Captain Kangaroo

What makes you so sure they can beat Morgan State?

4-26! We probably found out about this guy as we were trying to schedule them. :lol:

Oscar doesn't like his size or skills: Blog Link If he had grade issues in Engineering, welcome to the club! It's happened to many a smart student

I went to Buc night the year after they played in the NLCS. They have been doing it successfully for years. You're only saying that because it was their idea, and they've been doing it successfully for years.

Elton reported this morning that Humpty is officially out, and Chauncey Gilliam is officially in. Gilliam will be eligible in 2011-12.

You'll be even more shocked to find out that they are having a dollar beer night tomorrow. Dollar. Beer. Night. The Info would be full from the time the gates open until the end of the game. Who needs a game? Just open the Info for Dollar Beer Nights every Friday and Saturday? Put some sports event on the Jumbotron...blast some tunes...we could create The World's Biggest College Bar?!

Giving away free tickets is bad. Discounting GA ducats on games that typically draw flies, and promoting event, is smart. If the Zips are playing Malone in basketball, I would rather have a 3/4 full house than tumbleweeds. And - "Band Day" is still a staple of filling the seats @ UA. Sad to say...

I think with the #20-something scholarship to give, you take the best available remaining player.

Addressing your points individually - 1.) I never said discounted tickets are a cure-all. Nor did I say they can fill Can't's football stadium. Nothing will save K.e.n.t. football. They have been in the bottom 10 of D-1 for 25 years. Saying "<Insert Idea Here> didn't work for K.e.n.t. football" is not a valid argument. It is like saying "Lipstick and perfume will not work for a pig." Sure it won't, but it will work wonders for any decent-looking girl. K.e.n.t. football is a hopeless pig. 2.) Important: Our product is NOT reasonably priced. $20 is too much money to get GA seats to watch Akron football. $80.00 for a family of four to watch Zips football is too much. One could argue "Season tickets for a family are MUCH cheaper than $20 per person." And, one would be stupid to argue that point. The fact is - most people don't buy season tickets. You want to get families to InfoCision. Then you can set the hook for season tix. And educate them on the value of the season tix. 3.) People should expect $1.00 entry for their kids...once or twice per year. Look at the history - Zips football draws flies at season's end. If the team is terrible, even the flies stay home. Giving a 45% discount on GA seats at year's end loses no money, and cheapens no product. Any butts in the seats are butts that would have stayed home otherwise. 4.) You confuse a 45% discount with free tickets. I am not saying "free tickets." 5.) The Aeros don't cheapen their product with BOGO tix...MLB's Pittsburgh Pirates don't cheapen their product with $1.00 kids tix (they've done it since I was a kid)...but the Zips would somehow take a financial bath if they let some families in for 45% off? Not true. 6.) Handing our free tickets at the last minute (EMU game) is NOT Marketing. Handing out schedules in July, highlighting your Fall 2010 "Buck-a-Roo Kids Night" and promoting it at Zips home games and at InfoCision high school games...will pack the stadium. THAT is Marketing. Summary - Do you want to Market the Zips and try to pack the stadium? Or keep your profit margin, but with a 2/3rd's empty stadium? The same can be applied to basketball at the JAR. Do you want 3k? Or do you want a couple early-season games, typically against "dog" opponents, to draw 4k...or 5k? Funny to see people so negative about a damn good idea that's easily within our budget.

Whoops. You are correct.

Have the Aeros ever offered discounted tickets? Something like BOGO? Just curious. If so, someone told me they are undervaluing their product. Obviously the Aeros must NOT know what they are doing.

Pre-season accolades and ranking are essentially worthless. If they were a slam-dunk, Brookhart would have won a National Championship. And Bobby Hendry would have toted nothing but a water bucket.

Re-fixed. Do you really think that, if "Buck-a-Roo" nights appear next season, it's because some UA person took in a Pittsburgh Pirates' game? No kidding - Everyone does "Dollar Night." YSU does it. The Aeros do it. I'm sure the Milwaukee Bucks do it too. The overall idea is hardly original. But - How many times has it been done at UA? Zero. How many times has ANYTHING of substance or success, Marketing-wise been done at Akron in the last 5 years? How many 3rd grade baton twirlers did you seen at the JAR this season? Hundreds. How many team jersey's were on sale at the team shop? Zero. What was your favorite promotion to fill the JAR this past season? For lack of any other choice, could it have been the "White Out?" How original was that one? How original was "Fear the Roo"? How successful were those two? People grouse about UA Marketing. But who offers a solution that would get thousands of fans to a game that would otherwise stay home? I did it. And not with a simple link to YSU's promotion. Or simply saying "Dollar Night." I laid it all out. Tied into the "Roo" thing and ready to go. For free in 20 minutes of my lunch time, with my hacker Photoshop skills. The idea costs almost nothing to execute, and can be used annually, easily becoming a tradition that people will place on their calendar. If 3k @ the JAR, or 5k @ InfoCision is cool with UA, they are free to ignore the idea. Band nights and baton twirlers always get Joe Akron off the couch, right?

