Spin

One more reason I'm glad I didn't major in economics at Akron.

Agreed. This could be its own topic, right alongside the ACC and Spring Football fantasies.

I met several faculty members who are very jealous of the athletics spending, and were not afraid to make that known. Some were staunch tOSU fans (speaking of SPENDING) and it remined me the old saying about who butters your bread.

How could we charge people to go to that middle school playground?

What was the attendance when they played at Canal Park? The only 251 people who knew there was a game that day?

That's a heck of a point. It's obviously not about winning...

I guess that's all college sports are for. That's like considering basketball and football as "revenue sports". There's a L O T of "fans" who have their priorities in the wrong places.

They cut baseball to save money. Not spend it somewhere else.

GJ, Chris went 7 1/3 innings giving up 7 hits and 2 runs, missing a W by 1/3 inning. I didn't get to watch the game (at work). JD Brubaker got his first professional win Thursday night at Lowell, going 5 innings with 0 ER and 5 K's. After a rough couple of starts he got it together against the Spinners. No, they're not named after me.

So the big question is, is elimination of some sports the answer? Or cutting the budgets of all sports and stop pretending to mount a Division 1 effort? Wooster and Baldwin Wallace and CWR and heck Wayne College can have these sports without spending all that money. The popular opinion is we're not going to attract Joe Sportsfan to our games, and/or can't afford the marketing campaign it would require. I would bet 90% of the paying fans would be paying fans if we were D2. So why pay out all those scholarships and expenses? Advertisers who like to advertise in front of the number of fans we have now, would they think the same way? Would a different baseball model work better for cold weather schools? One where you don't travel cross country the whole month of March. One where you don't pretend you're going to go deep in NCAA Superregionals. Maybe a fall season and a spring season, like was proposed for college soccer. And no out-of-state overnight travel... Just throwing out ideas.

Those ramifications COULD have been done silently, where the media wouldn't have had a field day of it. You could slowly and quietly cut jobs, for instance, show that to the State, and avoid any and all of the ramifications. That was my main point. I understand baseball was the easiest target. I brought that up as sort of an apology for going off last night, I needed to vent. But my main points were the impact on enrollment, and on the effects the other sports will see. Whether or not their budgets get cut or eliminated.

^very thought provoking

So you're answering my questions about negative ramifications with "No. There won't be any".

CSU Wrestling was able to fund itself through contributions from the wrestling community. Which has me thinking. If club baseball comes back, are they able to accept contributions from fans? That's something I never thought of when I worked with the club hockey team.

Doesn't this make you proud? http://fox8.com/2015/07/10/university-of-akron-to-cut-baseball-215-positions-due-to-budget-issues/ We're also taking an absolute bath on social media... First and foremost there's the huge deficit being broadcast all over NE Ohio and the internet. Other schools may have a deficit, but Akron is on the news. It doesn't matter whether it was Proenza's fault, Tessel's fault for not raising funds, or Scarborough's fault for panic'ing or not having faith/ability to raise funds. It doesn't matter. This is a HUGE black eye for a university with enrollment problems. What does this say to prospective students and their parents? Especially if they're interested in majoring in Economics? If they dump 200 people, is the grass going to be cut? Is the snow going to be plowed? Is the garbage going to be emptied? Will the computers and networks and wifi work? Are the walls going to be painted? Are the toilets going to work? Will there be enough police? Will class be cancelled every time a faculty member is sick? Then, there's the story about the baseball program. Shut down. Now. It's heartbreaking for the fans. I know I came on a little strong last night, but I'm a baseball lifer, had a lot of fun watching the team and the guys. And needed a place to vent. And this was where other baseball fans hang out. It sucks for us, but that's not the major problem here. First lets look at prospective students again. So baseball was cut, very few 30 years and under care, right? A prospective student might say "What next?" What other programs and organizations and activities are they going to cut? Then there's the other sports programs. That had to send a shock wave through the rest of the department. Who's next? Are we still going to travel for non-conference games tournaments? Are they going to downgrade our programs? Decreased budgets? Decreased number of scholarships? Drop to a lower level? To a prospective student/athlete, this cannot look good at all. I can't imagine recruiting is easy with the given budget and the regional competition, this has to really screw it up. I know Scarborough is trying to show the state that he is making the University fiscally responsible. But is he cutting off his nose despite his face? Enrollment is as important as cutting costs. And there's no way in hell that this news helps enrollment.

Yes. Immediate.

at the expense of Wrestling.

Interesting, there are 55 college baseball programs in Ohio. 12 D1 10 D2 21 D3 5 NAIA 1 NCCAA 6 NJCAA 2 "other" You can watch and play baseball at Lorain County Community College but not here.

