Spin

Sounds like Can't's marketing program is going well... http://www.ohioverticals.com/blogs/kent_state/

+1+1 they haven't even begun to touch the possibilities with MCUC. And Wayne's getting bigger and busier. Why waste time and money on one of the most depressed parts of the rust belt? When Kant, Stark, Mount U, Malone, and Walsh are already there? Expand west and southwest, where the money is...

Just now, on ESPN during the NASCAR race.

You can hear or download the entire interview at http://www.espncleveland.com/audiovault/reghi_roda.php

Plus there are still the weeknight games on ESPNU or ESPN2. This can't be anything but positive.

Do we know what number he is going to be? If there are no jerseys available, does it matter? There is a Zip football jersey #8 hanging in the brand new Beef O' Brady's in Wadsworth. That was his high school number. It might be his college number too.

I know we're talking about two different things. My point is a mediocre Cavs team will hurt businesses in downtown, they're not going to make that up by people from Sandusky going downtown to watch Toy Story 35. it's going to cost jobs. But that's a drop in the bucket of Cleveland's problems. As I said later in my post.

I don't understand this. A winning team draws fans from a wide area. Not just the suburbs. Many of us go to games. People from Sandusky, Lorain, Akron, Canton, Ashtabula, Youngstown. These people are not going to drive to Cleveland to see a movie or go out to eat, they have all that right there where they live. Probably within 5 miles. In a small way this may help the local establishments, probably not enough to notice. But it's going to hit the restaurants and bars and hotels at Gateway hard. The arena workers. Souvenir sales. The Cavs have drawn over 20,000 per game the last four years. The year before The Playa came along they drew 14,000. That's a quarter million fans lost. And I bet money if they tracked the demographics, a lot more of those fans are from outside Cuyahoga County than from within. Anyway, how to save Cleveland? Like Hammer says, every day 20-something year old males move out of Cleveland everyday. LeGone just made the most noise. Just listen to the typical Clevelander. "This is a hard working blue collar town. Hard hat, hard working". Someone should tell them there are no hard hat cities anymore. Unless you go to Mexico or China or Saudi Arabia. You can just picture these guys getting up in the morning, putting on their overalls, and going down to the steel mills with their lunch bucket in their hand. Waiting for it to reopen. It aint coming back. Hell the biggest one is now a shopping center. You have to find something else. Pittsburgh did. Columbus did. Mansfield and Akron is trying. But Cleveland, Youngstown, Lorain, they're all waiting for the mills to open back up. "Hey, there's a hundred or so guys working at the Cleveland and Lorain and Canton mills, it's just a matter of time. We're tough, we're going to recover and make lots of steel again." Cleveland is done. Youngstown is done. Warren is done. Lorain. Sandusky. Canton. Maybe even Elyria. Stick a fork in 'em.

The font is copyrighted, I don't know how close you can come...

Agreed. Those are all part of the college football experience.

Let's just load up on Wal Mart jerseys and wear them to the game. When they see the sea of (cheapo) jerseys in the stands, maybe they'll see the error of their ways. I know that's giving them a lot of credit, but ya never know...

We had a franchise in Cleveland that was very successful and could have moved up that ladder. But the USL moved them up too quick, they lost key players, and went down the tubes. There are people interested in obtaining a USL Second Division (the old D3) franchise. But that set us behind several years.

Funny cause when Bosch signed with Miami, he said he didn't want to play in Cleveland.

I thought so too but can't find anything concrete. We also play four Big Ten programs this year, so we should be on BTN at least once. Fox Soccer might pick up the UNC game at least.

Well if you don't understand the perception of the level of college soccer by now, if you can't grasp the numbers other college programs in soccer hot beds are drawing, then I can't help you. And if you don't know why Bert Wolstein didn't bring the MLS to NE Ohio, I'm not sure anyone can. I'm glad the Aeros management didn't factor in the Zips baseball attendance when deciding whether or not there were baseball fans here...

How can I explain? I look at that number, with a realistic expectation of college soccer, at a not-so-famous school, and think that's great. There are people on here predicting we hit the top ten in the country in attendance this year. And looking at the demand for tickets last year, and all the expansion, it wouldn't surprise me that much. Looking at the top programs in attendance, no surprise you see a lot of the soccer "hot beds". California, Connecticut, Maryland/Virginia, St Louis, Raleigh/Durham. That number, 400, doesn't include students. They don't need to buy tickets. And if you don't think there are soccer fans among the students, you need to be around the Student Union during the World Cup. We disrupted an engineering convention when Donovan did his thing. Fact is, this has always been a strong soccer market. It shows in demographic studies, in the success of pro teams, in the fact a developer wanted to build a stadium and a team by himself because he believed in the fan base, by every indication. You agree, but you want to pick apart one small part of my argument. In my eyes, you have unreasonable expectations for a program playing at a level considered below minor league, in a school with a "minor league" stigma compared to other DI schools. That's like saying Cleveland isn't a baseball town because the Lake Erie Crushers don't draw as many fans as the Yankees. You have to compare apples to apples. 1,800 fans puts you in the top ten in NCAA attendance. The PDSL, playing at the same relative level on the soccer food chain, averages just over 500. Like Einstein said, it's all relative...

So if you're acknowledging there are a lot more soccer fans like us, then what's to debate? The thread is "Is Akron a soccer city". I say it is. You say it is. But you want to beat up the fact that the season tickets are selling better and faster than ever before. That a college soccer program sells 400 season tickets is not proof. Don't get caught up in comparing a college soccer program with a major league team with a major league marketing budget and major league merchandising. If you want to compare them to the City Stars, or the Caps, that still might be a reach, but at least then you're comparing it to franchises whose marketing budget basically consisted of hoping to get press releases used in newspapers, and a few stories on TV. A team with a more comparable perception to college. Ohio State was 5th in the country last year in attendance, and drew 1500. And that's a hot spot city where the Crew draws 13,000. So it's all relative. Keep that perception in perspective when we talk about a college team or a minor league team. 400 season tickets, for a college soccer program, in July? To me, it's one of several things to point to that says this area has a lot of soccer fans.

Now you know the fans there are not just alumni. You're avoiding the obvious fact. Along with the fans of AU and the alumni and any other stinking group you can come up with, there are also S O C C E R fans there. Give it up. No more of this crap "well, you know, the janitor from Kolbe Hall goes and he's not a soccer fan." Weak. You got nothing.

My sons want an Anthony Schrock replica jersey. He was a teammate of theirs. If only he had gone to the College of Wooster...

And the AK Rowdies go because they have to, blah blah blah... The simple fact everyone is ignoring, if you look at the fans who go, you can tell they are a lot of SOCCER fans. You can see it in the clothes they wear, the teams they talk about, the strategies they discuss. If you want to debate that somehow, I'll continue this dead horse beating.

The heck with the merchandise, how much is one of them girls? For about 3 minutes?

That explains a lot

What's 1350's "range"? 1 mile? 106.9 was finally a chance to really pick up a Zips game that actually somewhat came in anywhere outside of downtown/campus in Akron. I can get 1350 in Cleveland, almost all the way to Lorain, out past Ravenna, But I can't get it at all in Wadsworth...

Soccer is very VERY polarizing, as we have seen here. A big precentage of sports fans are NOT going to go watch soccer even if it's a national contender. As many have said, they would rather watch paint dry. The bandwagon jumpers may go to see the MAC Tourney, and the NCAA tourney. They may go to see us play Ohio State. But they're not going to be buying season tickets to sit and watch soccer for hours and hours in all kinds of weather. You have to like or love soccer to do that. The jump in season ticket sales, as much as anything else, answers this whole thread.

Either