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It's a small price for another line on an athletic director's resume.

Only due to football performance; our facilities are stellar. Our Olympic sports are also excellent, and men's soccer and basketball compete at the national level. They are #11 and #43, respectively, in terms of all-time wins in program history for Division 1. https://d1sportsnet.com/mens-soccer/records/wins.php https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_teams_with_the_most_victories_in_NCAA_Division_I_men's_college_basketball Also, Akron has some strong academic programs and has a higher enrollment and median earnings for recent graduates than most of the Sun Belt Conference members. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid-American_Conference https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Belt_Conference We also have the Cleveland media market. All of these things matter. We would not be on a short list of schools without a chair when the music stops if there were a merger.

According to the below reference, our program is #11 all-time in terms of total wins in Division 1 and #5 by win percentage behind only Indiana, UCLA, SMU, and St. Louis, in that order. https://d1sportsnet.com/mens-soccer/records/wins.php We are also #10 all time by number of games played in the NCAAT, #10 by appearances, and #17 by wins. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NCAA_Division_I_men's_soccer_tournament_all-time_team_records Astounding! We are truly gifted for having such an elite program!!! I am excited for what the rest of the season holds.

Congratulations to Matthew Paiva for winning Big East defensive player of the week It is a travesty that Matthew is not on the mid year Hermann Trophy watch list. Matthew has been playing All America caliber soccer all year. https://www.bigeast.com/news/2026/10/12/four-teams-earn-big-east-mens-soccer-weekly-honors.aspx

Tipoff reception October 30th at 6PM, doors open at 5PM. I can't attend, but anyone who does I would be interested in hearing how it goes. https://twitter.com/ZipsMBB/status/2109736119738782146

He was here today.

Behind the scenes.

Their response is so flawed. I really hope the courts see through the crap and rule in favor of the athletes. Here is an interesting excerpt... "The Athletes completed four seasons of NCAA basketball during a four-year period and therefore exhausted their eligibility under the rules applicable during their years of play. The Athletes do not dispute that they are no longer eligible under the Four-in-Five Year Rule that applied each year they played collegiate sports." At the golf outing, Dustin Ford made the point that all the 2026-27 freshman committed under the Four-in-Five Year Rule but are now covered under the Five-in-Five Year Rule along with 3(?) other classes of athletes. All they had to do was grandfather in this class to avoid the chaos. The NCAA's stance is weak and we are less than a month away from the season. I hope the courts stick it to 'em for creating this mess.

Throw in Mountain West and Conference USA.

JMU is not like other schools. Their students pay almost $2600 in athletic fees a year with 73% of their budget being covered by these fees. For contrast, Akron doesn't break out an athletic fee, it just charges a $2400/year Akron fee. A small portion of that goes to athletics, while the rest goes to admin, facilities, etc. I also saw that JMU is including a corporate sponsorship of the conference on top of the registration fee. How many schools can offer that? The corporate sponsors have not been released yet.

I feel there will be some major shifts forced unto schools in the coming 7-10 years. The number of high school graduates peaked at 3.9 million in 2025. By 2041 that number is projected to decline to 3.4 million. Considering ~40% of high school graduates attend a 4 year college that means a 200k reduction of incoming freshman per year. Schools that are in financial crisis right now are going to be in worse shape. Those barely running budget surpluses are going to quickly flip negative. Schools like Michigan, OSU, Indiana etc are going to be fine. A lot of your regional G6 type schools are going to desperately need to trim deficits. They will likely have to reduce the 20, 30+ million dollar deficits they're currently subsidizing athletics.

Probably where it’s going anyways (along with the Mountain West and PAC-whatever). Moving up to AAC might mean more money, but at the end of the day, you’re still just one of the taller midgets.

I personally think that the AAC, Sun Belt, and MAC would create a very interesting and entertaining division that is between FBS and FCS. I'd to see us regularly playing OOC, cross-over, and tournament/bowl games against any and all of these schools. I really like the SBC-MAC Challenge in basketball for this reason.

Akron moves up from #12 to #9 in this week's Coaches Poll. Georgetown #3, Creighton #5, Cornell #19, Xavier #21, Wake Forest #23, West Virginia #24. https://unitedsoccercoaches.org/rankings/college-rankings/ncaa-di-men/

They aren't the only ones. Anyone that can get out is going to get out. It's just...there aren't many that can.

It makes sense in this case. The AAC TV deal pays about $7 million a year while the SunBelt is around 1.5M-2.0M. That means the move to the AAC gives them an additional $5 million in revenue per year. Probably more once you factor in sponsorship revenue and NCAA tournament credits. JMU will probably recoup their money within 4-5 years. The bigger issue many G5 programs face when making these moves is they need to drastically increase their athletic budgets. That won't be the case with JMU as their $79 million current athletic budget would place them in the top 3 of the AAC in spending. For comparison Buffalo has the highest atletic budget in the MAC and they spend $50 million, so about $30 million less. They were already operating as a high end spending AAC, but playing in the SunBelt. Edit: I do think your point is valid for most scenarios. This is just one of those times where the move made sense since they were already functioning as an AAC team. Not like they will have to increase expenses $20M-$30M in order to chase an extra $5M-$10M in revenue. That's what many of these realignment hopefuls, like Miami, would have to do.

Akron stays at number 10 in the October 12th College Soccer News poll https://collegesoccernews.com/college-soccer-news-mens-soccer-week-8-top-25-poll-clemson-joins-the-top-contenders-after-comeback/

I wouldn't be surprised to see the SB lose another school and to then go pluck 2 MAC school. I just don't see how that suddenly makes the MAC in trouble. The AAC would be done with their round of expansion and the SB would be done backfilling. The MAC would still be left with 10 full-time members and the conference would still be battling C-USA for the honor of being the 9th best FBS conference. That's really no different than how things are now. We would just have 2 fewer teams, which has some advantages. It's less mouths to feed when splitting league revenue; corporate sponsorships, NCAA tournament credits, TV revenue, etc.

class of 2028 recruit forward from Indy Premier https://www.instagram.com/p/DeFqUy5kef-/?img_index=1

Here is their response: https://www.supremecourt.ohio.gov/pdf_viewer/pdf_viewer.aspx?pdf=1011021.pdf&subdirectory=2026-1353\DocketItems&source=DL_Clerk I thought this part was funny

The lack of finishing is maddening. How many open chances not taken. Why are our players so timid about shooting? Sending one over the open goal from point blank range with little to no pressure should not happen; and then a few moments later taking out your frustration on a play giving the ref an opportunity to send you off with a red card is totally unacceptable. I'm not sure this team yet believes in itself. The wins v St Louis, Cornell, and Syracuse should have solidified that belief, but I'm not sure it's there yet. Down a goal, down a man, and dealing with another questionable referee ... not allowing a goal and finding one to tie, I sure hope brings it.

I'm not blaming the kicker as it was by no means a give me field goal. That said, he had the distance so it's obviously a field goal he's capable of making. What percentage of those kicks he makes I don't know, but I imagine Joe was reasonably confident he could make it. It was the right call in the moment. It just didn't work out. The bigger special teams blunder that probably more directly led to the loss was the blocked punt. I don't know how we let that happen.

John was inducted into the Summit County Sports Hall of Fame ❤️