kreed5120

Yeah, Akron wouldn't have cut cross country if it only saved them 8k.

Arth's 2nd best offer would have been staying at Chattanooga making ~170k. I didn't see anyone offering him $300k or even $250k. We were bidding against ourselves.

Janitors don't add much value, but they're still needed. I'm just saying what I feel they get paid isn't representative of the value they're adding to the university. As athletics slashes budgets, you're going to see a downward trend in pay. It's already happening with coaches at various universities taking 10-25% pay cuts.

What they're getting paid relative to the value they're adding. Athletics as a whole has been running at a $20 million deficit. The only reason it's still functioning is because the government is throwing money at it to keep it afloat. That's not really a free market.That's an artificially inflated market. Personally, I don't think there is much of a difference between the 100th best volleyball coach or the 200th from a bringing money into the university perspective.

The two aren't mutually exclusive. As an example, I want the UA to continue as a university, but recognize they must find ways of reducing costs and minimize the deficit.

The market is over inflated because the subsidies the schools currently throw at athletics. You reduce those subsidies and the amounts universities can "afford to pay" go down. I don't think it's just football or basketball head coaches at G5 schools who have inflated salaries. It's also the volleyball, t&f, and softball coaches who are making 6 figures despite playing in front of dozens of fans.

Yes, I'm not saying giving 5 year deals hasn't been the norm in the past. I just don't feel it should be the norm moving forward. It seems our logic is very similar behind this as I actually mentioned the WMU hire in my edited post. The guaranteed money is the bigger thing for me. If they wanted to sign a guy to a 5 year deal, but only the first 3 years were fully guaranteed, I'd have no problem with that. Ianello was the university's 3rd (behind Dambrot & Bowden) highest paid employee for 3 years despite working as an assistant at some other college. That can't happen.

We've been doing this and where exactly has it gotten us? There is no rule that states you have to give a coach 5 years nor is there a rule that says you have to pay them $500k/yr. When we extended Bowden after his deal expired, we give him a 2-3 year extension, not 5. The vast majority of FBS coaches have less than 5 years left on their current contracts. I suppose all of them must have it used against them when it comes time for recruiting... Edit: Also, I think you're going to see things change. Coaches are going to be getting lower salaries and fewer fully guaranteed years. You already seen it happen at WMU with their basketball coach. Akron throwing money around loosely for the previous 3 decades (not just on athletics) is why we're in the financial mess we've been in and that predates covid. Continuing to try to operate the way we have in the past won't fix anything. Maybe to you 500k isn't a lot of money (must be nice), but that's probably nearly enough to cover the cost of cross country for a year, which is one of the sports we just cut

This right here. If we're not prepared to keep a coach around for 5 years, we shouldn't be offering him a 5-year deal. If it's deemed it takes 3-4 years to effectively evaluate a coach, we should be offering coaches a 3-4 year deal, especially inexperienced ones. I didn't see anyone else bidding for Arth so his only other option would have been to stay at Chattanooga for about 1/3 of the pay.

He should get 5 years because I believe that's how long his contract was signed for and frankly we're in no financial position to pay someone $500k to not coach for us, even if only for 1 season.

The bottom 10-11 scholarship players on FBS rosters would definitely be getting scholarship offers at FCS schools. I'm not opposed to it. I just feel it's disingenuous to state those players would have no other options. I've actually stated a few years back I'd like to see the NCAA reduce the scholarship to 80 as that would trickle some of the talent from schools like OSU down to schools like Iowa. In turn players who normally would go to Iowa would then trickle down to other schools like Akron. This would help create a more level playing field. The current 85 scholarship limit makes it easy for OSU to hoard a player like Warren Ball on their 3rd or 4th string when in reality he's good enough to start at a school like Akron.

I believe what he's referring to is that full cost of tuition stipend the NCAA started allowing schools to pay 3-5 years ago. It's something in the neighborhood of $1500-$3500 per full scholarship. Akron eliminating paying it would impact all sports, not just football.

I went to college during the Ianello days so I use to pregame for the games then leave near halftime when I sobered up and realized we were down 4 TDs. The football team hasn't improved much, but at least they serve beer in the stadium now. If I was a student now I may have actually been able to make it through all 4 quarters.