The MAC is a Quarterback's conference. Look at Davis @ Ball State...he elevated an entire team to a top 20 ranking...and when he left...the next season they lost double-digit games. Dan LeFevor was a 6th round NFL draft QB, and he tore the MAC up. PN7 needs to kick some butt in 2010 and we'll be fine. If we want to compete beyond the MAC, we need a solid defense. Sewell and Wagner are all MAC, but we need others to step up and generate more than 11 sacks on the season (that was our total last season, right?). A kicker that can make 7-out-of-10 from inside 40 yards would be worth a couple wins in itself. The list goes on...but the Zips go as Nicely goes in 2010. If he has a great season, we'll go to a bowl.

You are welcome, UA. Please give me credit when it is used.

Basketball is a winner, statistically. But in the world of mid-major basketball (Note: Not "Major"), we aren't. Quality mid-majors beat us like a drum. We won 24 games last season, but it was a toothless tiger. We lost to VCU by double digits...got smoked by K.e.n.t. twice...lost at home in the CBI, not to mention following up our NCAA tourney appearance by blowing a 15-point home, late-2nd half lead to Austin Peay. Losing to Rhode Island, Texas A&M and NC State...gheezus... I spoke to someone high-up in UA athletics at the Wisconsin Green Bay game (you can probably figure it out because there were only about 12 people in attendance). That person also said "I can't figure out why more people don't come to basketball games...the team wins?" Coming from this person, that scared the sh!t out of me. We had a sh!tty 24-win basketball season last year, and "yes," such a thing is possible. And obviously Dambrot knows that he's gotta up his level of play. Hence the massive (by Dambrot standards) player turnover we've witnessed in the aftermath of 2010. Soccer had a special run, and they needed to bring in temporary bleachers to accommodate the fans...and there still weren't enough seats at year's end. Joe Akron exists. Basketball is the #2 winning sport, record-wise, at UA. And there is a laundry list of reasons why it doesn't draw fans (facilities, marketing, etc.). But pointing to a 20-win cake walk schedule and looking aghast at the JAR attendance...like LeBron, that one-time-out-of-50 that he shoots a lay up and doesn't get a foul call...is crazy. It's as plan as the nose on your face. All the Zips need to do is find 2,000 butts in the seats per game and the JAR is full. That should be easy. I saw 5,200 people watch the UA/K.e.n.t. game, and only about 300 were K.e.n.t. fans. Joe Akron is there. Just quit laying egg on his face. Quit blowing a tire and losing a fan belt every time the bandwagon exceeds 35MPH. And back to football -- 3k in attendance @ the JAR is equivalent to 14k at InfoCision. If the Zips football team won 7 or 8 games, they'd draw a "real" 13k. If anything, Joe Akron is consistent. It's up to Ianello to prove that. I agree with some of what you are saying. But, the highlighted area is all the proof that anyone should need about Joe Akron. Does anyone really believe that thousands more people in Akron suddenly became soccer fans? Or, that they just wanted to be associated with someone who was winning games? They started showing up because we were accomplishing something that had NATIONAL significance. We can't ever put this label on basketball or football. You are close... Basketball DOES need to do something of National Significance. But it doesn't need to be a "Butler" or a "Zips soccer" Final Two game. Just start beating some respected teams, and back it up the following year. Build something meaningful. OU beat Georgetown in the NCAA's. We need to accomplish something similar, or we're not catching Joe Akron's fancy. 15,000 people showed up @ Ford Field to see a barely-over-.500 Zips football team play Memphis. That's all the proof you need that Joe Akron will show up, if you give him a decent reason. Whether it's basketball or football...we can't back up our success. We either sink back into the abyss...or continue at a "decent" level. "Decent" is certainly better than "The Abyss," but neither will pack the house. Nor should it. There are too many other entertainment options out there today to expect people to pack the house for losing football, or Malone basketball beat-downs.

