zipboy

JD said on ZipsLive last week that Jackson, Jacquemin and Hakes are pretty close and he doubts either one will emerge as the frontrunner after spring ball. He wants to give all an equal shot in fall camp.

Nice job ladies, keep it up!

Thanks, these should be ticket sales. I took the official attendance numbers posted in the box scores. The OU game had sold just under 4200 tickets presale. My guess is that we would have gotten about 5000 for the game with decent weather but that is just a guess.

Great find! I agree, if I was a pole vaulter and wanted to stay in the Midwest, Akron is probably the top place to be with the combination of coaching and facilities.

So I am bored and did some research on final attendance figures for the MAC. Listed below are avg attendance numbers for MAC games only. I think the league games are a better barometer - students are generally in school, there are no holidays, everyone has the same number of games against the same teams. Here are the 07 figures1. Toledo 63242. Ohio 52083. Ball 42364. AKRON 42325. Can't 39126. WMU 32327. Miami 30428. Buffalo 25489. CMU 243210. NIU 165911. BG 149812. EMU 978Average attedance for league games was 3275 vs 3413 last year. Akron was 6th last year at 3793. So we made a huge jump up this year! And if the OU game had good weather, we would have averaged 4300+ for the MAC games.Overall, we averaged 3593 this year. 3470 last year. This includes the non conference games as well. A few other thoughts 1. This years attendance of 3593 is the 5th highest in school history. I am assuming that Memorial was not higher.2. In the history of being a Div 1 team, we have only been below 2200 once, Crawford's last year. For as much as BSU is a bball school, NIU is a football school. Given the new arenas at NIU and EMU, you would think they could at least draw 2000.3. I compared these numbers on a national level. The NCAA has last years numbers posted but I doubt there is much difference. Last year, the overall average attendance for every team was 5198. Both CUSA and A-10 averaged just over 5000 per game. That is a lot lower that I thought. The MAC ranked 13th in attendance last year (both OOC and league games). The Colonial was 12th only about 100 fans more than the MAC. 4. There are 336 Div 1 teams. The 100th ranked team attendance was 5369 (VCU).5. For as much as we complain about fan support, the league is in worse shape than us. Another reason to get better and jump ship.I expect a big jump up next year. We have only cracked 4000 once in school history, the 1st year of the JAR. I think we have a shot to break that next year. In 3 more years we could be averaging mid 4000s. And while attendance is going up, the excitement in the building is at an all time high. The Rowdies have done an amazing job keeping the arena loud and the intensity up all year long. I remember where this program was just 3 years ago and the strides that have been taken. The 1 good thing coming out of this NIT fiasco is for the 1st time so many people are now thinking of Akron as their team. I guess getting spit on and disrespected reasonates with Northeast Ohio well. Anyway, just my 2 cents.

I will be there. Hard to advertise it. If Pluto wrote about it, we probably would get an extra 300 people to show up. Not that I am his biggest fan, but he does have a pull with the community.

Good luck to him but GP1 raised this issue last year. With all of the turnover on assistants, it has to take a toll on JD at least in time alone to interview and get someone in. If some assistants are not performing as well, it is hard to make a change. Some continuity is needed.

My question is where do the sponsorship dollars from Team Akron partners get allocated? And how much is generated from the Z-fund etc that would not be gotten if those sports did not exist? I would think playing at osu, indiana, and uconn alone would generate over 1M if revenue next year. Mike if you are interested, there is a website called ope.gov (I think) which lists revenues and expenses for all teams.

My favorite was when Purdue got in with something like a 21-10 record. Greg Gumbel said, Purdue with a 16-1 home record gets the 9th seed! So they were 5-9 on the road?

Thanks for everything coach and team. The best news since Friday night was the interview with KD on ZipsLive tonight and he saying to all the Akron fans (his people as he so often says in postgame interviews) not to worry that he plans to finish his career here. KD made a comment when he was hired that he wanted to outgrow the JAR. That comes to fruition next season. *signed*

Thanks much for the response. Iappreciate it.

I have nothing against the guy other than his post to timmy. He was hired to improve MAC visibility in basketball. By all accounts, he failed this year. Now either it is impossible to get MAC visibility because people like Gene Keady are going to not care and in that case this guy's job is meaningless or someone else would have gotten Akron in and then this guy is not successful at his job. I guess that I don't understand the position. The big recommendation was to schedule better teams. Can't played at osu, Butler lost in OT, and Duke, lost by 7. they won 21 games and only last to Akron over their what last 13 games? So they finished strong. They did not get an NIT bid.So either this newly created position is a bunch of BS overhead, or this guy has good ideas that need to be implemented, or someone else needs to do the job. But after about the 5th year in a row hearing Rick Chryst say we need to asses things and take a hard look at what the NCAA committee is telling us is getting old. Laing Kennedy is part of that committe, ask him rather than trying to figure out the secret message.

