kreed5120

Guess that would depend. Europe would pay far better, but G-League would provide him an easier pathway of potentially making an NBA roster in the future.

From the graphic I think it's an Zips Athletics Club event. Probably not intended for us unruly blue hairs.

Then people would just complain that he isn't a 1970s style back to the basket scorer.

Our soccer team has had foreign born players for a long time. This is kind of the first I'm hearing about Akron basketball actively recruiting overseas players. Not to say they haven't before. Just that I don't recall seeing it mentioned. The overseas players I recall Akron landing in the past were either transfers or guys that came to US to play basketball at either a high school or prep school.

Like others I'm surprised the buyout is so low for a 10 year deal. I would have thought it would be 2-3 years of his base compensation so more like 800k-$1.2 million. He still earned about $950k this past season it appears. Given that he seems to like it here, it would seem that would be enough to keep him unless a team from SEC, B1G, Big East, etc came calling.

Since schools are now able to pay up to $20 million directly, the realistic solution would be to schedule a 2nd or even 3rd P4 every year. If OSU is paying $1.4 million, use 300k (or whatever) to cover travel expenses and invest the $1.1 million in NIL. If you don't have money to retain your players, you can't compete in the MAC. Others on here complain about playing a 2nd paycheck game, but I don't see another workable solution.

Of the players you mentioned above only Naz Reid and Julius Randle have done enough in the NBA to earn consistent minutes and figure to play the bulk of minutes for Minnesota this year. Everyone else is either unproven or a JAG (just another guy). If Minnesota is placing Freeman on a two way deal, they're likely not expecting much from him this season. Mainly break glass in case of emergency (fill in in case of injury plague) with the hope he can develop into something a season ot two down the line.

Probably the last place that it makes sense for him to go. The Cavs are good and have lots of depth already. He would have a better opportunity of cracking a roster elsewhere.

If they were planning to appeal one would imagine they would have mentioned it at the time of being sanctioned.

Yes, I bet on occasion, but mainly follow lines and over/unders to get educated expectations. Its not a perfect science

Thats why you hedge your happiness. That way if your team loses at least you made money. If you lose money, at least your team won.

Even before MACtion Akron football was an afterthought. It would be even worse today as live attendance at sporting events is down a crossed the board at all levels compared to the 80s or 90s. I can't speak for everyone, but my undergrad was during the Ianello years. Having a new stadium should have been an exciting time for the program. Instead it was a pathetic excuse for football. People can forgive you for losing by 3 touchdowns to a ranked P4 program. Consistently losing by 20, 30, 40 points to teams in your own conference week after week destroys fan enthusiasm. Often times the games were decided before half-time. More so than just losing, nobody wants to watch bad football. At least when the Browns lose it's often times still a game entering the 4th QTR. The same friends who I used to go to games with as an undergrad quit going and now even if I tried giving them free tickets, they'd rather just stay home and do yardwork or whatever else. The Northwestern win was the most excited I have been as a Zips football fan (wasn't a Zips fan until 2007). The issue is they failed to build off of it. I think they finished 4-8 that season. Followed by Arth's 3-24 tenure. Why would Joe Akron care if after a big win they just go back to being the same old Akron? The last game I went to was in 2016 when App State came to town. If you're wanting 15k-20k people at games I'm the low hanging fruit you should be looking to attract. I obviously have an interest in Akron sports since I post here and since that time I have even attended dozens of other Akron sporting events. Heck, I've even went to several alumni homecoming tailgates, but skipped the game. Deciding on either going to Eurogyro to hang out with friends or just going home instead. I'm telling you the reason I don't attend is because watching bad football, which Akron has played for the better part of the decades I've been a fan, isn't worth spending 4 hours of my Saturday, Tuesday, or Wednesday. You're a former football player if I recall correctly and it seems if you were local you would probably already have season tickets. You're not the Joe Akron that needs to be convinced to attend. Simply playing games on Saturdays isn't going to make 10k more fans show up in the frigid cold. Much more needs to be changed.

I don't have hard numbers, but I would guess Akron is averaging around 8k-10k currently. An extra 5k-7k fans (to get us to 15k) per game isn't going to suddenly make Akron financially competitive at the G5 level. Especially when you consider the majority of those extra ticket sales would be GA, which last I look are about $15/ticket, or students who get free admission. Edit: That's not to say it wouldn't be great to have more fans at games. What would get people's interest is winning games that matter. Joe Akron isn't going to care about Akron trying to pad its win totals against cupcakes, like New Mexico State, just so that it can backdoor its way into a 6-6 record and irrelevant bowl game that only hard-core fans or degenerate gamblers care about. What could get their attention is beating UM in the Big House, which we nearly did. You only have those opportunities if you schedule those games. App State had a lot of success at the FCS level, but their win over Michigan is what everyone remembers them for.

Its not just college sports. The MAC schools have to compete with pro and minor league sports as well. Using northeast Ohio as an example, we have the Browns, Guardians, and Cavs, multiple minor league baseball teams, the Lake Erie Monsters, and Cleveland Charge. Not to mention whatever other entertainment options. People only have so much available time and only so much disposable income. I believe Cleveland is the smallest metro to have 3 major pro sports teams. Many of the SunBelt schools are in the middle of nowhere. Those schools have less to compete with for live entertainment.

The problem is 10, 15, 20+ years ago we could have competed. Not at the OSU level, but at the upper level of a G5. Back then if we had more than 1 P5 school on our schedule it was because we were hosting a school like an Indiana or Iowa State. Those are the type of schools, if you're aspiring to be an upper echelon G5, you need to schedule and on occasion beat. For the bulk of two decades we experienced extreme ineptitude on multiple levels and failed to capitalize. Fast forward to today and the landscape of college athletics has vastly changed as has Akron's financial situation. We can't compete with the upper half of the G5 financially any longer. Even EMU collective a few years ago reportedly made a $1 million offer for a QB. Meanwhile we can't even afford a training table...