taxpayer

What makes one eligible to enter? Cost of Membership?

Inquiring minds need to know how many patrons are in the lounge: Pregame? Halftime? After game?

D.I.G. - I realize your concern, however our radio men would understand the move and mid court on the track or in one of the corners isn't that bad a seat...especially if it's free. Moving them allows some boosters who who would be willing to pay to sit there and possibly some other boosters who would purchase seats in floor rows 2,3 and 4 and if there isn't an ample supply of paying boosters having some boisterous students down on the floor is better than the current arrangement. Hopefully someone can figure out how to get seats into the floor corners matching the elevation of the lower bowl seats and someone at UA can figure out how to pay for that improvement. I'm thrilled to hear ALL lower bowl seats are sold out, I have a hard time believing it but I like hearing it. I suggest that when some boosters are not going to use their seats they would voluntarily turn them back into the ticket office and they could be sold and utilized. Good seats being empty is demoralizing even if they're paid for. Let's get creative and ask ticketholders to simply email the ticket office the day of the game stating they can not attend. Print temp tickets and get them down to the window where Joe Akron could buy them.

I guess UA acts like I do. List improvements by priorioty and then do the ones you've got cash for. In this case it's a good move since so many of us wandered around the lobby in the dark and got lost and never made it to our seats. I suggest the next improvements - move band back to opponents end move media tables up to "track" level and replace with "floor" seating Build portable risers allowing two or three elevated rows of additional floor seats. They can be rolled out of the way after each game. Sell as many floor seat season tickets as possible. Unsold seats go to students on first come first served basis. Consolidate season ticket holders, UA admin seating and player/coaches family into one/two sections below the track. Clear sections behind visitor bench and designate it as student seating, again first come first served. If season tickets, Admin/faculty & family seating doesn't fill the lower bowl, advertise for one month that the balance of seats are still available for 30 days and if not sold, they will go into the student seating pool. Once the above is implemented and the Zips continue to win, season ticket sales should increase as the most desirable seats won't be available on a game by game basis. Nest, begin replacement of the bleachers and track. Since funds aren't available, extend an open invitation (think contest) to all architectural firms to develop a new interior design concept for the JAR; making sure that a "concept" must cost under say $5,000,000 and could be built either in stages or from April to October. Your thoughts?

Can anyone who attended give us a report on how the fundraiser went?

I still contend that a couple defensive players are imperative to the Zips continuing the 20 win and MAC Finalist traditions. Yes, all players mentioned are good athletic and talented; they wouldn't be here if they weren't. Defensive stops and unselfish play will be the challenges this year. Tree and Q will be this group's leaders and they have to set the standard on both accounts.

The key to the season isn't who is the best player, it's who has the best team. Last year's Zips team had players making individual sacrifices for the success of the team. The result, long winning streak and regular season and conference championship. This year has the physical talent to repeat both, the test will be do they have individuals who will sacrifice personal results to play as hard defensively as they do offensively; just as important will they share the ball. If the Zips excel at both of these skills/attributes they will be champs again. As far as the kid from Buffalo, he is a nice player. He can have the POY, we want team awards and championships.

Tuesday Nov 12th at midnight west coast time and 3am east coast time. The Zips better be getting big time cash for this. I hope the Zips are planning on spending the weekend in Cali preparing because we typically practice in the morning during the season so the player's internal clocks will be totally messed up. Trying to play a good opponent after flying across the country at 3am (our time) is just asking for trouble. The players are apt to be zombies

Why can't everyone simply be thankful that LeBron stops by, is nice to everyone, helps the Zips players with not only his comments, but his attitude and work ethic? I've never seen a people with such negative attitudes; Lebron is an all time basketball great; how much financial donations he makes is his business. He owes the U of Akron Zip! Quite frankly, with all the small minded, negative attitudes that seem to populate the area I'm amazed he comes back to get exposed to it. KD and his staff are the Reason the Zips are the flagship of the MAC in mens basketball. LeBron is just a wonderful positive influence simply by example. Workaholic who is unselfish on the court, even on the court, in the JAR with the Zips players. Please try and enjoy it for what it is..... If you want to complain, complain about attendance & wood bleachers in the C- facility lovingly called the JAR.

If Deji can be a lock down defender and rebound well he stays and plays that role. We have shooters, we need some tough defense at the 2/3 position.

Creative and worth a try. I still like the idea of teaming up with Cant or CSU versus a quality opponent and make it a double header. I'll leave it to the posters who are closer to the program than I about what the financial aspect would be but as far as improving the OCC and playing "big boys" consistently will assist in preparing our players for the NCAA tournament and that kind of arena, environment and opponent.

