DannyHoke

Every team puts in work each and every day. Big f'ing deal. Akron has weak coaches and less talent than other teams. Little hope of change without time on the field and no spring = disaster.

Seriously without Spring Ball and a legit off-season program The Zips will be challenged even more this fall than last. Other than a win against Youngtown there is little chance for a W here.

Missing from the history was the lack of effort that Fred Albrecht's idiot son, Steve, and ACME put into the game over the last decade that it was staged. ACME was providing $5,000 in cash sponsorship and was taking about $40,000 in tickets and selling them for $1, or outright giving them away with every grocery purchase, which was killing future ticket sales. Akron replaced Acme with GIANT EAGLE in 2003 and received $60,000 cash per year, plus another $100,000 in media value. I was an intern in the ticket office at that time and remember a lot of the old farts around the department whining about losing Acme until they found out what GE was bringing in.

This is really playing into the Zips hands. If the football season is played, but fans are not allowed into the games, the Zips have a leg up on opponents as they are used to playing in front of no one. If football season is cancelled altogether, we cannot lose games, so that is a plus.

Because he's unpaid. ?

Found this interesting... https://sports.usatoday.com/ncaa/salaries/football/assistant Akron is only $2,000 total comp pool behind CMU Interesting that Matt Feeney from Akron makes $150,000 with ZERO FBS coaching experience. Not a bad pay day for a 28 year old first time coordinator. 16th highest paid assistant in the MAC and makes $35,000 more than any other Zips Assistant. Charlie Frye makes $125,000 as a first time coordinator, but he has experience with the Florida Gators program, and in the Florida HS Ranks which is a fertile recruiting landscape. Also interesting that the iCoach / Rob Ianello, makes $232,398 and is the top paid assistant in the MAC.

Let's highlight the following statement from above... "The athletic dept had a 10% across the board cut in funding this year which was ultimately due to the loss of revenue from football, not the decline in enrollment." So, you take a 10% cut due to loss of revenue from football... (a) was this based on the BUYOUT from last year? (b) a projected loss this year? (This would be contradictory to the Interim President's assumption that the Arth hire was going to spur on revenues (HA)? Football Revenues have not been anything to base a budget on for the last decade plus so any Administrator who was counting on an increase, or even status quo revenue from football should be immediately terminated for incompetence. The biggest source of athletics funding at Akron (70.2%), or $24,289,339 of the $34,873,226 in expenses comes from student fees. I would love to see the breakdown of where the other funding comes from... Fundraising/Z Club Ticket Sales Sponsorships Merchandise Sales Food & Beverage / Concessions Camps Stadium/Arena Rentals Conference Television Deals Other Once we see the 2018-19 breakdown, compare the revenues to previous years and see where the numbers are trending. It's one of three answers... UP... DOWN... FLAT. Anyone want to guess UP or FLAT?

What the kids on the team, the alumni of the program, the students paying the athletics fee, and the Citizens of Akron, Ohio DESERVED was a real coaching search and not a declaration by the University of Akron Board of Trustees that they hire a friend of one the board members as the head football coach. The Akron Presidential Landscape for the last 5 years, and the hyperactive Board of Trustees has a wicked reputation around higher education, and it negatively impacts searches for all sorts of positions on campus, including athletics Here are the BOT members... if you run into these folks around town or on campus, let them know your feelings towards their actions. Trustees < All Political Appointees aka Hacks Joseph M. Gingo, Chair Olivia P. Demas, Vice Chair < One of the weakest members of the Board on a wide variety of issues - her husband, Bill, was on the BOT in the past Dr. Alfred V. Ciraldo, Vice Chair Lewis W. Adkins Jr. Roland H. Bauer < Someone who does major damage to athletics be getting too deep in the weeds - out of his depth Cindy Crotty Michael J. Dowling Thomas F. Needles William A. Scala < Like Bauer, Scala means well but tends to put his weight behind friends instead of what is best for Akron U Student Trustees Andrew M. Adolph Taylor Bennington Advisory Trustee Anthony J. Alexander David James

Only 80?

You really need to be more positive. We just can't have you being Mr Negative Nelly with your aggressive ultimatum. Please stop.

Good feedback. TV runs the show I guess. It's not about the kids who are missing more class with travel to midweek games and not about the fans who buy season tickets and see 40% of their investment shifted away from times where working people can attend games.

