kreed5120

Guard is a pretty crowded position so I suppose it is logical that someone transferred. Hate to see him leave as he was coming on strong at the end of the season and a position of strength will quickly turn to an area of need once Noah/Antino graduate. Hopefully we take this opportunity to add another big.

Illinois had been a much greater basketball program than Georgia Tech both in recent history and all-time. I wouldn't categorize them as one of in the same. Penn State is probably the more accurate comparison.

What need would Akron have for a 2nd outdoor concert venue?

Part of the problem with that is so many mid-majors are good 1 year then bad the next. Last year Ark-Little Rock was the hot team in the SunBelt. This year it was UTA. There are some schools that are consistently good just about every year like Belmont or Valpo.

Woodson is an unknown quantity. We have no idea when he'll return and don't know how he'll be when he returns. Who knows what set backs he may encounter. We finished the season with our 3rd string QB (a WR) throwing passes because the 2 guys ahead of him were too banged up to play. We lost our best offensive lineman so what's to say our QBs won't continue to take lots of hits? I went with Kato as a guess, but I don't know how you can say definitively that Woodson is the correct answer. Had he played all 12 games last season and not had offseason surgery, I'd agree with you. But he was injured last season and did have offseason surgery which impacts his availability this fall.

I do think Thursday's are better than Tuesday's as many students are still on or around campus, but don't have Friday classes therefore no homework or tests to study for. I wasn't following Akron in 2004 so I'm not sure what all factors besides Marshall being ranked that got that many people to show up.

WMU came to mind, but unfortunately they aren't the only one that has done it in recent years. As for the students, I don't think I'd be saying anything ground breaking if I told you the average student just doesn't care about Zips athletics. They have other stuff they'd rather do than attend games.

I salute those of you that freeze your balls off for 3 1/2 hours on a Tuesday night to watch a sub .500 team only to be rewarded by getting home past midnight and dragging a$$ the next day at work. You guys are better fans than me. I'll watch from the comfort of my home then shut the TV off and go to bed after it's over. I can get home at a reasonable hour from basketball games and the JAR is heated with no worry of snow or rain. Those are the 2 biggest reasons that I go to a Tuesday basketball game, but not a Tuesday football game. The fact I know Zips basketball won't likely get boat raced at home doesn't hurt either

You'd be the only one there if you did.

Length of the season matters because people understand there has to be a Tuesday game played in basketball. There is no other way of squeezing 32 games into a season. People do complain when Saturday games get moved to Friday. There are plenty of no shows for Tuesday basketball games. A typical Tuesday basketball game might have 2,500 butts in the seats so its not like those are pulling huge crowds. In fact, I'd say many of the people that attend Tuesday basketball games are the same people who attend Tuesday football games.

A healthy Woodson would be the obvious answer. I'm just not when he'll be back and have no clue how close he'll be to 100%

I do agree that people will go that want to go. It still isn't apples to apples trying to compare a sport that plays ~32 regular seasons games to 12 and ask why people don't complain about Tuesday basketball games. It wouldn't be practical to have a 32 week basketball season.

In basketball there are 32 games and teams play 2 games per week. Of course they play a midweek game. I do see people complain when they move our Saturday games to Fridays. A college basketball game is about 2 hours, meanwhile, college football is about 3 1/2. Tailgating is a part of the college football game experience. Its not for college basketball.

My philosophy is that the stadium is already built and the money is already spent. Regardless of how you feel about the stadium, the people who made the decision are no longer here and bulldozing it or cutting the program won't make that annual ~$4.4M cost go away.

Blossom is a much better outdoor venue for concerts. That really limits the options.

The talent disparity in the NIT isn't as great as the NCAAT. Any team can beat any team. CSUB deserved the 8 seed based off their performance in the regular season as their schedule made Akron's look like a world beater. To their credit they stepped up their game. Seeds aren't awarded off of hindsight. In general I feel the NIT is a much more challenging tournament to seed. You don't know which teams will treat it like an opportunity and which treat it like a punishment.

It was his junior season.

Louisville, where I went to school, plays in the same region as East. One year we made it to the state championship in division 3 despite having 0 seniors that went onto play D1 football. In fact, only 1 player on the entire team went on to get a scholarship at a FBS or FCS school. That being our then JR WR who went to play at Boston College. That's why I find it strange that East isn't more successful given all these D1 athletes they have when schools like New Philly have 0. People like to mention Glenville, but D1 is vastly more competitive and all those schools are flooded with players that will play at the next level.

Pretty much all D1 athletes dominate in high school. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm under the impression that Xavier was the only 'big name' school that was recruiting him and they quit recruiting him after he suffered a leg injury that led him to add on more weight. Pretty sure when it was all said and done at the time of selection Akron was his best offer.

+1

Had recruiters known Big Dog would turn out the way he did, he would have had 100 offers coming out of high school.

This makes me a little more uneasy, but its not like there are a surplus of 400lb players floating around.

But then you risk him landing on you...

Mark Few has won more NCAAT games than all these guys combined so if anything his comment was an understatement. There are 30, maybe 50 Senderoff, Coleman, Hipsher, Hurley, Witherspoons, Christian, etc. of the world for every Mark Few or George Marshall. I'd have no problem getting rid of a guy to escape mediocrity. I wouldn't label Akron as mediocre, at least not compared to our peers, as we are consistently at or near the top of the conference.

The problem extends well beyond athletics. Universities try outspending one another to attract the same pool of students then pass that cost off to the students. It's why tuition rates have been rising as rapidly as they have been over the past decades. My cousin studied abroad in Germany for a semester and the university he attended was a converted WW2 military camp. It didn't have a 350,000 sq ft recreation center, a $60 million football facility, nor even luxury dorm apartments. It's how they keep costs down. If universities (not just Akron) focused more on trying to provide the best education possibly and focused less on the bells and whistles, today's youth would be receiving a better education and the student debt problem would be well on its way of self correcting itself.