kreed5120

The real problem is coaches are grossly overpaid at the mid-major level. Bowling Green's basketball coach who came in with 0 prior head coaching experience is making $450k to coach one of the worst teams in the MAC in front of an average attendance crowd of 1,606 fans. If anything he's providing that university negative equity.

That's what I used when I pointed out Siena. I agree 251/351 on the surface sounds like it would be about right.

You have to remember that Dambrot was in the middle of a 10 year contract and his buyout actually started at $300k had he left after year one and got smaller with every passing year. That's a pretty standard setup in today's world with coaching contracts.

If we're losing coaches every 4-5 years to better jobs, that means we're doing something right. When we want to fire a coach 3 years into a 5 year deal but can't because we can't afford his buyout plus pay his replacelant, that's when we'll have a problem.

Fair point

I see him getting the program back on track, but he's going to be 59 and a lot of work still needs done. I was on the fence of going 1 as I do see them becoming contenders, but I'll instead say he makes 3 NIT appearances.

FBS is 128 teams and seasons are 12 games. Or playing teams teams like Buffalo and Bowling Green means we played the worst teams FBS had to offer and we play in the same conference as said teams. Excuse me as I barf since we lost to both . I do agree football games carry more significance since there are fewer games played. That isn't the reason however that football attracts more fans. The reason a bad or mediocre Akron football team is able to significantly draw more fans than a very good Akron basketball program is solely because football is the much more popular sport and more fans want to go to see it. Removing Radford and replacing them with UNC-Wilm isn't going to suddenly bring thousands of new fans to games. The average fan wouldn't know the difference between the two. The people that would are the hardcore fans that already attend games.

The program is, or was until last week, in the best shape it's ever been and still we have only 1,500 hardcore fans as you put it. That's where the problem lies. That screams low ceiling to me. Say what you will about the schedule (I do agree I'd like to see quality mid-majors during OOC at the JAR but I just skip the Adrian type games, not boycott the entire season), but I witnessed a lot of fantastic finishes this season at the JAR some good, some bad. I'm counting 10 of our 14 home games decided by 10 points or less with several of those being decided by the last possession. People that skipped the Ball State game because they felt it was a no name program even though they show up in October and watch the same school play Akron in football, missed one hell of a finish.

Arguing with people in 1 thread, meanwhile, agreeing with them in the next.

I agree with about 90% of this. The exceptions being schools like Gonzaga or VCU who break through from being a nobody to being a household name. Those schools are too far and in between for schools to be spending what they do to "Keep up with the Jonses". Coaches, not just basketball and football but non-revenue as well, are grossly overpaid. Some states have enacted legislation that restricts how much state schools can subsidize athletics and despite being an Akron sports fan, I'd support similar type legislation to get passed in Ohio.

I just think people are kidding themselves if they think us playing Belmont or Valpo instead of Radford is suddenly going to bring huge crowds in and I'd say those are both pretty good teams. College basketball IMO just isn't that big of a deal in NEO and that's the real problem. This is a football heavy area. If Akron was located in an area where high school and college basketball was a bigger deal, I'd say our crowds would be much larger.

Once again I used an unbiased arena ranking as I've been in 2 out of the 351 basketball arenas. If you want to take the time to go through and assemble pictures and rank all 351 arenas, please go ahead and do that. I'll work from there.

Yes, and nobody cares about VMI, but that didn't stop 11,000 Akron fans attending last years football game. People don't attend Akron basketball games because they aren't interested in attending. Any opponent that would drive up attendance UNC, Duke, OSU, Kentucky isn't going to come to the JAR. As for your 2nd point, using this unbiased arena ranking Siena jumps out at me as they averaged 5,925 fans playing in the MAAC. http://www.scout.com/stadium-journey/story/1681072-college-basketball-arena-rankings

OU, Kent, Buffalo, Ball State, Marshall, and Georgia Southern were all solid home opponents for us this year. Even a game like Ohio, who'd I'd label as our #2 rival behind Kent, we managed to attract only 3,598 fans. Its no miracle that we attract the number of people that we do as you previously stated. There are worse programs than us who play weaker schedules than us who get more people out to games. Edit: It amazes me we can get 12,000 out to watch Akron play Ark-Pine Bluff in football, but those same people turn around and use it as justification for why they don't attend basketball games.

