ZipCat

Sorry I'm a little behind, but does anyone know when/why the rest of the MAC games dates and times hasn't been released? This just seems completely ridiculous that 4 games officially have dates and times but the rest don't? And it seems to be this way across the NCAA ...

Every major decision of the board of trustees over the past 20-years has been a complete disaster. UA wouldn't be in the position of potential bankruptcy and dissolution if it weren't for the bungling monumentally weak decision making by the BOT. Have I met any of the Trustees? Yes, in the past. The current ones? No. Am I wrong that the BoT are political appointments in Ohio?

I feel like this has been discussed a trillion times before. Unlike OU, which is in the middle of nowhere. Unlike Cincinnati, which is a larger city with it's own relatively unique culture and a larger student-base, There's another D-1 college right down the road...not to mention OSU. Yeah people show up to The Akron Rubberducks because it's over the summer. The best student Turnout we had to games was in the RooWards days and when they were doing stuff like Blackout game and tuition giveaways. Guess what? Those people behind that weren't valued, and the University refused to pay them what they were worth, so they rightfully moved on to Bigger Universities who were willing to pay them more.

Because Akron is seen as a stepping stone, a resume builder, nothing more. And Board of Trustees spots aren't awarded to people who care about the University of Akron or community, they're political appointees in a state that constantly doubles down on not caring about education. Even people in this very forum, crap on professors and people who work at the University, who are the very people that ... if you pay them well and trust them to be experts in what they do, can help build that sense of community. But instead the state and political powers at be just see Akron as a glorified community college; so the community and students are going to treat it as such.

Except G5 programs only exist as resume-builders for everyone involved so they can jump to the real jobs that are the P5. I'm sorry GP1, but those days have come and gone. And when we're seeing massive cuts to ACTUAL EDUCATION over, and over, and over, and over ... at some point we have to reconcile that it's negligence to act like we can be competitive and keep flushing money down the drain.

Bingo. The days of being a competitive G5 team that can "build a fanbase" are gone folks. OSU is king here, and OU and Cincinnati take whatever is leftover. Maybe you could have done it in 2013 by beating Michigan, enduring Akron into the OSU fandom's hearts or something...but that was really the last window. You're not doing it in 2025...how many times are we doing to double-down on the fallacy that Akron can be competitive at Football?

I'm as much of a diehard as any Zip fan, but this is just delusional. You stand a better chance of building a fanbase by having a signature win in a season you go undefeated, than you do by playing Somebody-Nowhere-University. Remember Indiana University 4OT loss?

I naturally agree, but not sports ... not when the University is in debt, and a lot of it has to do with the debt burden from supporting athletics with that white Elephant of a stadium.

It's behind a paywall, but how does this make any sense? The Football Program doesn't cover costs, so if you're cutting "money games" you're cutting the ability to fund the program, and the University is in a debt crisis. How does this make ANY sense?

Having a little fun with the LLM today. Why it picked this, have no idea. I laughed though.

And yet mentioning them both in the same conversation infers and implies one causes the other.

What should boil everyone's blood is that one of the people involved with covering up the abuse is a current congressman representing Ohio. Who never bothered to be there for ANY of the Victims, but cried and begged the victims to say something nice about him and to keep the stories a secret while he rand for congress.

Let's be real here: College Athletics WAS NEVER competitive, it was always the illusion of competitiveness to favor a class of overpaid managers who pad their resumes while collecting 6 and 7 figure salaries, generating billions in profits "non-profit revenue" on the backs of unpaid college athletes. Yes, the athletes should be paid. Yes, the athletes probably should unionize. Yes, Millions of Dollars should be considered income, and yes they should pay taxes. College athletes already employ professional agents, and have for decades. Where have you been to not know that only a handful of top schools "do well" why the rest are just there to feed the trough for everyone else? That's literally been true for the entirety of me following college athletics before athletes started getting paid. Why TF does everyone have a problem with people sharing in the profits they generate? It's a really fucked up mentality.

The removed the grove of Dawn Redwoods which was disappointing.

What evidence do you have that "the cuts" made any difference? UA was still Number 1 in North America. It's more like Kyoto and Tokyo fell off, more than magical "we made cuts, so now we're better". Because that at face value makes no sense. The ratings are based on papers published, and citations of those papers: "These rankings are based on research output (EduRank's index has 32,967 academic publications and 788,899 citations attributed to the University), non-academic reputation and the impact of 99 notable alumni. UA also scored in the top 50% across 177 research topics." So past performance can have an impact on these rankings. Which means "the cuts" wouldn't necessarily be felt until later, as the scaled back programs will start publishing LESS which means LESS citations and notable alumni.

