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But, the song OHIO by Neil Young would work if we are playing Kent State. Oh boy, I just went pretty low there....didn't I ?

Certainly one of the best places I've been to as well. But keep something in mind. Rocky Top IS their fight song. A very unique one. But a fight song, nonetheless. It shouldn't be asking much for fans to sing a fight song, but it will never happen here. If we can't even get people to chant A-K....R-O-N, they are never going to sing the entire song. But, I love hearing the players sing it in some of the videos I see.

I actually just watched that Western Michigan video. I get it. They want to create some things, and instruct everyone on what to do. Great. I'd love to find out how it works for them. And it doesn't have to be a modification of someone else's idea. They can be uniquely our own. I actually,enjoy watching other team's traditions, and feel jealous at times. Singing "My Old Kentucky Home" before kickoff in Lexington a few years ago was a memorable moment for me. So was watching the entire crowd do "Jump" at the beginning of the 4th quarter at Wisconsin. We certainly could make more efforts to get these things started here. I remember a few years back when we attempted to get the crowd to shout A-K....R-O-N along with the Cheerleaders near the end of our fight song. A guy came out on the basketball floor and led us through it a couple of times. The Cheerleaders still do it, but few in the crowd participate.

Seeing what our defense has given up over the first 4 games, I think this game comes at a perfect time, and presents the ideal opportunity to start getting this defense some confidence. I hope we take advantage of it, and turn the corner.

I was there. It was indeed getting rather frustrating watching how nearly every offensive possession was somehow squandered by a bad pass. It repeated itself so often that I was ready to take a nap. It was a long game, and a rather small and inactive crowd. I'd say it might be the least exciting Akron Soccer experience I've ever had. I haven't watched enough this year to say if this passing problem had been a constant all season. But, I did note early this year that I thought that this team was struggling to finish when they got the ball close to the goal. That was evident last night again as well.

I agree. Which is why I was pretty surprised to see this below. That line ought to move a lot by the end of the week. I see this as a 3 touchdown margin, at least.

That's the point I am trying to make. Sorry to a few of you others who are laboring over this issue, but this notion that college students today are all working tirelessly and going to class, and have no time for any other activities is BULL. This may sound exaggerated, but at times, I feel like I am literally tripping over the masses of students who are sitting all over that campus playing on their phones. Please note that I don't expect a college student to work enough to pay for school with a minimum wage job. I didn't do that either. But, you also fail to mention that today's students can also borrow 3 times the amount of money that us old folks were able to borrow, and their starting salaries are not 15-20k when they graduate, like me and my fellow classmates 30+ years ago. It's all relative, like I said.

There's things that can be done to make this situation better, for sure. I hear what you're saying in your last paragraph, which is also being echoed by others, as you can see above. HOW to change the culture is the challenge. And, if it can be done, it's going to take some time and patience. But I'm still going to challenge you on this issue of "students don't have time to go to game like they did in years past". Are you indicating above that they might be "too tired" after class? Come on man. That's pretty ridiculous. They aren't too tired to drink until 2am, I'm sure. You can say that the 80s is different than it is now, but much of that is pretty relative. Tuition was much cheaper, but we also worked for $3.65 per hour, and were maxed out at 2k per year on student loans. School group meetings?? You think we didn't have those back then? Absurd to think that there's "100x more things to do today". Seriously, you are reaching to the sky with excuses like that. However, I do think that internet is certainly something that's added to a student's repertoire to be lazy and not walk down the street to a game, which we didn't have back then.

That's the kind of student experience that 24,000 students are missing out on. I had similar ones. I don't get it. Thanks for sharing.

Our home opener was a 6:30 game. It's not a new phenomenon that college students have jobs. I did too. And I can't recall missing many home football or basketball games when I was around in the early 80s. Are all of these Students working both Saturday during the day and Saturday at night? The football games aren't always at the same time. And mysteriously, plenty of them still find a way to walk into the gates to collect their free tee shirts. Maybe at times, there are conflicting schedules. But if "Saturday jobs" is the excuse, why are they also mostly absent from those weekday evening football and basketball games? We're talking about a University of 25,000 students with possibly only a few hundred going to a sporting event that's FREE ? There's no excuse for that. I don't dispute the fact that things can be done to attract more students. But conflicting schedules with their Saturday jobs doesn't account for the 99% of the student population who's not participating. Even if HALF of them have Saturday jobs, there's still 13,000 students who are not participating. It's beyond pathetic.

Excellent point. This was a major problem that happened repeatedly. I mentioned earlier that I HOPE that it was just a strategic error, which can be fixed. If our kicker struggles to kick deep, that's a big deal. ASU's kicker was certainly able to kick through the end zone.

