72 Roo

Meister, a pretty interesting ranking that means absolutely nothing other than who is on the move. Kent's Sean Lewis and Ball State's Mike Nee seem destined to move on after this year. I always appreciate someone who moves up in the rankings, yet I think we can expect our coach to move more than 5 places this season.

I agree. I like who we have now to compete for the job. Clark is a cancer in the locker room that began at Hoban and has been fostered by his dad. We don't need his act. Clearly not the high character recruit Arth wants.

I do not believe for a second that 147 schools make a profit or break even in athletics. A couple of years ago Forbes, I believe, reported that only 27 schools made a profit from athletics revenues, that is no support from the school's budget. OSU was one of them and they made a ton. Enough so that athletics gave millions back to OSU's general fund after paying for 37 varsity sports, the most in the country. This was on top of the building spree that OSU has been on for the last 20 years. That building spree was funded completely by the athletics dept's accrued funds or major donors. No university funds.

ll take a stab at why the AD's supported the ESPN weeknight contract. To my understanding each MAC school picks up $1.4 M each year from the contract. So when the AD's weighed that revenue against low late season ticket sales and other game day revenue they opted for the contract. They probably felt if they could have this contract and find two big paydays from the P5 teams plus regular season revenue they could come close to paying for their football budget. At least that is how I would surmise their reasoning went. It might actually cover their budgets in the short term, but long term it is killing any interest in the MAC or bowl participation.

Clark, you forgot to mention that the ESPN contract called for games to be played primarily in late October and into November. Rain and cold were added to no daylight yielding embarrassing low attendance. The casual viewer was served up a message that said "this conference is a joke, no one cares to attend". It's always a great look for Akron when there are more people in the band than there are in the stands.

"Or, they can put a good team on the field competing against teams that will draw interest while offering great tailgating, a clean stadium/parking and good concessions at a time AND DAY OF THE FREAKING WEEK that is convenient for students, alumni, fans and the greater community to attend." You realize, of course, that this argument is too reasonable to ever be adopted by UA athletic administrators. It just makes too much sense so it is doomed from the start.

Clark, thanks for sharing. That was an incredible race not because the world record holder got beat, but for how they overlooked Clayton's unmatched kick coming down the last 100. He has always had that. The commentators showed they did not do their homework so they were surprised, but we, who were lucky enough to see him run on campus, were not. He's ready for gold! I hope the new AD gets him back in the fold.

This makes sense for WVU. Conf USA has the potential for greater growth than the MAC. Unfortunately UA is stuck in the MAC. The best thing for us would be for the Mac to drop men's soccer thus freeing us to join a better conference or put together a dynamite independent schedule.

Congratulations to the staff and this young man. Welcome to the program. Getting a recruit that Marshall also wanted tells me this athlete has some talent. His being a TE is surprising considering how we have ignored this position for years. There may be hope that our offense will become more diversified and less predictable. I also have to give the staff credit because I believe they have slowly and methodically raised the team's talent level. That's encouraging. I wish we had more to get excited about, but the almost total blackout on anything football related since February has killed any buzz. Regardless of any challenges this is a year the team has to win 3-4 games. I hope this new talent influx process gets us there.

Thanks for the good news TennZip. I hope the talent coming in can contribute right away. I don't get why Pol transferred out to Xavier. That doesn't make sense to me. Perhaps you can help me understand why he left for a lesser program. Couldn't he do better?

If I had my druthers I would go after Tim Tyrell at Hoban. He would have to take a serious pay cut to come and for that reason alone I don't think he would consider it. But he would make a great addition who could easily be groomed into a coordinator's position and down the road a potential HC.

Do you think we might even throw the ball to an "outer tackle" one day? Just dreaming with nothing else to do until fall.

I'm willing to welcome him and give him a shot. I guess that is depending on the offense actually discovering how to use the TE as a weapon. That will be a new concept to the coaching staff. Either way he comes to Akron at a time when excuses are fading and performance, as defined by wins, is required.