Interesting how many of you find fault with the messenger while ignoring the cause of the message which is being delivered. The Athletics Program is being mismanaged. This too is nothing new. It has been for the better part of a decade. The same people, save for the AD position, have been in place for 30 years. There have been 6 ADs since 1994: Bobinski, Helsel, Thomas, Rhodes, Wistricil, Williams. NONE of these people made much of an impact, though one could argue that Thomas' hire of Dambrot got basketball back on the map and Wistricil's move with Bowden achieved that in part with football ,regardless of how it ended. Two bowl games is pretty strong for Akron. The following things are ones that you would think people would be asking for answers on... 1. What is the new President's vision for athletics... not the 50,000 foot stuff he's mentioned - real goals and metrics 2. What is the contract status for Larry Williams? When that is answered, why does the AD change 6 times in 25 years but the senior positions are the AD just keep hanging on with no change. With all due respect, when the team around the leader is weak, the results will be the same. If these people are so great why have they never had a chance to move up in their profession? If you do the same thing again and again and expect different results... 3. What are the detailed benefits of playing these football games on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday nights in November? 4. Why did Dyer, who is absolutely a joke of a reporter, talk to middle management in the Athletics Department instead of the AD? Seems pretty weak that Williams would push his sports media person out front on the attendance issue. Seems to be the AD should be leading from the front, not the back, but then again, he is a Phantom. Did Dyer ask to speak with LW? 5. What are the real season ticket numbers for football, men's basketball, women's basketball and men's soccer? Not the BS announced numbers, the real numbers? If there was a recent annual report like there used to be perhaps some of this would be widely known. 6. In the face of financial distress at the University, Athletics has added two new sports and is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on fields, facilities, coaches, uniforms, travel, etc... for baseball and women's lacrosse when the main publicity and revenue sports are all falling off: Men's Soccer, Football, and Men's Basketball. Why were these sports added? 7. What is the 2019-20 expectation of the AD and President for John Groce? He has had two lackluster seasons at Akron after running the Illinois program into the ground... when should we expect to be back in the running for the MAC Championship? 8. What is the basic goal of the Akron Athletics program? Is it to sponsor a large number of sports and be mediocre, but drive heads in beds in terms of added number of students (D3 mentality) or is it to have winning programs? Big broad based programs cost a lot of money. Logic would lend the leverage to having a lean program with priority resources where they will pay off? Ok, now attack me for asking the questions... 3-2-1...

3 to the NFL. Humorous. More like 3 to the XFL.

Like it or not, the piece I shared is the National Perception. This impacts recruiting and influences image of the overall school.

Actually it was a rhetorical question, but thanks for playing. Adding in teams that will not be competitive (lack of scholarships) and which drain resources (financial and staffing) away from the sports which were already in place does not really set the AD up for a bigger, better school. Quite the opposite. Here's to Spuds and doing the best he can playing 5 card draw with 2 Jokers, a 2, 9, and Queen. That's no hand that you'd want to roll out on the table. The deck is stacked against him.

One of the cool things about the MAC is the parity among the schools. In fact, one of the reasons it’s considered a cradle of coaches is because nobody’s got recruiting or resource advantages, so those who do the best work tend to get noticed. In that sense, most people thought Terry Bowden was doing a pretty good job at Akron, keeping the Zips competitive, even winning its division in 2017 and making a pair of bowl games. For some reason, though, Akron decided it wasn’t enough and fired Bowden last December. What’s happened since, however, isn’t pretty at all. Akron is 0-10 and has been out-scored 218-47 in conference play under first-year coach Tom Arth. For a program that had been middle of the pack in the MAC under Bowden, that's a stunning turn of ineptitude. Dan Wolken's Misery Index

School is in financial distress, major sports are not championship quality, but Akron adds two sports in women's lacrosse and baseball which will tax the limited resources, financially and in terms of human staff, and deliver absolutely $0 in revenue. This is a good decision why?

Let's be real here, did anyone really think that anyone was going to show up for a Tuesday 6pm game in a blizzard featuring two teams with losing records when it was going to be on television? No. Sure, the attendance number was inflated by 10,000 - no big surprise there. These midweek MAC games are terrible ideas. They kill the premise of what college football should be about - which is tailgating, a campus coming together with students & alumni cheering on a team in unity. No one watches these games on ESPNX and in this day and age of 700 channels you'd probably get more viewership over a YouTube Stream. That's where the younger generation is consuming video, not on expanded tier premium cable. That idea is so 1999. Kudos of gargantuan proportion to the Zips Marching Band as they were out in force and making noise. Great job! It's gotta be hard to be so cheerful when the product on the field is what it is.

No one at the game, getting blown out again, but we have scored a Touchdown for the first time in 18 quarters, so there is light at the end of the tunnel. It's only a 4 possession game heading into the final 15 minutes of play.

It got old listening to the whining from people about me posting actual FACTS. A lot of people on this board are apologists at best, or just simply losers at worst who are conditioned to being doormats. On to tonight's 10th loss of the season in front of 43 people on national television.

The scholarship bill alone is around $2.5m and salaries/benefits for the staff are another $2m easy. Are the "body bag" game payouts public? Not sure that all of them are 1.5m, but in the ballpark for sure. All things in, football loses money at Akron. This is not breaking news, and no need to beat the dead horse about athletics finances, which for FY2018 were revenues of $34,601,000, expenses of $34,873,226 and a total of $24,289,339, or 70.20% of the budget coming from the student fee, which is based on Akron’s total enrollment and $1,359 per student annual fee. It makes no sense whatsoever to drop the program at FCS as the MAC is a perfect match for Akron in all things, including the academic profile. The issues come down to historical, long term mismanagement of the limited resources that Akron has athletically to begin with coupled with brutally poor hires in football. Make good hires on and off the field, find the right mix of sports and do not add sports that drain resources from support staff, other budgets, and operate with a thoughtful strategic goal of winning more than you lose, and Akron can win again.