Here's some things I think I think: Akron in general doesn't care about Zips basketball. Akron students, in general, don't care about Zips basketball. No interest = no attendance The JAR could be a good venue if actions were taken to improve it. The staff has below average offices , the players have above average locker room & lounge. Weight room is average, training room is nice if it was 1920. The floor is average and the practice gym is non existent. So from a recruit's perspective it's way down the list even in the MAC. From a paying customer's perspective: it's bad. The good: Parking is free. Where else can you go to a game and park free? Some of you are complaining that the walk is too far; you're the same people who complains when free beer is available that the cups are too small. The Zips are good; not Duke, but good. Especially in the MAC. It's not the Zips fault that there are too few competitors for the MAC Championship. Nothing wrong with winning it every year. Keep the NCAA talk to another topic for now. The JAR is a bandbox, when full it's an advantage. The roof doesn't leak. That's it for the good. I won't attempt to list the bad, you know it and it is an impossibly long list. The JAR can be improved and used for another 20 years or however long funding takes for a new facility. Cameron Hall is famous not for it's beauty but for what occurs on the court. Same for Rupp Arena & Butler's facility. IMO the JAR currently has too much capacity. Yep, you read that right. When 2000 of 24000 students show up for a game & everyone is thrilled.......... pathetic. There is an apathy in the Akron community towards the Zips. I'm too new to this subject to voice an opinion but that's what I see. A new facility would cause a short term bump in attendance but not worth the cost as it stands today. Putting together a business plan for this subject would be impossible currently to justify a new facility. Rather, improve the JAR, make it attractive to the paying customer & students and develop a ten year plan to build the coveted hoops home. Remove all bleachers. Installing chair back seats, Capacity will drop. Adding restrooms, concession stands and a "club" (revenue generation) on the track level would drop it further. I'd guess 4800-5000 as a target number. The creation of an environment where a shortage of product is desirable. Lowering capacity, improving the JAR, and continued winning will build some demand for seating. With UA's budget, economic projections and season ticket sales it's the only realistic path to a better facility unless Santa shows up to pay for a new facility. UA needs to move NOW on improvements; there aren't any improvements being made this off season and KD isn't getting any younger. This is a time of opportunity not only for the team but for the university; why stand still?

AA needs professional help. If you are close to AA, please direct him to a rehab center. He obviously needs it. For the legal counselors, can the court mandate a 30 to 60 day stay in such a facility?

LOZ, I wasn't blaming anyone; simply making an observation. I agree the Zips need more fans in the stands and that the little steps taken last year sending out a couple players to talk to the students was a good idea but even with a very long winning streak and a great record, the Zips had trouble filling the JAR. Quite frankly, with enrollment over 20,000 and still having a 6,000 seat arena not filled to capacity is hard to believe. As was the announcement at one game that having 1800 - 2000 students at a game was the largest student attendance ever! Can't decide if that's funny or pathetic. The game day experience is s l o w l y getting better but the young man who came up with the LBJ/KD bobblehead and the whole black Z jersey with twitter links was new, creative and effective. Such thinking should be directed at the JAR gameday fan experience. To expect different results from the same old efforts has been defined as insanity.

Move the baseball team to Canal Park = great facility for Zips baseball = great recruiting venue not mention a great facility. That opens up ground for a new facility to be built while the Zips continue to play in the JAR. Now it's a matter of corporate sponsorship and TB's team to be successful so some financial pressure can be relieved within the athletic department. Maybe KD will have to agree to some buy games from the big boys in college hoops to start raising some cash within the program itself.

The Zips do not have much of a name outside of our region. Remember, the last time anyone saw us or heard of us it was the unmerciful shellacking VCU put on us. No one outside of Akron cares why we suffered such a beating so the lack of name recognition will continue until the Zips take down some big named teams. Last year was a very good step considering the winning streak and the regular season's final. I'll continue to marvel at the team's accomplishment at the MAC tourney and keep that experience in my mind as I still attempt to forget Abreu's actions and the food poisoning disaster before VCU.

Congratulations to our competitors in Cant! A contract is a contract; words have meanings. I do not see why this action and decision is bad for Ohio public universities and Cant in particular. Coaches are no different than anyone else in a contractual relationship. I'm not an attorney nor did I stay at a Holiday Inn last night. However, I can read. If you don't like the terms of a contract, either negotiate different wording/conditions or don't sign it. The NCAA lets the coaches move without penalty. Why not the players? Both have signed contracts, one group of people get to ignore contractual language and the other group gets penalized severely. I'm really glad to see at least one court has not caved in to special interests. Again, congratulations to Can't State for taking action and to the Ohio court system for simply enforcing contractual language. I don't care if Geno or a big booster of his new university pays this bill; should his new employer pay, I pray the taxpayers go after that decision maker(s) legally as well.