Meister, stop picking the lint out of your belly button! We have more important issues here like you chaperoning Zipoutsider to Auburn to cheer on our coaching staff. Reminder: check for weapons first.

This may be good news for the MAC, so it can keep its automatic bid to the tournament, but it does not make the MAC stronger. This only allows the MAC to survive in soccer.

If coach Wilson is announcing an addition to the team that will be a bomb for the community I'm not sure this fits the bill. Nonetheless welcome to Akron. Hope you make this team far better.

Sorry to get you pissed off again. I love your posts. We need to support this program, and all Zip programs, that reach excellence. We also need to expect excellence of the ones that aren't there. I'd tell the coaches you are either on the way to excellence or on the way out, you decide. Now go have a beer and lower that BP.

I agree with you LZ, not a big loss. I do hate to lose senior leadership and Ohio guys. I suspect he waited this long because the staff told him he had to get a lot better in the off-season to get PT. I also suspect the hand-writing was on the wall so he elected to bail. I don't blame him and I don't blame our coaches. Probably best for all. Isn't it insane that the only news we get is negative. Again, why is the university content to let other information sources control the narrative about our program? Brilliant!

I don't think it's Embick's mess. It's the university's and the AD's. Embick is getting poor support for a program that considers itself in the top 5 in the country. He has had a volunteer coach taken away, a director of administration taken away. The university refused to honor scholarships this past season for seniors who were granted an extra year to play this spring. The soccer alumni funded those scholarships. Recruiting and travel budgets have been cut 20%. Jared is a better coach than this situation deserves. Yet he has hung in there. He is human and has made mistakes, but he is a fantastic asset for us and he will win if supported. Make no mistake, he wants to be at Akron. Just support him. That $100,000 spent by Miller to find the AD who reported to him at UWGB could have done wonders for our premier sport.

I don't care to get into that rabbit hole of love Bowden, hate Arth or love Arth, hate Bowden. I just want some engaging information on next season's football team. We get nothing and it is obvious it is planned that way. So why? How can that strategy possibly help rebuild our program. I'm not into conspiracy theories, but I have to admit that I have given thought that Miller and the board of trustees may want to scrap football so they are trying to reduce any interest in the team. I think it's sad to even debate that possibility.

Congratulations to coach Bowden and the ULM sports information dept for putting out something different and fun. It shows there is excitement for the program. Do you think there's a lesson in this for our SID? Maybe it is communication engages the public, who may want to see your team perform. That may get people excited to actually buy tickets. Just a thought. Let's just keep doing nothing for football and then make every excuse we can except that those who run and support football are doing nothing. Brilliant!

Can you explain the concept of a TE to me? I haven't seen that position at UA in the last 8 years. I've forgotten what a TE is. So, apparently, have the coaches and play callers. They may need to be reminded also.

Kudos to the coaches for dipping into the portal and increasing our talent level. I hope he is an immediate contributor. Our track record with transfers is not the best. Hope that is changing. Are we supposed to celebrate this or follow the SID's lead and say nothing about off-season football? Is this a new secret strategy to catch the MAC by surprise? Again, Brilliant!

You are correct. He makes more money, runs a bigger dept and the Akron AD job rounds out his resume because it gives him experience with managing D1 football, which he lacks and will never go further w/o it. Even tho' we are arguably the worst program in D1 he has filled that resume gap. It's a good move for him. It remains to be seen if it is a good move for us.

Guys and Ladies, are we living in some parallel universe where every athletic administration issue is handled with unbelievable incompetence? As I said in an earlier post you can't make this up. We hire the AD from our president's former university and we pay $100,000 to find him when our president knows more about him than any recruiting firm could. Why, because our new AD reported to our president weekly for years. On top of that football is our biggest issue and the guy we hire to solve that problem has no D1 experience of any sort. Don't you think a competent recruiting firm would have recommended someone with a plan and experience to restore the football program? You can't make this up. I'd like to remind you that the $100,000 we found for this search could have more than funded a men's cross country program along with outside funds that were pledged for years. It also would have kept our most decorated olympian Clayton Murphy supporting U of A, not that that was critical. But it would have been nice.