For those operating under the theory that Arth & staff can flip the Akron program, their history does not point to this destination. In the FOUR YEARS before Arth took over in Chattanooga, the Mocs had these records; HEAD COACH: Russ Huesman 2013 ........ 8-4 2014 ........ 10-4 Quarterfinals — Division I FCS Playoffs 2015 ........ 9-4 Second Round — Division I FCS Playoffs 2016 ........ 9-4 Second Round — Division I FCS Playoffs Huesman leaves for the Richmond job, Enter Tom Arth HEAD COACH: Tom Arth 2017 ........ 3-8 (-6) 2018 ........ 6-5 (+3), and lost last three games, 5 of their last 7 To break this down for you, Arth took over a program that had made the postseason for 3 straight years and averaged 9 wins a season for the four years prior to his arrival and impacted the program to where they averaged 4.5 wins a season for his two years, exactly reducing the win total by 50%. At Akron, Arth took over for Terry Bowden, who averaged 6 wins a season over the last 4 years, but lost lost 5 straight games to end the season and effectively had lost the lockerroom and the kids basically quit on him. HEAD COACH: Terry Bowden 2015 ........ 8-5 .... Famous Idaho Potato Bowl 2016 ........ 5-7 (-3) 2017 ........ 7-7 (+2).... Boca Raton 2018 ........ 4-8 (-3)... was fired on December 2 Akron hired Tom Arth 12 days later on December 14. Jim McElwain was hired at CMU on December 2. Scot Loeffler was hired at BG on November 28. You have to ask, at what point did Larry Williams decide he was going to fire Bowden? Did he really wait and make the decision after the South Carolina game on December 2, which was pretty much a guaranteed loss, or did that decision come following the BG or Ohio games? Why did he wait until after the season? The argument made by some here is that the timing of the hire was such that it put Arth & staff in a bad place recruiting. Would a week, or two, have really made a difference with a staff that had never recruited, or evaluated players at the FBS level?

One positive way to look at this is that sometimes you truly have to bottom out in order to make the meteoric rise. When putting together a staff your first staff would logically be your best effort, as it would be fresh, new, and full of hope. How many people are going to jump on board an 0-12 team and put their careers on the line? What you are criticizing here with the makeup of Arth's staff was literally a harbinger of what we are around to see in terms of player recruitment. If you cannot get a staff of qualified people to surround you as a head coach what does that forecast for the future? Nice guys, sure, but also proving to be unqualified for the task at hand. Arth has now gone a full calendar year without a win as a head coach. Someone thought it was a good idea to buy him out of his Chattanooga contract to launch this pain train. Who are the people who made these decisions? That's rhetorical. Last year was a once in a decade opportunity to right the course of the Zip football program, and all signs at the present are that there were some major flaws in the financial and search aspects of this process. It's always darkest before the dawn. Keeping it real, we all know this personnel make-up is not changing any time soon. We bought out Bowden, and paid Chattanooga to get Arth, the athletics department has no revenue coming in off football and so this is our reality for the next 3-4 years. Our new President, Gary Miller, shared that "We need a strategic horizon about three to five years where we really make some hard choices, go with our strengths and move the university through the current proximate difficulties," he said., Miller's last two schools did not even have football, so there is no precedent in his past which points to investing more money in football when the rest of the university is struggling with fiscal matters. The University of Akron saw an overall 6.5% decline in enrollment this fall Someone wrote above "Good money after bad", perhaps, but there has never been a steady stream of revenue coming in off Akron Football to look back on and say we are missing out on anything, so it's truly hopeful conjecture to assume that it could ever materialize. The next two home games are on Tuesday nights in November and will have less than 1,000 butts in Infocision Stadium, and a winless 2019 season hanging over the program. That's the reality of what our coaching staff will be armed with when they go out and recruit over the next 3 months. You could have Nick Saban, Dabo Swinney, John Heisman and Vince Lombardi on the sideline and that is a pretty tall mountain to scale. All we can do now is hope for the best. Dr Z - The ESPN crew, yeah, they made the game funny at times. I appreciate your positive take. Every little bit of light helps. As for AJ Watts, it would be nice if his twitter bio correctly listed the name of the school he attends and plays for https://twitter.com/anthonyajwatts?lang=en We cheer the Akron Blue and Gold, We cheer as the colors unfold. We pledge anew, we're all for you, As the team goes crashing through, Fight! Fight! We cheer the Akron warriors bold, For a fight that's a sight to behold, So we stand up, and cheer and shout, For the Akron Blue and Gold!

FF: Just when you think all hope is lost, a spark of inspiration ignites the flame of victory. Alvin Davis gets two picks and the Zips win 17-14

Other fun links from Zips FB Video... too bad page has not been updated since 2015 https://www.youtube.com/user/ZipsFBVideo/featured