinator person has to be so offensive.

Feels really good to have some positive vibes around the program for once. Here’s to hoping we can keep the momentum going.