There's is a HUGE difference between people showing up for a Browns game and a Zips game. The Browns are on sports talk and TV pretty much 24/7. The Zips - Zero. The Browns are built into the fiber of the NE Ohio community. The Zips - Zero The Browns bring in nationally recognized opponents. Super Bowl champions. Hall of Famers. The Zips give you K.e.n.t. State, EMU and a bunch of players with talent closer to Youngstown State than Ohio State. And also - There is a big myth surrounding Browns attendance -- don't tell anyone, but Browns stadium is often "filled" to wayyyy under capacity. Hence why 30,000+ Steelers fans annually clogged the place throughout the 2000's. Even in NE Ohio, with the massive NFL/Browns marketing machine, people have their limits.

3-9 is work. 9-3 is a party. People want to work during the week, and party during the weekend. We might as well be holding "3rd Quarter Earnings" Power Point Presentations on the Info scoreboard on Saturdays. It has to stop.

Basketball is a winner, statistically. But in the world of mid-major basketball (Note: Not "Major"), we aren't. Quality mid-majors beat us like a drum. We won 24 games last season, but it was a toothless tiger. We lost to VCU by double digits...got smoked by K.e.n.t. twice...lost at home in the CBI, not to mention following up our NCAA tourney appearance by blowing a 15-point home, late-2nd half lead to Austin Peay. Losing to Rhode Island, Texas A&M and NC State...gheezus... I spoke to someone high-up in UA athletics at the Wisconsin Green Bay game (you can probably figure it out because there were only about 12 people in attendance). That person also said "I can't figure out why more people don't come to basketball games...the team wins?" Coming from this person, that scared the sh!t out of me. We had a sh!tty 24-win basketball season last year, and "yes," such a thing is possible. And obviously Dambrot knows that he's gotta up his level of play. Hence the massive (by Dambrot standards) player turnover we've witnessed in the aftermath of 2010. Soccer had a special run, and they needed to bring in temporary bleachers to accommodate the fans...and there still weren't enough seats at year's end. Joe Akron exists. Basketball is the #2 winning sport, record-wise, at UA. And there is a laundry list of reasons why it doesn't draw fans (facilities, marketing, etc.). But pointing to a 20-win cake walk schedule and looking aghast at the JAR attendance...like LeBron, that one-time-out-of-50 that he shoots a lay up and doesn't get a foul call...is crazy. It's as plan as the nose on your face. All the Zips need to do is find 2,000 butts in the seats per game and the JAR is full. That should be easy. I saw 5,200 people watch the UA/K.e.n.t. game, and only about 300 were K.e.n.t. fans. Joe Akron is there. Just quit laying egg on his face. Quit blowing a tire and losing a fan belt every time the bandwagon exceeds 35MPH. And back to football -- 3k in attendance @ the JAR is equivalent to 14k at InfoCision. If the Zips football team won 7 or 8 games, they'd draw a "real" 13k. If anything, Joe Akron is consistent. It's up to Ianello to prove that.

That would certainly be a start, but honestly the basketball team has been winning for a while now and it's not like we're packing out the little ole JAR. In order to get more butts in the seats at a school like Akron it really comes down to the fact that the team has to do something significant that captures the public's imagination and makes it "cool" to be an Akron fan. The harsh reality is that we've got to somehow pull a Boise State, because winning the MAC is just not going to cut it. You're still going to get a "so what" from Joe Akron. We will never get more than a 15-20 k per game average unless we become significant in the college football world somehow, and we're a long way off from that. We're not even significant in the MAC at this point. I don't think we need to be Boise State. I do think we need to quit going 4-8, 5-6, 3-9, etc. Win 7 or 8 games and then ask the question. If we stay sub .500, the "Why won't fans come?" question is pretty pointless. NE Ohio fans see enough losing on Sundays. They want to at least go .500 for the weekend. Thus they root for Ohio State on Saturday. I can't blame them. Being a Zips fan is work. Until being a Zips fan is a party, Joe Akron remains in a coma.

I was thinking of transferring to Harvard or MIT after my Soph. year. For a myriad of reasons, it just didn't work out. South Fresno State University, or Indiana-Purdue Fort Wayne...MAYBE. Hope he can fight through this tragedy and get back on the JAR floor next fall.

I've lost hope for our kicking game. But rather than pout, I've decided to embrace it. Week #2's Tailgate will highlight:

"CC" (as we called him) was an absolute STUD back-in-the-day:

Thank you to all the mom's out there who worked so hard so your sons and daughters could attend UA and get a great education! Thanks to the moms who bundle their kids up for a mid-week November Zips football game...then do it all over again for a Zips basketball game two days later! Thanks to the moms that participate on ZipsNation, and those who tolerate the husbands who participate on ZipsNation! Thanks to the moms who hold hold down the fort while their Coach husbands work their 70-hour weeks and spend weeks at a time on the road recruiting! Thanks to all the moms...enjoy your Day!