UAZipster0305

Our play in the final third lacks purpose and urgency.

I never had a problem with Bowden not being renewed, but as you point out, a cash strapped university cutting academic programs like crazy while BUYING OUT Bowden was the appalling part. All so we could hire iCoach 2.0. It really makes me wonder what UA could be post-Proenza with perfectly average hires in place of iCoach, Arth, Larry Williams, and Scarborough. Given UA's financial circumstances, Arth shouldn't be bought out either. Tell him he won't be renewed and hope he gets another job knowing what's coming. State it publicly if necessary; shame him into leaving. That gets us out of buying out his contract or having him hang around. That's the best outcome we can hope for.

Well that was disappointing. I hope this proves to be the Cleveland State game of circa 2009/2010. That's what we get for me talking trash with an OSU alum at work. I guess this means we'll upset them on the gridiron in two weeks though.

Let's get this thing tied, so we can finish them off in OT!

Got it...just wasn't working in my Firefox. Working in Edge. Thanks!

The gametracker does not seem to be available. Anyone mind giving periodic updates?

Because it's now more evident than ever that via a relatively small investment in facilities and a coach, your non-P5 brand and university can be featured on national tv winning a National Championship against a Big Ten team and perrenial powerhouse. To me, that's better than playing in a no-name bowl game or the NIT every year. Even if it doesn't get the alumni as excited, the exposure is better. Winning a game in the NCAA basketball tournament is about the only realistic thing that tops this achievement, but in Akron's case, we literally have one more men's soccer national championship than we do NCAAT wins in basketball. When or how else would Akron or Marshall win a D-1 team national championship? I live out-of-state, and when I tell people that I went to Akron, if nothing else, they know our powerful soccer brand. That's a great return on investment.

Marshall was clearly the better team and deserved to win. Kudos to them, and yay to another non-P5 winning a team National Championship. In the last five minutes of the second half last night, the commentator referenced Indiana, Akron, and Maryland as the "hallowed grounds" of college soccer. It's awesome to be recognized in this way, and it's certainly been true in the past 15 years; however, I think UNC, UVA, and Stanford could make as much or more of a claim to such a distinction than us. College soccer is arguably the 4th most recognized sport for winning a National Championship behind football, men's basketball, and women's basketball, so one has to wonder if other mid-major AD's are taking a look at Akron and Marshall and thinking it wise to compete in men's soccer. It only takes a top notch coaching hire to compete with the P5's and win a National Championship. For all Cincinnati's success in football and men's basketball, they've only ever won two team National Championships, and those were in the early 60's in back-to-back years, so essentially the same team won two titles before the modern era.

Said every NEO sports fan since the beginning of time. This is another hiring of a friend just like iCoach was. Lazy and without vision.

I think it's on following the President's fireside chat address to the nation.

Not sure what to make of the list because I don't believe in the stars and the recruiting class rankings. Instead, I'll share a few thoughts and observations based on the info for each player that was available via GoZips.com: 1) It seems there wasn't much interest from other MAC schools in these recruits. 2) Arth and company beat out some other strong programs for these players though. 3) The academic accomplishments of this signing class are impressive. 4) On "paper" this seems like a great class of true scholar-athletes. 5) If this talent can be coached up and combined with a dynamic game plan, the program could turn around quickly. Next season will be very telling. 6) One recruit wants to major in architecture and another in architectural engineering. Good for them, but does UA offer those programs?

As with this year, the hard decisions will be coming from higher up the food chain than the Athletic Department.

"...it has happened before..."

You nailed it! This is an epic and tragic disaster. Arth isn't going anywhere until his contract is up. If only we had that same desperation to keep Bowden around until his was finished.

There is symbiosis among universities and their cities/towns, so this is great to see: https://www.bestcities.org/rankings/americas-best-cities/ Akron, OH #92 behind Columbus, Cincinnati, and Cleveland, but ahead of Dayton. Toledo didn't make the list.

Our TE's are more likely to throw a pass than receive one.

I predict we won't go 0-7.

Interesting and timely topic. I'll bite. The argument can be made that Athletics is almost exclusively funded by students as a result of a general service fee assessed directly to them. Students already get in free for their contribution. Am I missing something? How are state taxes directly paying for athletics rather than supporting university academics based on credit hours? Do coaches have equity in a state retirement system? I honestly don't know, but if coaches do get vested for retirement, perhaps going forward they should be excluded?

Wow, Scarborough was taken off the list! You'd think that UA would be doing everything they could to get rid of him. He must have BoT or political connections. And it is far past time for Proenza to voluntarily take a more modest salary. While some of his decisions as President have not played out well, I always respected him for being a good leader and having an ambition for UA. Some of those decisions with regard to specific buildings look far too over the top in hindsight, but at the time I don't think they were obviously wrong given the context of timing. For my respect of Proenza to continue, he will need to show continued leadership by sacrificing half or more of his current salary.

We should be so lucky.

Thanks. I only read it once. As with many of you, things have been very out of the ordinary on my end.

Thank you. Not sure that was clear in the press release.

I support all of these things. The problem is, it costs the average student who doesn't participate $1500 / year, and they get little to no personal benefit. These are values of sports in general that anyone who participated at the high school level should already have. If our athletes were not on scholarship and coaches weren't making six figures, I'd feel differently. The objection I have is that academics and research are sacrificed for athletics that benefit <1% of the student population. Something had to give.

Golf and cross-country have roughly the same number per sport, per gender though.

The loss of men's golf, men's cross-country, and women's golf is about as good as the UA community could have expected. Though I feel for the individuals who are affected, historically bad decision making led us to a course that was already unsustainable. I wonder though, why not cut both men and women's cross-country OR men's and women's golf rather than one gender from each sport? And how in the world do those 3 programs cost $4.4 million per year?! In general, I feel that Dr. Miller's messaging has been favorable, especially relative to what we've been used to through recent history. Let's hope he chooses to not renew Williams' contract next year and that the academic changes will be equally as reasonable. I wrote to him to advocate for some specifics related to the latter.