kreed5120

Buffalo did quite a bit of reloading. I'd say Buffalo, Toledo, and BGSU would be the favorites right now. I don't see any of those teams being that far ahead of the rest of the pack so I wouldn't be surprised if one of the other 9 MAC teams wins the regular season title or tournament. Edit: As I whole I expect the MAC to be down compared to the prior two years where it was one of the premier mid-major conferences.

If only the opposing defenses in the MAC were this bad...

I think it will be LCJ, Cheese, Banks, Williams, and Riak to start the season. These new guys are going to have to show they're willing to put forth the effort on the defensive end to earn their minutes. This probably won't end up being the starting 5 once conference play rolls around.

There is a reason K-Lac ended up at malone or whichever non-D1 school it was. It was obvious D1 was too fast of a game for him. I'd take playing a 6'6 or 6'7 forward at C any day of the week if it meant keeping K-Lac on the bench.

As Hilltopper and I have both already mentioned, football pretty much pays for itself. It probably generates something between 70%-75% of the athletic departments revenue. I've listed the various revenue sources. It's the 13, soon to be 15, non-revenue sports plus bloated admin costs that's responsible for the large deficit. The real cost savings from Akron or Kent cutting their football program would be from them also being able to cut ~85 scholarships worth of non-revenue women's sports. Edit: By revenue I mean money brought into the department unrelated to student fees & general fund support.

I have no interest in adding UMass or UConn. That would just be 2 extra mouths to feed as both football programs stink and won't really boost revenue whatsoever.

4 million of that 10 is something referred to as a sunk cost. We could disband the football program tomorrow and we'd still have to pay that for the next 20 years. Hell we could demolish the stadium to build a new dorm and guess what? We'd still owe that 4 million over the next 20 years. The real cost savings of cutting football entirely would only be the $6 million/yr. Here is some of the revenue streams that football generates. 2 paycheck games - ~2.5 million total MAC TV Deal - 800k College football playoff pool that G5 teams split - ~$750k-$1.5 million depending on how MAC performs relative to other G5 conferences That right there is ~$4 million dollars and that doesn't factor in parking, ticket sales, concession sales, advertising, or donations as frankly I have no idea what those are. If we were to cut the football program the time to do it would have been before building Infocision, not now. I'm well aware the athletic department lives off of student subsidies. I'm not exactly sure what you're trying to argue here with me? Look back at my post history. I've advocated for us cutting some non-revenue sports. I was outspoken against adding baseball and woman's lacrosse. I said we should play fewer SWAC and NAIA and instead collect 2-3 additional ~100k paychecks in men's basketball. I've probably been one of the most outspoken members on needing to make the athletic program more fiscally responsible. I'm just going to call out incorrect information when I see someone post saying the football program is losing 24 million a year. We don't need the spread of false information. I understand it was something that you misread and that's fine. It happens to the best of us.

Where are you coming up with this total that Akron is spending $24 million/year on football? We're spending ~$33 million total for all sports. ~3.5 million on men's basketball and ~$2.5 million on men's soccer. No way are we spending only 3 million on all other sports and athletic department admin costs. The number I've heard that is directly attributable to the football department is ~$10 million/year. That $10M includes the ~$4 million/year sunk cost that is known as Infocision. This means the operating cost of the program is really ~$6 million. Between ticket sales, buy games, MAC TV deal, college football playoff pool G5 distribution, advertising, etc, the football program is probably pretty close to paying for itself outside of the large sunk cost. Where the athletic program is bleeding money is the bloated admin costs and all the non-revenue sports that probably cost us something in the neighborhood of $1 million each while generating us next to no revenue. If the goal is to reduce the deficit I have no idea why we added baseball and women's lacrosse. We should have cut more sports to meet the minimum D1 requirements.

We seem to for whatever reason be able to attract quality backs the last 2-3 years. We should have some very solid depth and for once our ground game should in theory become a strength. Hopefully we keep adding quality players at other positions so we can create some nice position battles.

If it's all about winning games then why take a paycheck to play at any blue blood school as that will pretty much be a guaranteed loss? Just schedule 1 FCS opponent and 3 cupcake G5s and go 3-1 or 4-0 every OOC. The reason being winning is important, but so is the money in playing those games. It's about finding the middle ground between the two that you think is the best fit. You speak of enthusiasm, but the most excited I've been as a Zips football fan in the last 10 years was this year when we knocked off Northwestern. A game that very well may not have even been played in the first place had we said we're only going to play one paycheck game this season. Personally, I think we should accept a large paycheck to play one blue blood and a slightly smaller paycheck to play at an Illinois, Indiana, Northwestern, Rutgers, Duke, etc. Those weaker P5 opponents aren't guaranteed losses and still pay in excess of $1 million. Just because someone else places a slightly more importance on the University financial well being than you do that doesn't mean their opinion is irrational or dumb.

Yes, even if Robert Morris attracted 300 more fans than Howard and each of those 300 fans on average spent $50 between ticket, parking, and concessions that only equates $15k in extra revenue. That really isn't moving the needle. YSU is probably the only FCS opponent that would attract enough fans to make a material difference and they don't seem interested in playing us on an annual basis.