No surprise in the ESPN preview. Boise State and ISU are the fav's on paper in the middle of summer. The Zips have alot of work to do defensively to reach the level they were playing at during last season and especially in the MAC tournament. Our offense is average at best; IMO the Zips win because of defense not offense. We wear most of our opponents down and they have trouble scoring and defending the last 10 minutes in games. We don't wow anyone on the offensive end and that's a big problem. It is also the reason we stumble in the NCAA tournament. Better teams have solid defense and have above average offensive capabilities. We don't. I'd love to see our offense run plays that match the players on the floor strenghts as opposed to dribble, dribble, dribble, pass - shot. We've had some great shooters recently but rarely ran them of one screen let alone two or three. In the MAC we have had the better athletes in most games so we won most games. I believe we will continue to be a very good defensive team due to KD's focus at that end. IF the Zips are going to take the next step up the food chain the offense needs overhauled. To me, the Zips will be the 3rd best team in this tournament (as of July 2013). Carmelo & Q will be very good defenders, Tree will be above average. That makes the 3 & 5 the key. I expect Nyles to play good defense or KD will make his life tough unless he is lights out on the offensive end. Pat & one of the freshman bigs need to be dependable defenders and very good rebounders. Time will tell.

I doubt ISU is looking to duck us; they've reloaded their guard positions with transfers plus some big recruits at that position. We should do well at the 4 matchup as I'm not sure they have someone to control tree and I think they are unproven at the 5 as we are. Our guards will have their hands full defending their opponents, if we can get tough defensive mind sets from our guys we will frustrate them. If not, could be a track meet. We need better d at the pg position than what we got last year. Melo played excellent d and hope that's true of our new pg as well.

Congratulations to Coach Kest - hope she has continued success and gets a MAC championship or two. Out of curiosity, what is her ballpark compensation? I saw that the men's program was 3rd in money spent behind OU and Western Michigan if I recall correctly. I'll try to find those stats and post them.

Article didn't mention whether the student can purchase their IPad at graduation for a discounted cost. This could put some money back into this great program and address the privacy issues as well. Good idea and truly an asset to the students and could save $ for the athletic budget as far as the cost of books. Are all or most of the mandatory class text books available as an ebook?

The NCAA does not allow AAU tournaments nor camps like Mr. Jame's to be held on a D1 campus; they felt it gave host universities a recruiting edge. From everything I've read this relocation was not Mr. Jame's doing. Still can't believe all of you who continue to put the guy down for being manipulated by a TV network & the signer of his biggest endorsement check. He is as unselfish a superstar as I've ever seen. The move was to give himself a chance to win. How many years did Cleveland fail to do so? Time to get over it and enjoy watching an all time great. BTW, what does he owe UA? Many of you want the guy to support an institution he never attended nor played for. Why? Believe me when I say I hope he'd like to contribute to a new basketball arena so KD could recruit even better but to be honest, why should he?

DATE OPP RESULT ATT YDS AVG LNG TD REC YDS AVG LNG TD 9/1 Youngstown State L 31-17 No statistics available. 9/6 @Cincinnati L 34-10 8 31 3.9 12 0 0 0 0.0 0 0 9/15 Virginia Tech W 35-17 23 157 6.8 29 0 2 15 7.5 10 0 9/22 Gardner-Webb W 55-10 13 41 3.2 13 1 0 0 0.0 0 0 10/5 @Syracuse L 14-13 1 2 2.0 2 0 0 0 0.0 0 0 10/13 Louisville L 45-35 18 96 5.3 19 1 5 34 6.8 15 0 10/20 @Buffalo W 20-6 12 35 2.9 16 1 1 41 41.0 41 0 10/27 Temple W 47-17 12 79 6.6 33 1 0 0 0.0 0 0 11/3 @Notre Dame L 29-26 (3OT) 1 2 2.0 2 0 0 0 0.0 0 0 11/9 @Connecticut L 24-17 6 23 3.8 11 0 0 0 0.0 0 0 11/24 Rutgers W 27-6 11 43 3.9 21 0 1 13 13.0 13 0 12/1 @South Florida W 27-3 11 53 4.8 17 0 0 0 0.0 0 0 BBVA COMPASS BOWL 1/5 @Ole Miss L 38-17 25 79 3.2 14 0 0 0 0.0 0 0 Youngstown State game - suspended for breaking team rules.

Great high school back; his days at Pitt were average. Don't follow Pitt close enough to say he didn't produce because of their OL deficiencies or his best days were behind him. TB needs to do his homework before dialing direct, this young man has some baggage to be inspected before opening the door to him. I"m not saying he is a bad apple but the last six months have been a circus around RS & Pitt.

To you RPI guru's; would it help us to entice Duquesne (A10) into a home & home series? Short travel, nice conference.