If college sports became a business at some point, which programs show a profit? Any of them? I heard before there were about a dozen football programs in the country that break even. I doubt any of them are MAC or even mid-majors. College athletics are not businesses. Nobody in their right mind would open such a money loser. They are an activity for (and partially paid for by) the students. Just like the Rec, the theater, the bowling alley, the pool hall, etc. And they're not just an activity for the athletes but also the students. For myself there was nothing more relaxing than sitting in the spring sun watching baseball between classes. And I was not alone. Those couple hours of sanity might have been what got me through a very difficult program (especially for a guy old enough to be most classmates father). My facility fees paid for the theater (that I never used) and the bowling alley (that I never used) but that was cool. I enjoyed my soccer practice in the fall and ballgames in the spring. They are also a potential marketing tool, well we've been over that. College athletics are a lot of things, but "business" is not one of them.

Yep, this ranks us right up there with Cleveland State.

How much will we have to sacrifice to pay for his rebranding?

Very disappointing, but not surprising. This is what college athletics have become. And this asshat is falling right in. Either earn the school a profit or you're done. What a freaking joke. Guess I'll have to go watch College of Wooster for my college baseball fix. I hope they don't get delusions of grandeur like Scarborough Polytechnic did. Maybe I'll send them donations instead, since this UA alum has ssent that asshat his last cent.

UA has never been accused of mounting a serious marketing campaign. That's always been one of the main reasons cited for our failure in attendance. The problem isn't the athletics dept. doesn't want to do serious advertising, but they have a small marketing budget from the administration. The same administration who will be making decisions on the future of athletics. Marketing needs to be seen as an invesment, not an expense. I find it very hard to believe people would rather watch arena football than college football. Or watch indoor soccer (which Pete Franklyn referred to as "human pinball") than college basketball. But looking at just attendance numbers you would think so. I was there... I go to as many games as I can, and depending on my work schedule have bought season tickets to football. I support club hockey and the baseball program that few people stop to notice as they walk through campus. The hardcore fans are not the problem. You have tpo look past us if you want to see any growth. We're on GoZips rooting through schedules and downloaing them into our calendars, hell sometimes we have them memorized. We get on here and talk about our teams. We're at the games. We can't keep pumping money into athletics!! While you folks put blinders on I am simply stating reality and you don't want to hear it. I firmly believe if people would have shown up to support, we would have won more games at home, we would have better recruits, we wouldn't be in as bad of a financial mess and more than likely we would be further ahead on getting a new basketball arena. Instead we are being embarrassed by articles being written about having the worst attendance in college football. I am more pissed at the previous administration for building the Info and then sitting on their asses. Seriously, I think they watched "Field of Dreams" too many times….."build it and they will come seemed to be their marketing strategy. Now, SS is taking the blame when the previous administration were the ones that did not whack TW and try to stop the bleeding. The classes I took taught me about supply and demand. They taught me about running a business. They taught me about making sound/responsible business decisions. They taught me about ROI. They did teach me about marketing too but part of successful marketing begins with having a product people want. The defeatist attitude lies right in Akron…..if cuts have to be made Joe Akron will have to look no further than the mirror to find someone to blame. That is like the promoter of the Milwaukee IndyCar race holding a race, doing very little advertising, and then blaming the fans for not coming.

A few years ago myself and GP advocated for dropping back down to I-AA so that we could be competitive with our budget, which would increase popularity, which would increase attendance and possibly enrollment. But we were shot down big time. I really don't think those fans who paid to see the Canton Invaders cared that the league was inferior to the MISL. The players were making $1000 a month while the better Force players were making 6 figures. I don't think all the fans who go see the Rubberducks care it's only AA. It's a good time, and the team wins. The legacy of OSU's using athletics as a marketing tool is very evident when one walks through Akron's campus. I myself had thoughts of going to OSU Mansfield instead of UA when I went back, but my wife would have nothing of the 54 mile commutes. That's the allure of being a "Buckeye".

Again, students pay for a LOT of recreational programs that few take part in. If we're going to start hatcheting sports programs to fit your needs, and to save student fees, then lets padlock the bowling alley and the theater. Work out facility? Shut down. Clubs and organizations? Gone. Where do we stop? This whole concept that college athletics somehow suddenly needs to break even is a big part of what's wrong with college athletics. Other schools invest lots of money into their sports programs hoping it will do for them what Ohio State's investment did for tOSU. Whether you agree with that or not is irrelevant when you talk about cutting athletic programs. They were never intended to make money for the school. The fact that some universities use them as marketing tools does not change that fact.