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

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.

Jon Gruden is entering the sweepstakes. https://x.com/i/status/2086203296415428906

Looks like another football recruit: Jayden Remplet 6-7 310 tackle from Kingston. PA!

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

Can’t believe he didn’t bring up Bivens.

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?

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.

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

They need to pass out prop gameday headsets or something like the 1st 1,000 fans get an Akron OC Headset sponsored by Turtle Beach, Logitech... something like that.

#8 in Top Drawer Soccer - pre season poll https://www.topdrawersoccer.com/college-soccer-national-rankings/men

I'm on mobile so can't copy and paste it. I asked ChatGPT to summarize it for those of you who struggle to access. AKRON IS PRODUCING OUTSIZED RESULTS ON A TINY BUDGET • University of Akron spent $33.8M on athletics in 2025-26, the smallest budget in the MAC and second-lowest among public FBS schools. • Despite that, Akron had arguably its best athletic year ever: seven conference championships, men’s basketball went 29-6, won the MAC Tournament and reached the NCAA Tournament, and the department finished 104th nationally in the Learfield Directors’ Cup. • Huron ranked Akron No. 9 among public FBS schools for athletic value/efficiency. FINANCIAL CHALLENGE Akron faces about a $700K budget hit in 2026-27: $500K less in institutional support plus roughly $200K in employee-raise costs. University funding makes up nearly two-thirds of athletics revenue, making new revenue especially important. FUNDRAISING IS IMPROVING • Athletic cash contributions increased 109%, from $1.7M to $3.6M, just $129K short of Akron’s single-year record. • The ACE NIL Fund raised more than $664K in its first year. • Akron also balanced its budget. SPONSORSHIPS AND NAMING RIGHTS ARE A MAJOR OPPORTUNITY AD Andrew Goodrich is actively pursuing football jersey-patch sponsors, along with naming-rights deals for James A. Rhodes Arena and the soccer stadium. The InfoCision Stadium naming-rights agreement expires in 2028 and currently pays $500K annually. Goodrich wants to replace it with a deal worth roughly $1M per year. Akron is pitching potential sponsors on its reach, including 2.5M unique football viewers, 880K unique basketball viewers during March Madness, and its social-media audience. ATTENDANCE REMAINS THE WEAKNESS Football attendance averaged 7,729 per game, up 21%, but still last in the MAC and second-lowest in FBS. Goodrich wants to sell out at least one game, pointing out that more than 3M people live within 45 minutes of campus. GOODRICH’S VISION Hired in 2025, Goodrich wants Akron to become the “pound-for-pound best athletics department in America.” After just one year, Akron has already reached the top 10 nationally in athletic efficiency, giving him some evidence that the ambitious vision may be achievable.

In his defense, doesn’t everyone regress under the Guthrie regime? Lol

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

We really have no idea what to expect in Athens. The international guys sound good on paper but how will they translate on this side of the Atlantic? And to be 100% honest, Boals' track record the past few seasons doesn't inspire the most blind belief that this group will be any different from the last one. It feels like a significant recruiting change from previous years, maybe an attempt to salvage jobs here.

Freshman Austin Thum may well be a beast in the middle.

If Robert Morris was smart they would have countered with a promotion allowing a season ticket holder to serve as honorary defensive coordinator for the first drive. Benefit would include travel and hotel stay with team.

A coach that has never made the tournament in his 24 years as a D1 coach who coaches at a program that hasn't went dancing in 46 years. Loser mentality by a losing coach at a losing program.

@kreed5120.Who cares what GP1 thinks. He is just a Negative Nanny. I'm a former Zip football player. This is really a no brainer. Players will always tell you that they are extra motivated when we play a P4. When the spotlight is on the game, players are motivated. How much excitement do you feel coming from the players when we play on a rainy Tuesday night in front of friends and family?

