kreed5120

Thanks for posting. Can you confirm if Creighton is still on the schedule? Also, are you at liberty to tell us which mid-major is coming to Akron?

Marketing dollars are marketing dollars. There are countless ways that businesses could spend $20-$30 million (or more) in advertising that would provide them much more value in getting their brand out there. I just provided Progressive Field as a single example. The numbers that I provided on Gonzaga are already adjusted for inflation. Gonzaga might be in a smaller conference, but they are a much bigger brand and are the #1 basketball team at any level in their state. They are also able to attract quality teams to play there. Bowling Green arena is extremely poor. I've seen many other arenas that were much nicer and that were at or around that price range. Along with Gonzaga, the Jack Stephens Center comes to mind. Akron can't afford payments on its football stadium. What makes you think that they could afford $60-80+ million basketball arena? The athletic department is already heavily subsidized thru student fees so asking the students to continue to assume more of the athletic departments budget shortfall would be extremely unjust.

He's already getting free education for thousands of kids by just letting the University use him for ads and for him to make a few appearances. The University doesn't really have anything left to offer him. I can see him make a donation at some point just because him and the University had a good relationship and he cares for the community. At the end of the day any gift he gives is because he is looking to be charitable. At least any gift of a sizable amount to get the project rolling. Honestly, having a new arena would benefit Lebron's camp, but it wouldn't benefit it to the tune of $20 million or so. Where he could be incredible useful is by helping to pitch a new arena to corporate sponsors and alumni. When Lebron speaks, people listen. He could get businesses to front money for premium seating. He could help land some smaller sponsors by his name being connected to the basketball team. He could agree to let Goodyear or Huntington use his brand to market their companies as part of the package of them acquiring the naming rights.

I don't think it is impossible for Lebron to donate a large sum of money towards a new arena. He seems just so much more focused on wealth accumulation at this stage of his life. I can see him making a sizable contribution sometime down the road.

I'm not against a new arena as I agree it would help improve the atmosphere and help with recruiting. I just think building an $80 million, 10k+ seat arena is a bit overkill. We've seen what it has done to CSU. I'd much rather have something in the neighborhood of 7k seats that way the Zips have a chance of consistently filling it. I'd want it to have premium seats that appeal to businesses and professionals. I get Coppin State isn't a draw, but a new arena isn't going to suddenly make Pitt, Minnesota, or or a Wisconsin come to play in Akron (it certainly wouldn't hurt). Akron needs to have some postseason success to make that happen.

I feel the only way Akron gets corporate sponsors to build a new arena is if Akron actually experiences some March Madness success. Right now it would just be a poor use of marketing dollars for any company. Progressive Insurance paid $58 million dollars for 16 years of naming rights to Progressive Field. The Indians play 162 games with each game being watched on TV by hundreds of thousands of people and well over 1 million people attend a Tribe game each year. Not to mention the field is in the heart of downtown so I can't even guess how many cars drive past it each day. There are people in Seattle, Chicago, New York, Tampa that know Progressive Field. You would be hard pressed to find out of market people who know what the JAR is and know what team plays in it. Edit: An $80 million arena sounds overly ambitious for a team that doesn't even average 4k fans per game. The 1st step towards getting a new arena is setting realistic expectations. If you make 40k per year, going out and buying a 100k porsche makes little sense. Gonzaga paid ~$30 million (in today's dollars) for their arena. If that's good enough for them, why is a similar priced arena beneath us?

Exactly! The only cost of the Wolstein Center is operating costs. A new arena would have both an operating and financing cost component. They say they are losing ~$1 million per year thru operations on the Wolstein Center. The Zips currently pay ~$4 million per year for their $60 million stadium. Lets say CSU new arena cost 2/3 of that. Their financing cost per year on a new arena would be $2.66 million. Sure the operations cost will be cheaper having a new arena, but I don't see it being $2.66 million per year cheaper. In the end CSU would come away with a nice new arena, but would end up spending more per year until the new arena gets paid off. Edit: Of course if they got a wealthy alum or company to flip a large chunk of the cost, it would be a different story.

That is a fair point. Perhaps had CSU been able the sustain the success it wouldn't look so bad.

It wouldn't be the operating cost of a new arena that I'd be comcerned about. It would be the financing cost.

I can see how them building it that large in the 1st place was a mistake, but it's not like building a new arena is cheap. The $1 million per year deficit seems pretty small compared to what the Zips are losing on their football stadium. Unless they are able to find someone willing to pay for this new arena, I don't see how they come out ahead.

