zen

Yeah, he's in every U A commercial that I ever see.Hey proenza, you're okay and stuff, but dood, it's not about you buddy.

LOL! I was fully prepared to deal with any gloating you did because the win grants you that, but you had to go overboard and troll with silly comments about a skid and ruined a perfectly valid chance to revel.

I didn't see it either. Was this a nationally televised commercial??? Or is it one of those commercials that fits into the slots for regional advertisements?

Hypothetical:So, you are a nationally ranked highschool ballplayer and you are looking around. You have alot of things to consider (and these considerations vary from person to person), but if you visit 10 schools, and you narrow your choice down to two or three. Does the fact that one of your choices has a plush indoor facility as well as other campus perks, the other(s) have outdoor practice fields in northern climates with concrete locker rooms, wood benches, and slimey shower floors.... are you suggesting that this doesn't make a difference in your perception of your football experience for the next 4 years?Perhaps I exaggerate to make a point. Still, my question is whether it makes some difference to your contention it makes none.

You are in denial my friend. When NFL teams rave about your facility, you can bet it helps recruiting top talent when they get a look at it. But even so, as I said (since I was the one who brought up the indoor practice facility), I did say it was only one step, one part of the overall forumula. Before you can recruit talent, you need to be able to recognize it, and you need to find ways to bring them in. Once you get them in, there are a lot of things that can impress them into signing. That is the part of the forumula for which this has some bearing.But even with an eye for talent, and a knack for drawing them in, you also need a lot of thing before that. Success on the field. Bowl game appearences. Players who get NFL contracts. TV/media time for games. Fan base and game atmosphere. Campus life and offcampus environment. Geography/ Proximity.Coach Personalities, philosophies, and past successesWord of mouth from friends, players, and grapevine.History/Legacy/HeritageSome of these things need building. We need to work on what we can.

Great stuff!Things are going well!I hope we do well this season and win the MacEast again.I heard Miami is building an indoor practice facility, and all I can think is "hmmm, I wonder where they got that idea?". Obviously they recognized that it gives us one more advantage in recruiting. So, I hope we beat them and recruiting leverage will continue (I know there is more to recruiting than this, but it's the perks that the players see, along with success).A new stadium is the next step (along with the obvious, which is continued success on the field). I wish some people would step it up and make this a high profile issue. We need a few people in city and county government to pick up the torch on this along with a high profile person to put a face on the stadium effort, such as, say, Charlie Frye for example....and to muster up government and corperate backing for the new stadium. It's the next step, but it's a big one.

Muahahahahaha!Can you say PWNT?rowdies make me nearly as proud as a win in the game would have.

http://www.sportsline.com/collegebasketball/story/9206478

There's a lot of great talent in this state (just ask OSU who recruited pretty heavily from Ohio), but that comment sounds more like sour-grapes/penis-envy than it did a genuine criticism. I promise you that if Can't could have signed the players that Akron did, they would. But they couldn't. They are just frustrated. It's tough for one mac team to recruit in a region where big10 gets the cream, let alone two. They cant catch a break because of a catch22, IE, if you are doing bad, you can't recruit. If you can't recruit, you can't turn things around.Frustration talking.

If it requires a 100k investment to launch a single local college team shop, I wouldn't hesitate to let your mind continue coming up with other ideas. Heh. I don't mean to be a naysayer, and since I haven't launched any retail businesses, I am far from an expert.But let me just remind you that the age of internet commerce has yet to see it's golden era. There are a lot of business models that require brick and mortar storefronts, but this isn't one of them where it is a necessity. Also, why a mall? It's true, you will get a significantly higher number of people to casually walk in then those who would drive in to a retail plaza just to patronize a team shop, but a much higher percentage of foot traffic in a mall will not result in a sale.If you are serious about this, after you have studied the feasability with the product with the school, I would consider a smaller loan and testing your venture with a 1 or 2 year lease somewhere that the rent isn't so high.

Yeah, I think toledo doesn't understand some of the underlying issues here, besides just the fact that the rubber bowl is out in BFE.All of this is built on the fact that Akron is going to build a genuine football program. Granted, bad luck is always a factor, but for the most part, you build a new on-campus stadium and couple that with success, and you can finally tap into a regional market that is arguably the heart of football in the United States and not a bad media market to boot (definately a larger market then all the other MAC teams). Cleveland has CSU. *twirls finger* No offense, but they aren't competition. Akron Zips Football barely gets mention from the media around here. Break into those BCS ranking just one freaking week, and your little 22K stadium will be an insult for years to come.Right now, Zips football hasn't even scratched the regional market appeal (let alone actually tap it). Believe it or not Highschool football is bigger (which is one part of why I said this region is arguably the heart of football), but aside from various alumni, people in this region are Buckeye bandwagoners (to which I make no criticism) because of Ohio State's success. Now, I dont' mean to sound delusional. I recognize that joe-dogpound from parma isn't going to be quick to put on blue&gold and drive down I-77 on saturdays just because Akron Zips football starts getting covered by the Cleveland Plain Dealer. The Cleveland Media Market (north east ohio, at which, you can say Akron is the epicenter) is ranked as the 16th largest media market in the Nation (in terms of dollars) and potentially larger then that in region-wide population, which could bode well more in regards to TV and merchandize increases, rather than butts in the seats. But this school has a lot of alumni that probably also happen to be football nuts who just don't think about their college alma mater in the same way think about the Browns and even their old High Schools. That can change.There is a tendancy for front-running and bandwagon phenomenon in this market, but that happens in other sports more than football. This region is football crazy. It doesn't take extreme imagination to envision a successful collegiate football program in this region to capture the imagination of people from Avon Lake out to Palmyra, from Mentor out past Medina. From the northcoast down past Canton.Having the vision to build up the program is the first step and perhaps the hardest, but that ball is definately rolling. Getting to a bowl game is next (winning it would help more, but that's football). Granted the MotorCity bowl is not the Fiesta Bowl or the Rose bowl. I will definately give you that. That's why I said breaking into the BCS, even if it's just for one week would do amazing things. It would change the perception of Akron for a long time regionally and be one of the final keys to breaking into a new teir of recruiting success.