Doing some napkin math. It was said that Akron sold out it's suites for the first time in program history. The stadium only has 16 suites available for public sale and one has to assume a number of those were already sold. Let's assume this promotion sold 4, which would be conservative. Let's also assume it sold 50 or so Club Seats. Very possible it could have been more as this promotion brought attention to the program. It's obvious the biggest jump is the GA tickets as people are treating this as a closed $75 lottery. I don't think it's unrealistic if 2,000 "entries" were sold. Suites 4 X $15,000 = $60,000 Club Seats 50 X $515 = $25,750 GA 2,000 X 75 = $150,000 All totaled that would be ~$236K in direct additional revenue. That's about half of the $500K the school said they wanted the athletic department to erase from the deficit. That's not even factoring in any increases in merchandise, sponsorships, or donations from alumni who now feel more positive about the school and/or program. Not to mention a chunk of those 2,000 are actually alumni or locals. Some amount of them could be persuaded to renew. Not to mention all the free advertising for the school at a time where seniors are deciding where to send their applications. Not saying anyone would pick Akron based off a promotion, but it might lead a few to give the Akron website a look whereas they didn't consider it before. Then a few of those stumble on a program or something they like.

So what if a Robert Morris fan drops $75 and wins and tries to sabotage the zips?! 😂

I just saw in an email from coach Nanchoff that after the current store closes on August 17th, a new store will open on August 19 and run through September 2. That new store will have gear featuring the A Star logo, he stated.

Looks like Freeman enjoyed Paris

They certainly may. The key is going to be "is Poffenbarger a good MAC QB?" If he is, Akron can win the whole darn league. If he's not, Akron will win 3 or 4 games.

At least it gives more stakes to the regular season, I loved the 3 days of chaos but with a 22-game slate now it'll keep people focused if someone runs away with first again. If I was the athletic department, I'd want to keep the fans educated so they know what is at stake before each game.

😂😂😂❤️

4 games on Thursday big whoop. Probably 3k at the noon game and 4k by 230. Now all fans can attend all games after work. Hard to complain about this

1) It wasn't unanimous and even Tod K voted against it originally. 2) It only lasted 4 years, 2012-15, reverting back to the original format in 2016. The format had the shortest lifespan of the 3 formats and seemingly the only reasons it's back are because Miami OH got embarrassed in the first round last year and Toledo couldn't end their drought despite being a 1 seed for 4 of the 6 years. Yes, it's confirmed. Your latter format is what they're going with. How does this make it any more difficult for a 5-8 to win? They get to avoid the top 2 teams in the league until the semis on Friday and get 2 warm up games to adjust to Rocket Arena. The Sun Belt's gauntlet yielded a semifinals of 1v8 and 2v10, with 1v10 being the championship. The now-previous format featured a top 2 seed in the Finals all 6 years, and a top 2 seed won it all 4 out of the 6 years. Ohio - a 5 seed in 2021 - was one of the non-top-2-seed winners and went on to win a game in the NCAAs and Akron - a 4 seed in 2022 - nearly beat UCLA in the NCAAs. I bring that up to say those anomalies were arguably the better teams in the MAC that didn't have the best regular seasons, but rose to the top when it mattered. It wasn't broken. The suits need to quit trying to have their cake and eat it, too. If the goal is to have an advantageous format for the top 2 seeds, just put them into the Finals automatically. If the goal is to make more money, they should have left it how it was. Unless Kent/Akron/OU are playing on that Wednesday, those games will be far less attended than the all day marathon that was Thursdays.

Top 8 format is what I saw. Why does it need to be easy for a seed 5-8 to be champion? It should be a challenge for them if we want the regular season to have more meaning.

We have won the MAC title the last 3 years and have not gotten past the first round. Three games in three days to win the MAC is a grind. You then have the excitement of selection Sunday and then a travel day Tuesday. Maybe it will help in the NCAA tourney if it only takes 2 games to win the title.

We're 34-2 in our last two years in the MAC. This doesn't hurt us

I'm sure someone will post Zips schedule graphic later, but the MAC released the conference schedule today. There will be 22 games. https://getsomemaction.com/news/2026/8/12/mac-announces-2026-27-mens-basketball-conference-schedule.aspx

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.

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.

I am not sure if I want Chucky even remotely close to this.....

"Creating Our Own Luck" on the shirts. Akron vs Toledo is going to be must see TV during the basketball season.