Well I think their underlying principle of you can do space for cheap is a fallacy. "Cost-Effective" is a term thrown around that has very little practical meaning. Do we build aircraft carriers or ICBM Nuclear powered submarines in a "cost-effective" manner? Or do you build them to build them right to get the mission done the first time? I think the greatest thing hurting SpaceX is it's abandonment of traditional engineering principals towards a "move fast and break things" trope that has become a cliche at this point. SpaceX did a great job with Dragon and Falcon, but has waddled with Starship to the point that Blue Origin, that has not followed the "move fast and break things", is posed to surpass them on the very thing they were supposed to be first at (landing people on the moon again). For the second question, that's actually a really good question. Congressional constraints hinder NASA when they constantly change approvals while development of a program is already taking place. That DID NOT happen during Apollo. And although, unknown to most people, Kennedy considered axing the Apollo program all together, it wasn't directly interfered with one the base objectives were established. Artemis and SLS have not been the same. SLS is the compromise rocket from two-decades of Congressional interference. And while it's an impressive piece of technology, that worked on the first try (unlike SpaceX's Starship) the ARES I and ARES V rockets had far more versatility, and NASA should have been allowed to continue their development. $230-billion over 7-years was spent on the development of those rockets only to have congress step in and cancel it as part of sequestration. Which then forced development on SLS using spare developmental parts from ARES. Don't get me wrong, I actually think bureaucracy is good. I just think changing political winds isn't.

And why should it? What has "loyalty" done for players? The idea that people owe us something is ridiculous. It's the same argument that you should be loyal to a company that doesn't pay you more or recognize your hard work. At the end of the day, you got to look out for yourself. Why would anyone stay at The University of Akron, when a larger opportunity presents itself? CEOs, CFOs, University Presidents, Coaches, NCAA executives always take advantage of larger opportunities that present themselves, why wouldn't the players (workers)? It's funny how "Loyalty" is always a one-sided benefit proposition isn't it?

They're probably infinitely better quality than the Influxer ones right? Which you pay $110 for.

Uh huh, sure they do. I'm sure they also use the magical S-Curve for seed placement on the brackets for where the teams play too right? Like Duke playing in Raleigh.

So Akron should be over McNeese State right? "Net Ranking" is meaningless.

I mean the NCAA is fundamentally rigged. Why do the Akron Zips perpetually get a 13/14 seed? You're telling me the might McNeese State from the mighty Southland Conference is somehow more deserving of a higher seed than the Akron Zips from the Mid American Conference? Drake gets an 11 seed while the Akron zips who swept their own conference gets a 13/14 seed? It's a joke. If the Zips could get matched up against the 5th seed, I think they could pull the upset. Arizona was a good shot, I must admit, but we had uncharacteristically low % shooting and Arizona had uncharacteristically high % shooting.

Correct. The "drops" in the bucket are individual line items in the federal budget. The flood is the cutting of the dam year-on-year. It's the cutting of the dam that causes the flood, not the drops in the bucket. You're absolutely right about that, you just don't have a correct understanding of the analogy.

At least Arizona's aren't falling too...

Sure, but they lack the proper context that you lost revenue long term, and that it's under what you would have had if you hadn't changed it, thus making the claim "tax revenue increased" isn't true. Stop saying this. If you have a $500 car note, and you go from working at Goldman Sachs to working at McDonalds and now you cannot pay the $500 car note, it's not the spending that's the problem...you have a revenue problem. But where I will agree with you is this: MILITARY SPENDING you are absolutely correct. That is part of the problem. But to sit there and say that Cutting Taxes didn't creat the $30-trillion debt is just a blatant lie. Yes it did. Regan, Bush and Trump didn't bother to cut spending to the military to pay for the tax cuts, they both raised military spending and cut taxes and the go "gee, guess we're spending too much on national parks!". It's a lie. You know it. I know it. Stop saying it. Stop being intellectually dishonest and at least admit that IT WAS NOT the EPA, Department of Education, USAID, Aid to Ukraine that created the National Debt. If you cannot admit that, you just are not an honest person.