I saw that athletics deficit figure equated to ~1350 per student, but I don't believe that's how much students are being charged for it. A full time student pays $1.132.32 per semester or $2264.64/yr in student fees. Built into that figure is x-number of dollars for transportation, student union, rec, and a variety of all kinds of other things. When I was in college the transportation fee alone was $350, but I'm sure that has went up. I'm not exactly sure the number allocated to athletics, but I highly doubt it's $1350 considering all the other amenities on campus that needs its cut. The university covers the shortfall from its reserves/general budget. Not saying that makes it much better, but not 100% of that shortfall is hitting the students. Some of it is passed along to the taxpayers. https://www.uakron.edu/student-accounts/estimator

I'd agree any real cost saving would be by us being able to eliminate other sports. That being said, D1 (non FBS) requires us fielding 14 sport teams. We're currently at 16 now so dropping football means we could cut 1 women's non revenue sport. Eliminating 1 women's sport may save us 600k-1 million depending what they cut. It really doesn't seem to be worth cutting football over that.

What I stated was football generates more revenue than soccer and men's basketball combined, which is true. I provided the detail to support it. Larry Williams is on record stating football costs 6.5-7 million to operate. Don't believe me you can go look through the forum as it was just posted a day or two ago. Football pretty much pays for itself. Any money Akron loses on football is from Infocision, which is a sunk cost. Cutting football makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. It's really the only sport that's capable of turning an operating profit. The 12-13 non-revenue sports is why our athletic deficit is so large as we're paying for coaches, travel, and scholarships, but getting pretty much $0 revenue from them

Speak and though shall receive. https://www.thestate.com/sports/college/university-of-south-carolina/usc-football/article221772820.html I've heard from other sources this deal was back loaded as it was a 10 year extension on a deal that had 3 years remaining, but feel free to use $670k instead of the previous $833k that I previously quoted https://www.sportsbusinessdaily.com/Daily/Issues/2014/08/20/Media/MAC-ESPN.aspx For 2019 MAC schools split ~16 million 12 ways. That works out to $1.33 million per team http://businessofcollegesports.com/2019/12/28/college-football-playoff-payouts-for-2019/ 2 buy games at 1.3 million + 633k for tv + 1.33 million for CFP money = $4.59 million. That's not getting into ticket sales, concessions, parking, sponsorship, and donations. The article you posted showed athletics costing 35 million while only producing ~10 million in revenue. I'll hang up the phone now and wait to hear your response on how soccer or men's basketball generates more revenue than football....

What am I looking at here? Nothing in your post provides evidence stating what I said to be false. Frankly I feel dumber for reading it. Fact is each buy game generates 1.3 million in revenue. The MAC tv deal generates 833k and the reason they get that is because of football. From there add in college football playoff pool money, ticket sales, concession, parking, sponsorship, and donations. Edit: I stated football by far and away generates the most revenue for the athletic department, which is true. The athletic department as a whole operates at a large deficit. That isn't ground breaking news.

I'd argue extending Bowden in the first place was the mistake, but I digress

I see you posting fairly often on olympic sports specifically swimming/diving and track/field. I'm sure you have posted some cross country from time to time. It wouldn't surprise me one bit as you're involved in those type of sports. Those posts just weren't all that memorable to me.

There is certainly room for men's basketball attendance to improve, but out of curiosity what numbers would you be happy with? Right now we typically average 2800-3000 for the season and ~3500 for MAC play. With the bump to 20 conference games I'd expect attendance numbers to improve. I'm a season ticker holder and Zips basketball is by far and away my favorite Zips sport, but even I have trouble justifying making the time commitment to watch Akron basketball play random MEAC/SWAC/NAIA teams at home during OOC. There is no way I'd pay $15 for a single game ticket to one of those games.

Yeah, I doubt he's worth even 100 million. Obviously that's more than I'll accrue in my lifetime so certainly that's no knock to him

It's really hard to build any kind of fan base when you've been a perennially losing program for 3 straight decades. Don't get me wrong I've vocalized that the football program should look to trim some fat from the budget just like everyone else. I'm just not sure why this has turned into some sort of crusade against the football program. I'm personally a basketball guy myself, but the numbers speak for themselves. The football program generates more revenue (even as terrible as it has been) than basketball and soccer combined.

I'm not trying to be anti-soccer, but basketball averages double that attendance and football has 1-2 games per year where they pull more than 13k fans, which is how many fans soccer got for their entire season.

I'm pretty sure Larry Williams has another year on his contract. Wouldn't make sense to buy him out in this climate. Besides do you really think we'd hit on the next AD?