It would reduce expenses some, but the revenue loss would probably meet or exceed the expense savings. Akron is going to have to continue paying ~$4.3 million for Infocision per year for the next 20 years regardless of if they stay FBS, drop down to FCS, or disband football altogether. Dropping out of FBS means we're likely to be booted out of the MAC. That means we'd see an increase, not decrease in travel costs as the MAC is a pretty compact conference. We'd lose out on ~$800k in annual tv revenue. We'd miss out on ~$1.5 million per year from the college football playoff G5 distribution. P5 schools pay G5 schools ~$1.3-$1.5 for buy games. Many P5 don't schedule FCS opponents and the ones that do only pay $300k-$600k so that's another loss or reduction to a revenue source. You can also add in reduced advertising and ticket sales. I'm sure there are other things as well that I'm not accounting for. Excluding the cost of Infocision, which is a sunk cost, the football program is most likely breaking even given all the revenue sources that I mentioned above. Men's basketball and men's soccer are probably both slight money losers as well, but mostly pay for themselves. Literally every other sport plus administrative overhead costs is where the athletic program is bleeding money.

It cost Akron $165k to travel to Nebraska, including flight. If OSU is paying us anything close to that Tulane ~$1.5 figure, we're likely netting something in the neighborhood of ~$1.3+ million after expenses busing ourselves to the game. I'm going to go ahead and pencil us in for an FCS win each year. If we can't go 5-3 in the MAC despite playing in what is by far the worst division in all of FBS, we have no business going bowling anyways. Also, I don't think we need to schedule two blue bloods each year. We can schedule 1 blue blood and another mid to lower tier P5 program. https://www.ohio.com/sports/20180921/university-of-akron-football-zips-still-awaiting-payment-confirmation-from-nebraska-athletics

Playing Dayton wouldn't make sense. In order for an FCS opponent win to count towards bowl eligibility they would need to have 57 scholarship players (90% of the 63 total that FCS teams are allowed). Dayton has 0 scholarships. I do agree we should be playing 2 paycheck games per year at least until we can stabilize the budget. While at it we should also play fewer SWAC, MEAC, and NAIA teams in basketball and in their place allow ourselves to be bought 2-3x more times per year.

We're all sports fans here, but we have to remember the University is an institution for higher learning, not a factory for producing amateur athletes. If we're needing to cut expenses to make our budget balance, cutting some of the fat out of the athletics budget only makes sense. The administration always sees more optimistic about their goals compared to what ever actually gets done. I wouldn't be surprised if this $8 million reduction in reality only becomes a $3-$5 million reduction. That would put us more in range of what Kent is spending per year on athletics.

The food is pretty mediocre at best as well. I'm honestly surprised it's still in business.

Athlon sports did their annual MAC Preview/Prediction piece. They have Akron finishing 5th in the MAC East at a 3-9 record. Two of the three panelists picked Alvin Davis to win MAC DPOY. Two of the three also picked Peter Hayes-Patrick to be the top freshman. https://athlonsports.com/college-football/mac-football-2019-predictions

I think another thing to remember is that since this is now a P5 vs. G5 Bowl this bowl game has likely fallen to the very bottom of the B10 totem pole. If there is ever a year that the B10 fails to fill all their bowl commitments, this is probably the one that has to get back filled.

College basketball will be pushing the 3-point line back to the international distance of 22 feet 1 3/4 inches started next season. https://www.espn.com/mens-college-basketball/story/_/id/26905011/ncaa-moving-3-point-line-back-next-season

Starting in 2020 the MAC will become a primary bowl partner in the Quick Lane Bowl. Locking in a B1G vs. MAC bowl match-up I'd consider to be a win. https://getsomemaction.com/news/2019/6/4/football-mac-to-face-big-ten-as-primary-bowl-partners-in-the-quick-lane-bowl.aspx Edit: Also, I think McDonalds should assume sponsorship rights and name it the BIG-MAC Bowl.

It was also in large part out of necessity. Mike Davis wasn't hired until mid-June and had something like 10 scholarships to fill. Needless to say the supporting cast surrounding Davis wasn't that great. Mike Davis has a pretty solid coaching resume so I don't want to discredit him in saying he only got the Detroit job because of his son, but at the same time it wouldn't surprise me if it played a small part in the ADs decision.

I think he should do fairly well there. The WAC is a notch below the MAC, but still is an okay mid-major conference.

Jerry Calhoun, YSU head coach, was a former assistant at WVU. From what I've read Huggins scheduled the game to help a friend out.

Marhsall isn't even on WVU schedule this year. Clark was talking about WVU agreeing to play us this season when we can't ever get OSU to play us during the regular season. Personally, I'm more impressed with WVU agreeing to play YSU in Youngstown.

If we were WMU, NIU, or Toledo I'd be inclined to agree with you. Those schools have winning tradition, meanwhile, we've been a joke of a program for 30+ years. We've had literally 1 winning season and 2 bowl appearances in 13 years. We need to work towards making bowl games every year and become a perennial 8-10+ win team. Once we get to that point then sure we can get rid of scheduling FCS opponents.