I wish this whole attendance issue was nothing more than "a couple of bad years under RI", and we'll soon see a surge back to "what it used to be". But, that's not the answer. It goes back much further than that. Heck, in 2006 we had just won a MAC Title, and just got a big road win at North Carolina State, and had our first home game in 2006 against perennial Sun Belt power North Texas, and it was an absolutely beautiful day. Anyone want to guess the attendance for that day? What if I told you it was 16k, about the same as it was last Saturday against Appalachian State. . People in Akron don't care about Akron football. We've never done anything significant enough to get their attention. Until that changes, it's a monumental challenge to impact attendance in the way that some of you folks are expecting.

That would equate to about the same "maybe 10,000" that I said earlier. And at least half of those people left early in the 3rd quarter when ASU took a 21 pt. lead.

No, I heard what you said. I know what transpired during the game. I was there. And I think you are wrong to assume that field position would not have mattered. But thanks for your opinion, and for the lecture about my listening skills.

Well, I sure hope our team doesn't believe that field position doesn't matter if the other team has a good offense.

I'm well aware of how the game went. But I'll call you crazy if you think that 10 more yards and having to earn one more 1st down wouldn't have had any impact.

No question. But, you really increase your chances of stopping an opponent if they have to start 75 yards from the end zone, instead of 60-70 yards away. I'm sure plenty of people have data to support this strategy, because everyone who is capable appears to be booting it through the end zone, and eliminating that risk.

If that IS what happened, then we cost ourselves mightily because I can't remember a single kickoff where ASU ended up short of the 25 yard line. It's hard for me to believe that if you have a kicker capable of booting them through the end zone, and you don't choose to utilize that option throughout the entire course of a game? Even when your opponent is returning many of them well beyond the 25 ? I'm not really buying it. I'll be keeping an eye on that.

It seemed that the advantageous side was kicking to the South end. It seemed like the ASU kicker was putting them to the back of the end zone on that side, and we were still only kicking to about the 10 yard line when we had that wind direction. Was that strategic? Or, do we have a kicker who's not able to kick that deep?

I was hoping someone would be talking about this. 6 Tackles (2nd most on the team today) 5 Solo 2 Tackles For Loss 1 Sack Very nice, Jatavis.

If you find it amusing that AKRON fans on an AKRON forum are presenting facts and giving their thoughts relating to a problem with an AKRON player.... Just imagine how amused we are when someone uses an AKRON forum to continually dispute charges against all of the players from one specific competitor.

I'm surprised that nobody has talked about Attendance, unless I missed it. I at least expected the ANNOUNCED attendance to be over 17k, and it wasn't. My guess would be that it certainly didn't even look like 10k in the stands. We had won 7 of our last 8 game, had perfect weather, and that crowd was a major disappointment. Unless NE Ohio college football fans were staying at home to watch the much-anticipated battle between Kent and Alabama But seriously, I hope I never hear "just win more games" or "the weather wasn't good" as a reason why people aren't coming.

Are you telling us that you know something about the case? Do you know that it was "fighting", or an accusation of someone hitting someone, or a false claim of someone hitting someone? If you don't have any information, please wait for the facts to come out. There's plenty of people who believe that this is total BS. All they've done is say that they will arraign him next week, and make him face charges. How do you state definitively that a player should face suspension under those circumstances?

I think the only real thing that upset me about this game is that we gave up so many big gains on running plays on first downs. It upset me because they seemed to run nearly every time, and we still couldn't stop it. This led to 2nd and short, or 3rd and short, all game long. We were playing in these situations repeatedly. It made it really tough to ever get our defense off the field. It's a real shame that we did so much to get back in the game in the 4th Quarter, and took 2 sacks and give up the ball without getting a single first down. Was 4 linemen and 7 guys in coverage supposed to be a surprise with 2 minutes left in the game and a chance to tie? Did we not expect them to do this? Don't we have plays for that situation, like I am sure that any team would have? It just seemed like a situation in which we were woefully unprepared. We were nearly in control of the game with a 14-10 lead, and ASU had the ball with a 3rd and about 10 in their own territory. We didn't make that stop, they got the ball back, scored rather easily, and forced us into an INT, and got the ball and scored again. From that point forward, we scrambled to play catch-up.

You mean, a conference like the old Metro Conference? That name got thrown around alot back in the 80s, and it would have been a good fit. It did contain a lot of Midwest city schools. Even after that league began to disband, and schools left for other arrangements, many of them ended up in some very good situations and have been able to grow their athletic profiles.