kreed5120

But seriously I do think Gibson is the answer at QB. We just need to get more talent around him on both sides of the ball. If he returns the next coach should at least have a solid QB to build around.

I'm confident the defense would have surrendered a last second fg to lose

If they cut through Canada it's only a 6.75hr trip from Buffalo to Kalamazoo. That would be drivable. Idk if Buffalo does that or not though.

The Option I like best is moving Toledo to the East then adding MTSU and WKU to the West. This gets all 6 Ohio schools in 1 division (plus Buffalo). Edit: Looking at the map WKU and MTSU would be the 2nd and 3rd most western teams in the conference so it would only make sense for them to be in the western division. Buffalo would be forced to fly to both MTSU and WKU for division games. The directional Michigan schools are much closer.

WKU has made it to bowl games 6 out of the last 7 years, including an 11 and 12 win season. Most likely making a bowl again this season too making it 7 out of 8. During that same span they're a combined 7-0 against MAC schools including 2 bowl wins. They're an average FBS team, but they're a top 3-4 MAC football program and top 3-4 MAC basketball program. I would have liked having Marshall over Middle Tennessee. MTSU doesn't really add anything since their basketball program went to garbage once Kermit was poached.

It's not just TV money. MAC schools would have to split NCAA tourney credits and CFP pool money more ways too. There is talks about expanding the CFP to 12 teams with 1 G5 (G4 if C-USA dissolves) guaranteed a spot. Depending on how the payout is structured for that the MAC might find it most beneficial to land a killing blow the C-USA that way they have less competition for that spot and the payout that spot would command.

I'd have liked this a lot better 3-4 years ago when MTSU was good. WKU basketball program is typically in or around the top 100 for kenpom. They would be a solid add if expansion is decided on.

Arth was way over his head for FBS. He showed he was a competent coach at the D3 level, but D3 is much different than the FBS. He honestly should have went out and got at least 1 guy who had long-term FBS experience to be his OC or DC to help him with the transition and bring him up to speed. Instead he brought his equally inexperienced staff.

You know the product on the field is bad when you're more looking forward to tailgating on a work night...

Bold of you to assume students will even show up

The vast majority of people only follow college basketball casually and only start watching in February/March for the March Madness spectacle. Ratings would go down if they turned it into a 16 team P5 playoff.

Unless ESPN is willing to give the MAC a pay bump to expand or the CFP payout gets amended, I don't see how it's beneficial for the MAC to expand. We would just be splitting the same size pie more ways. All that said, as a MAC basketball fan I would really like to get WKU in the conference.

I'm kind of surprised we're only 11 point dogs given the spreads of our last few games. I would have thought Buffalo was better than BG, Miami, OU but then again I really haven't followed the MAC this closely this year.

At the end of the day Terry Bowden was here for 7 seasons and only finished 1 year with a winning record. If that's what Akron's ceiling is as a football program I'd rather they just schedule OSU, Alabama, Clemson, and Oklahoma every year for the paycheck and punt on the football program entirely to focus on basketball. 5-7 football doesn't excite me and given how empty Inforcision was when Terry was here I'd say I'm not in the minority. Arth has been an utter failure, but I'd rather try for success (even if it means failing) than to settle for a below average (35-52 overall and 23-33 conference) head coach.

I feel Arth has to make it to 4 wins this season to justify giving him a 4th season and even then he would be entering season 4 on the hot seat. I'm not sure he can make it to 4 wins without a win at Miami.

Akron playing a game in Canton isn't going to attract fans. Any visiting fan can make the 20 min drive south on 77, which many do. I think it was Toledo that had a home and home with OSU with the Toledo home game being played at Cleveland Browns Stadium. Now that I would find worthwhile.

The number I believe Larry Williams stated previously was $10 million. 4.5 million of which was the cost of the stadium. That means the football program costs ~5.5 million on an operational standpoint. In addition to the 3.6 million we received in guarantees, we receive another 800k as part of our TV deal. We receive another million or so from the CFP distribution. Add in ticket, parking, sponsorship, etc. and football makes enough to cover itself on the operations side. It bleeds money on the stadium, but we are stuck paying that regardless.

None of those names Akron could afford outside of maybe Deion. Freeman is reportedly making 1.6 million this year. Why would he take a $1 million pay cut to take a bottom 10 FBS job? Clark Lea is head coach at Vanderbilt and is making I'm guessing $3 million.

I definitely feel there is a lot of talent in the midwest that gets missed. It's a big reason why I feel the MVFC is perennially the best FCS conference as so many FBS players slip through the cracks and find there way onto teams like North Dakota. States like Illinois might not produce a ton of blue chip 4 & 5 star recruits, but they have a ton of G5 talent that gets missed as teams focus so much on Texas, Florida, Ohio, etc.

If Akron was to cut the football program the time to have done it was before Infocision was built. I've ran the numbers many times here and don't fill like digging up those old posts, but between the guarantee games, MAC tv money, sponsorships, CFP money allocation, etc. the football program pretty much pays for itself on an operational standpoint. That said, I still find it absurd a 1-11 FBS coach still commands a 600k salary.

If the best we could have got last go around was Arth when the program was still bad, but not very bottom of FBS, I can't imagine the pool of candidates that we will have this time. Given our budget constraints and this being a pretty dead end job I think the best we could realistically hope for is a OC or DC from a good MAC/C-USA type team and hope we hit lightning in a bottle.

Really have been out of the loop. Just looked at the tournament we're in and I'm pretty disappointed. Those are the type of teams we could be scheduling outside of tournaments. I really prefer tournaments that give us a chance to pick up quality wins on a neutral court. It's really challenging to beat Louisville, OSU, West Virginia's of the world when you have to play them at their home court.

Hindsight is 20/20, but it was a mistake leaving Irons in the game vs OSU as long as we did. He was getting hit on damn near every drop back. If he did suffer a concussion, as some are saying, it's not really a surprise.

This defense is pretty horrendous.

Ohio lost to Duquesne