Think of the step up in both attention and program rise when the Zips joined the Big East. And maybe Embick would be open the scripting the opening play of the first home game. 😉

Between going to class, studying, practice, lifting weights drinking beer and trying to get laid, I didn't have time to think about this nonsense.

i personally am already excited about the season. I can't wait. I know we are not the only undefeated team in the MAC right now but i think we may catch some teams by surprise. I think this defensive line is going to be better than last year and I think they are really going to get pressure on the qbs. Tibs is a great coordinator and I think this publicity is only the beginning. ZIPS are going from bowl ban to bowl bound... stamp it !!!

Is it too late to let the winner "choose" a celeb helper? The right helper could really push this over the edge!

You have to wonder how Robert Morris is taking all this in. They have all kind of incentive to blow this up in our face. If I were Joe, I would challenge everyone(staff and players) to come up with the craziest play to start the drive. TD or flop, a crazy play would be on every show's highlight real. You just can't buy this kind of pub! Wake is probably wondering what kind of circus is coming to town for their opener. Could we really surprise them? Motivation is a funny thing. Can you imagine what this is doing to practice right now? When you have the football world looking at you positively, you will have a little extra "giddy up" in every drill, every play every day. In the season thread, I very optimistically predicted 7 wins for the season. This could make the whole season something special. GO ZIPS!!

Fox Sports 1's First Things First (arguably the best afternoon sports show) talked about this on air for five minutes of their two hour show. 14:25 into video until the end of video is the Akron part (was five minutes on air because they aired the Goodrich Promo on Akron Zips Youtube channel during that segment but cut it out afterwards when doing their own youtube video).

Yesterday I was on campus and did my usual rounds. For what it's worth: The renovation of Buchtel Commons is beautiful. The landscaping and pathway create a welcoming space all along the way. The entrance and arch leading to Buchtel Hall are impressive. On the other side Coleman Commons is a sight to behold. With the fountains now working it makes for a scenic place to take a walk. Fall enrollment appears to be up at an impressive double digits. Grad students are flat, but freshmen and transfers are up. Nemer's plan to get all deans and dept heads out to the high schools with our message seem to be working. Last year the football team had 11 of their athletes make their summer strength & conditioning goals. This year 51 have met their goals. Football GPA is at 2.94, the highest it has been in recent times. Those attending the first meeting of the football team described Joe as being the most positive and motivated he has ever been. His enthusiasm was infectious for all in the room. Soccer is loaded. There has been a slight setback with an incoming GK getting injured and possibly losing a season. The defense got the outside backs they needed. Goodrich has gone to bat for the soccer program adding Attila as a full time coach with a focus on operations and Bill as a GM with a focus on development. Andrew has said the soccer program will be the pre-eminent program at UA and he will not let it slip. Goodrich is highly thought of by the faculty. His door is open and he is transparent in all he does. Administrators feel we will go bowling. W's come from RMU, EMU, CMU, KSU, Mass and UB with the possibility of stealing one from WMU or OU. Some coaches feel UNLV is the best OOC team we play. They feel we will not sneak up on Wake or Minn. Crain's Cleveland Business ran an article yesterday citing UA as one of the best schools in the country (9th) for sports' achievement versus dollars spent. Go Zips!

With Pat doing College GameDay one would have to think it would be a scheduling conflict for him to actually do. With OSU/Texas playing there is no way College GameDay won't pick that game. Maybe they would let Pat off that week or have him join remotely.

Full discussion on McAfee, including a secondary discussion later on with AJ Hawk.

22+ million impressions and still rolling

This would be my script. Play 1: Run something unexpected and difficult to defend because the defense never has to defend it. I formation, one TE to the right. Fullback dive to the right. In 2026 it's a trick play and would probably get 6-7 yards. Play 2 Take out fullback and put him on the bench for the rest of the season and replace with a receiver. Run an easy to complete 5 yard pass for a first down. Play 3: Same formation. Get physical up the middle again. Play 4: Same formation. Bobble the snap and fall on it for a 10 yard loss. You know it's going to happen. Just work it into practice and execute it properly. Play 5: I have a friend who is a complete Eeyore when our group of friends watches football together. When it's third and long he always says they should just punt. We call him The Master Of The Third Down Punt. In honor of my friend, I'd punt on third down.

One of the sources ChatGPT used for this was ZipsNation. No joke, serious.