kreed5120

I think there is still value in college athletics as it keeps alumni engaged, enhances the college experience, and provides marketing for the University. All of this said, the costs have got out of hand. I get why the Nick Saban's and Urban Meyer's of the world made what they did. Their programs were highly profitable and they were highly successful. I don't think athletics necessarily needs to turn a profit, but it also shouldn't be financially crippling schools. IMO no MAC football coach is worth $600K+, yet you have multiple making $1M+. They're only able to command that because MAC Universities, along with most of the G5, are heavily subsidizing athletic departments to the tune of ~$25M+/year. If that subsidy was something more manageable, let's say $10 million, staffing costs across all sports and building costs would be greatly reduced.

I will say Akron's effort in the past has been poor. Under Goodrich the past 2 years the effort has seemed much improved. It just takes time. Rome wasn't built in a day. Not that Akron is Rome.

With extreme roster turnover week 1 lines have to be extremely challenging to bet. Even teams that loaded up on talent it might take time for them to gel.

I wasn't all that surprised to see PA, MI, FL, CA, and TX rank among the top 10 states for Akron alumni. I was surprised to see the heavy concentration of alumni in the VA, Carolina, GA region. Not that I wouldn't have guessed 1 or 2 of those states to make the top 10, but I wouldn't have guessed all 4. Scheduling more games against programs like Georgia Tech, Virginia, NC State, etc. would seem to make a lot of sense if we want to keep alumni outside of Ohio more engaged.

When you can't compete in the predominant sport you have to shift your focus elsewhere.

College athletics has become much less entertaining once a JD degree became required to properly follow. Probably why I watch much fewer random games than I did ~10 years ago.

I was going to call it alcoholism or insert whatever drug, but this works too.

TBF in a separate post I acknowledged they have a top 2-3 fry in the fast food game.

Haven't had either from there so I can't really make an argument. I will say Arby's curly fries are amongst in the best in the game. Probably in my top 2-3 when it comes to fast food fries.

I would assume this was the national sponsor they were referring to or at least one of them if there were multiple. It's possible I suppose. I just think they would have announced it if that was going to be the case. The season is only a week away. Is there plan to just surprise us when the Zips walk out onto the field against Wake Forest if that's the case?

They did advertise steak nuggets on the post so maybe a slight upgrade over the curly fries. It did mention football sponsor so we will probably see some signage. Maybe they will sell some Arby's food as well.

They pay Akron money. Akron name drops them and puts their logo in corner of video that will get hundreds of thousands, maybe a few million views.

I know some really wanted an influencer to win, but I feel this actually played out the best. Sure, someone like Big Cat would have generated more attention over the next 2 weeks, but once it was done Akron's 1 month of fame would be over. Everyone would think the contest was rigged and not want to participate again. Given that a Joe Akron won Akron can easily run this exact promotion or similar ones in future years and people will participate because they won't think it's fixed.

Yes, Akron's collective. The one Bud Wentz is heavily involved with. https://www.feartheroocollective.com/

That's the FTR collective logo.

Contest winner has been announced. https://x.com/ZipsFB/status/2092355978884764065

I saw Big Cat partnered with the Wisconsin collective and is offering 2 tickets to 25 winners (50 tickets total). To enter the drawing you have to donate $50 to Wisconsin's collective. An idea that was obviously built off of Akron's promotion. I'm sure these type of promotions are going to become very common in college athletics.

Well that would sure do it.

I'm a bit surprised by those odds. I haven't followed the offseason all that closely, but what I was hearing a month or so ago was that Miami and WMU were the favorites and Toledo was behind them. Wonder what has changed.

Zips must still be holding out hope. This was just posted a few minutes ago.

The announcement I believe should be made today. Anyone hear when or how it will be announced? Are they just going to be sharing it to social media or do they have an actual event planned?

I assume this is the successor to the Hustlebelt, which went out of business in the spring. If that's the case these guys are all part-time writers who do this more as a hobby or side gig. I'm not really trying to knock them as any publicity the MAC can get the better, but I wouldn't treat anything as deep level investigative journalism.

Georgia I think is a decent chunk more than we were getting ~15 years ago. The others might be only slightly higher. I feel there is a several reasons for this. One is there are just simply more FBS teams compared to 15 years ago, 18 to be exact. Secondly, more and more G5 schools are trying to schedule 2 or in some cases 3 P5 paycheck games per year. 15 years ago the standard was for a G5 to only schedule 1 body bag game per season. Lastly, P4 conferences have gone from 8 conference games to 9 meaning they have 1 less OOC game per year to schedule. All of this has led to supply exceeding demand which has given the P4 programs more bargaining power when it comes time to negotiate these deals with the G5. A program like Georgia can offer Akron $1.5 million and if we reject it by asking for $2 million they will just laugh, hang up the phone, and call Kent or whoever else instead.

Any idea when the full OOC schedule is expected? A decent number of programs have released theirs so far and when I come across them I quickly look to see if Akron is listed, but I haven't seen them.

I'm perfectly content with 2 P5 games a year. We desperately need the money in order of having any hope of staying competitive in the MAC. Also, if we can't go 5-3 in MAC we frankly don't deserve to go bowling. The payouts for these P5 seem decent and as @LZIp stated for the most part they're 2nd or bottom tier P5 programs. The type of opponents that an upset, while unlikely, is possible.