photoshop isn't made for precision work, but I matched the scales from the aerials between Syracuse and Akron, so it whould be relatively close. The graphics were just for concept only, a margin of error is okay in this respect. If you are going to spend 100M or more building a new stadium and parking decks, moving spicer street over an extra 4meters isn't a major issue as long as the intersection at exchange remains viable.I picked their dome partially because a dome would be awesome, but also because it is a facility that supports other sports and classrooms with a 49K capacity for football. Because of that, it means that footprint may be somewhat smaller for a less ambitious project.

this is it. I'm done with concepts now.(hope I didn't annoy anyone)

this one leaves less room for parking, but allows for the greek village.The nice thing about it is that it requires the University to aquire only a couple dozen residential lots. It will have a much easier time getting the frats, because they will agree to it as they may participate in the greek villiage project.It may, however require them to work on reclaiming the property on exchange street, which is prime real estate that the owners may not part with easily, but I'm sure they can handle it.

Good point. Perhaps it is better to put the stadium a bit more south.Then all you would have to do is get rid of nash and maybe reroute spicer somehow.I was looking at the area east of brown (as mentioned in the start of the thread) and I can't see how that would work out.

Memorial hall is arena sized and much too small. In face, it's not even a great size for an arena.

I checked the scale. They were slightly off. The Dome in the image (several posts above) should actually be about 6% smaller, which actually means you have slightly more room for the project!The bad thing is, this would interfere with the "greek village" project.I was thinking. Didn't Akron give up the central hower campus?So I checked to see how it would fit.(see attached)Bad fit. Very very close. Also, traffic access is worse then the east campus concept,and south college street would be closed,and worse, no place to provide parking except for the existing lots and decks.Also, keep in mind that the image below does not show the new spicer building project.So, this wont work. (but my wheels are still spinning...I will post soon)

It's a 10 minute drive (in light traffic) from campus, but much worse at game time because of the single access bottle neck I refered to previously. Of course the university couldn't turn it down. It cost them $1 as I remember. A donation from goodyear. If Akron can muster 7000 in a stadium in lean years that is a pain to get to and no where near walking distance from campus, then it is not in any way hard to imagine 4 or 5 times that kind of attendance in a new facility next to campus with a exciting program. Not only would you get a lot more students there, but the stadium would get a mystique that the rubber bowl has very little of.

The image shown should be pretty close to scale (as long as the altitude of the aereal photos are accurate to the scale google had for their aereal photos between Syracuse and Akron. I am assuming the scale on those aerials are relatively accurate). What that means is that location between Rt.8 and the Nat has room for a tight squeeze of a 50,000 statium. I estimate the parking as shown south of the stadium is less than 2000 vehicles, so parking decks would be in order, rather than lots.Also, I imagine 2 or 3 of the empty corners of the stadium could have spiral ascending walkways, and there could be elevated walkways between the parking decks and the stadium as well. Of course, that plan would displace dozens of houses and a handfull of frat houses, so it could seem like a bad idea to some.The benefit of that location would be that you add more parking capacity for commuters during the week, as well as adding classroom space right near campus (if you include classrooms on the sublevels (below the stands) which is in no way an architectural problem, and in fact, gives more campus usability to that real estate to the college rather than to private housing (which the school definately wouldn't mind). Also, since it's right next to campus, you can expect that a fair percentage of students from residence halls and off campus housing would attend the games (much more so then when it was at the rubber bowl) and that would not tax the parking capacity.Accesability isn't too bad either. Buchtel and Exchange from rt.8. If the city and county cooperated with the project, ramps could be added to brown, but that would probably be a civil nightmare because of proximity to the interchange. But hey, they fixed rt.8. Why not add ramps at Brown?

I did a quick photoshop job using google-maps sattelite images with the Syracuse Carrier Dome as a reference. It has a capacity of 49,250, and was built in 1980.

There is nothing wrong with a college team appearing somewhat similar to pro teams. To the casual observer, Iowa looks like the steelers, and Illinois looked a bit like the browns (or vice versa, the pro teams look like those college colors) It's more important to look unique among your own ranks.

It would be a damn shame to plan a 15,000 seat statium and while in the process of building a football program that will dominate the MAC for years to come.Aside from the fact that Akron started getting some national and more consistent regional mention every 20th time the Browns QB's is talked about, and aside from the fact that they won the MAC and went to a bowl game (albiet, definately not the most high profile of bowl games), and aside from the fact that they have an indoor practice facility that receives raves from NFL teams that have used it to practice, this program has reached critical mass (gone over the hump) in terms of their image in the region and state. This means that Akron will now be able to tap into the recruiting of SOME regional that once recruited larger schools. This is a snowball that could lead to recruiting success so good that the MAC could someday be asking Akron to leave so they can have parity.Sure, a lot can happen to kill the snowball, and lack of vision is one of them. The zips need to get out of the rubber bowl. It's a nice facility, but it's too far away, and at the end of a bottle-neck to boot. A campus stadium is exactly what the zips need to continue their date with destiny, but what they don't need is to limit themselves to a seating capacity of a Div.2 school.