A lot just depends on who they feel the right candidate for the job is. No point of throwing $600k at some guy they feel they can get for $350k. Edit: I don't expect them to throw out the $650k that they were paying Dambrot, but could see them spending $400k-$500k for the 'right guy'.

9 of our home games are against MAC teams like Buffalo, Ohio, Kent, etc. Its not like all 15 of our games are against Adrian. Just because you buy season tickets doesn't mean you have to go to every game, I didn't. There are still plenty of quality opponents that make it to the JAR that you can get your moneys worth.

We're talking paid attendance, not butts in the seats. It amazes me we don't have a larger STH base considering we are one of the best mid-majors over the past decade and you really only need to commit to 4 games out of 15 total to break even on season tickets. Hell split them with your neighbor and you'd only need to attend 2.

Just in general they are also way different. In a football bowl game it is winner take all. You have to win 5 NIT games to be declared winner. The deeper they got into the tournament, the more interest Akron fans would have had in it.

Football has a much larger following and there are 41 bowl games spread a crossed a month compared to ~100 basketball games between the NCAAT and NIT (not including CIT or CBI) with the bulk of those played in a 2 week period. As a measure of success yes a CBI appearance=Potato Bowl appearance. As a measure of fan interest they aren't equivalent, but that's because a bad Akron football team can still attract 9,000 people to a game, meanwhile, a great Akron team can only attract about a 1/3 of that. Edit: I'd imagine had Akron won its region and made it to MSG, we would have seen interest in the NIT.

I feel due to the nature of the two sports expectations is what drives MAC football attendance, meanwhile, current season performance is what drives MAC basketball attendance. The football games that attract the most people are the August and September games when the weather is nice and games aren't played mid-week. If the team is expected to be good, it gets even more people out. In basketball with so many more games you don't see attendance pick up until February or March when you already have a sample size of 20 or so games to determine how good the team is.

Not disputing there is a if you're not 1st, you're last mentality surrounding 1 bid conferences like the MAC. Still doesn't mean we haven't way outperformed our competition. We've won 3 MAC Tournaments in the past 11 years, finishing 2nd place 6 times. The other 11 teams that comprise the conference have won it 8 times combined or about .75 times per team.

At same time I feel it hurts attendance as it destroys the atmosphere. People are so spread out that even when we pull a decent crowd, the stadium looks empty. Not that it matters for football as we'll always have a huge surplus of tickets available , but in sports like basketball limiting supply can actually positively influence demand.

Just in general fans are always craving for more (myself included). I feel a lot of people took the success Dambrot achieved here for granted and will now realize it since he is gone. Akron isn't all that attractive of a job. We have poor facilities at a financially strapped university. We have no historical success outside of a 10 year Dambrot period. We have a small fan base (Despite an unprecedented run of success making 9 out of the last 11 MAC Finals we still can only get ~3,500 fans to show up to games). In a way he is a victim of his own success. If I told you today that you could sign a paper that guarantees that Zips football would make 9 of the next 11 MAC Champions, winning 3 of them, who here wouldn't sign that?

I could be wrong, but pretty sure you just have to average 15,000 every other year. I'm counting 15 FBS stadiums that seat under 25k https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_NCAA_Division_I_FBS_football_stadiums

It's a 27,000 traditional seat stadium with 3,000 SRO. One could argue (I wouldn't disagree with) that perhaps it should have been only 22,000 with the 3,000 SRO for a total of 25,000 available tickets. I'm not in the construction business so I'd have no idea how much that would have saved costs. In the grand scheme of things universities are in the business of spending more money than they need to on projects, but at same time Infocision is still relatively cheap compared to what other modern FBS stadiums cost so the university did show some restraint.