They see Akron as an 8-5 team that lost a lot of starters to graduation and by pundits opinion hasn't had great recruiting classes. I can see how an outsider might have them this low, but I feel the Zips will finish better than 8th in the MAC, which is where they have us ranked.

I was very vocal in my displeasure in Akron's OOC scheduling. With games secured against Creighton, Louisville, and UTEP combined with whatever mid-majors we face in that Savannah tournament, the schedule isn't shaping up to be half bad. I'm going to hold out congratulating them until I see the full schedule, but I'll be the 1st to give them their due if it's well deserved.

Thinking they would give a dime for a new arena...

Maybe I don't understand the differences enough, but if the Zips intend to not play him this season, why would they elect to blueshirt him over redshirting him? I guess my question is what advantage does a blueshirt have over redshirting or just putting him on the roster?

I don't know how well his havoc defense will translate to the NBA game when an increasing number of teams have 4+ ball handlers on the court at any given time. I certainly can't see him succeeding in Houston where the star player won't buy into his defense 1st mentality.

I don't think we will ever see radio completely die. I still listen to talk radio on my commute back and forth to work. I also will listen to games on the radio when I'm driving. No denying that with music playing devices and sirius the customer basis is shrinking. I expect radio to become more syndicated with fewer local stations.

I never said there wouldn't be demand outside your hypothetical power 4. All I said was there would be 9 conferences instead of the current 10. The ACC would collapse and every other conference would move up 1 spot up on the totem poll. There are 128 FBS teams so if you are saying all conferences are going to have 20-25 teams, that means there will only be 5-6 conferences total. Even if 20+ team conferences transpire, I feel I'll be long dead. Your entire concept is based off hypothetical TV dollars, but what you fail to realize is people are dropping cable. ESPN is currently gutting its staff because its subscription revenue is way down. The more people you add the bigger the pie gets, but also the more slices that need to get cut from it. Schools like OSU, UM, Bama, Texas, Florida, Notre Dame, Oklahoma, Penn State, LSU, and Georgia would be better off breaking off from their current conference and forming a mega conference. All these teams pull the weight of their respective conferences and forming a conference that includes all the powerhouse names ensures you don't have teams like Wake Forrest, Vanderbilt, Purdue, etc. who offer the conference little, but get the same benefits as the teams that earn the conference the money.

I'm fairly certain that was part of the agreement when UMass joined for football only. Obviously basketball takes precedence over swimming or wrestling so if it's a sport that we need the MVC to meet the minimum team requirements, it could backfire if such a demand makes them look to join a conference elsewhere,

The biggest argument to play FCS over FBS is to get out of the athletics arms race. We are already committed to paying for a stadium and a field house regardless if we stay at FBS, drop down to FCS, or just drop football entirely. The cost of 20 extra scholarships and higher coaches salary to play at FBS level instead of FCS level is more than offset by guarantee games and TV money. You also have to take into account the additional cost of travel to play in MVC over MAC. I don't feel Wichita State will be staying in the MVC much longer. Without them in the conference, I'd concede the MVC is still a better basketball conference, but I don't feel it would be that much better to be worth our time to make what would just be slightly above a lateral move.

If the ACC literally lost every team besides Boston College in your crazy scenario, the conference would be better off just folding like the WAC instead of trying to find 9 or more teams that it would need to add. At that point Akron would be better off staying in the MAC.

I just can't see how a big conference would accept Akron when it can't consistently draw 10k+ for football and only fills it's 5500 basketball arena a few times a year. If Akron could develop a legitimate following and the community and students embraced the athletics, it could grow into something as the Cleveland-Akron-Canton area is a very large market. I just feel Akron has to prove it has fans before we get accepted over safer expansion picks.

I could see how Akron would be an attractive option if it had the full support of northeast Ohio. The problem is like it or not NEO is Buckeye country. I don't see that changing anytime soon, even if we were to join a larger conference.

If we could get Creighton plus 2 other similar like teams, that would be great. Our regular season tournaments don't really expose us to quality competition this year.

I see him going round 4 or 5. I don't feel 22 teams send scouts to Akron's pro day if they felt Brown was a borderline UFA type of player.

Playing quality opponents in the regular season helps prepare you for when you face quality teams in postseason. Playing cupcakes that you can easily beat by 15 doesn't.