Thank goodness for this forum. I need to vent somewhere. And Rasor's blog and the BJ has been good with stories and quotes. But I want to hear from the big boys.Is there a ZipsLive? Will KD and Mack be on? I want to hear from KD his long term thoughts of the future of the program. His comments in Rasor's blog has me pretty scared right now. And I want to hear Mack say something. Even if it is we will assess what to do or we have no plans to do anything, I want to hear something. Realistically how feasible is it to go independent in football and join another league Horizon, A-10, or whatever in everything else? What do we need to do to get to the Big East level when they probably have a big change in a few years - double the budget, triple the budget, build a new arena and stadium? Name one conference that has regressed as much as the MAC over the past 5 years? There was a stretch where the MAC had a lottery pick something like 7 out of 10 years. When was the last time they had a 1st round pick? When was the last time the league won a 1st round game? That used to be routine.Toledo is as good as gone over the next few years. We need to follow suit.

All I know is Boyges said in the paper that it was his job to get Akron in the NIT. Guess that did not work out too well.

What I don't get is how if we were "slated" to be a 10th seed we don't get in over another at large team. Weren't there more at large teams seeded worse than 10th?

At least he feels like I do about the MAC. I was a big MAC guy until this weekend. This is a deadend league. What is the worst case if we go independent for football? There are not enough teams to get into bowls now. Would we miss great TV exposure? You mean no more Buffalo home games on Thursday night on ESPNU? I sure hope that we are putting some kind of a plan together. Nice interview Mike.I've always thought of Keith Dambrot as an Akron guy, and he is.But I've always assumed he'd coach the Zips for a long time, and that assumption got a little cloudier when I spoke with him today."I get frustrated," he said. "I can't say I won't get to the point where I wouldn't look (for another job). This is the biggest injustice I've ever been a part of."Dambrot said he plans to call each member of the NIT selection committee to ask why his team was not invited."I owe that to my team," he said.Dambrot also questioned Akron's membership in the MAC."The MAC hasn't used their brain," the coach said. "I've said before that I don't think the MAC is a good league for Akron."I asked him to name some better conferences to suit the Zips and he named Conference USA, the Big East and the Atlantic 10 (although the A10 doesn't have football).

When asked last night about lobbying for Akron to get an NCAA bid, KD said that first should come from the league. The league can't even lobby for an NIT bid? When he said it I could almost hear KD laughing like the league gives a crap about us.The biggest event of the year and your clock operator can't get it right then your commissoner has no balls to make the final decision and 2 of the refs on the same crew are brothers?You let Temple into the league in football and still can't get your scheduling right? Will they be releasing the football schedules in July this year?Next year I expect our first 4 MAC football games to be on the road.I pray that we get our stuff together so that in 5 years we can leave this minor league conference. Either the league office is so inept that it is incomprehensible or they just don't give a crap about Akron. How you could let this happen is beyond me. And thanks again Lang Kennedy for stepping up for us. I appreciate it.We should be down to 3 conference teams in soccer 2 years from now. Rick Chryst is a freaking joke.

At least if I only had a MAC tourney memory from college. We joined the MAC my soph year. Back then there were 10 teams in the league and only the top 8 got in. We never even got into the tourney in my day. Looking forward to celebrating on Saturday night.

I will hopefully be at the Lizard. Every bar will be packed around there. Especially if Miami and OU play at 2:30 with Akron and Can't at night.

Good to see Charlie's comment. If they had asked O'Shea who deserves an at large he would have said, Ohio, Ohio, and Ohio. Oh wait, he did that 2 years ago.

I remember Phillips throwing the ball away in the final seconds.

Nice link! BZ, I will be at Rays. I am bringing 26 to the game mostly Zips fans. Hope to see many Zips fans at the game.

I feel a lot better about the team right now than I did last year at this time. Joyce has not hit a wall, Dials is like night and day vs last year, and we have Wood. This team plays much better D than last year. Last year, we played a lot of zone to hide deficiencies. We have 3 conference losses, in 2 of those we had shots in the last 30 seconds to either tie or take the lead. If we make those 2 shots, we would be 12-1 and feeling better about ourselves but not be any better off for having a chance of winning it in Cleveland than where we are today.There are any of 5 teams that are good enough to play well for 3 days and win it all. None of the 5 standout any more than the others. In 2 weeks, Ohio people will say their team gets hot at tourney time, Miami people will say Charlie Cole always is a tough out, Toledo people will say #1 seed, Can't will say defending champs and tradition, and Akron will say the most complete team with the best senior leadership.I know that I am rambling here but it will be a roll of the dice. I like our chances as well as anyone. When Romeo elevates himself, no one else in the league can carry their team like he can.

Congrats to the Lady Zips for a 3 peat! And the men have definitely solidified themselves as a solid program with a strong 3rd place showing. The meet was outstanding yesterday. Good job Zips

Thanks for the update - one question, I thought the max was 25 scholarhips per year. If we signed 24, how can we give 4 more out this year?