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Someone who understands our plight, and the history, would never do this. This has always been one of the problems I have with bringing in people from other places around the country to do these jobs.

Now that I've calmed down...slightly.... I have to wonder what they thought this could possibly accomplish? Other than a few "Facebook likes" from followers? Did they think that Akron would possible get more notoriety for attaching themselves to a post about friggin OSWho? This hurts us in every conceivable way!!!! A huge school, two hours down the road would get a huge leap in athlete recruiting, student recruiting, press attention, and further their influence over potential "bandwagon" fans......the very same people who we struggle to keep their loyalty with Akron after going to school at Akron. And maybe most significantly, if you think we have problems attracting donor dollars for athletics from our community now, try to convince sports fans.....even right here in our backyard..... that we are the more worthwhile investment, when many of them already surely donate to Ohio State, and would be more inclined to do so when they can claim that they have the best football team in the country for the next year? Senseless.

I'm beyond stunned. What are the chances that the Cincinnati athletic department did the same thing? Or, if Dayton's basketball team would send that out if the Suckeyes ever made it to the basketball finals? I'm sure they've sent something similar to us every time we've passed them up on the way to the soccer finals...right? If you want to be the little peon of Ohio college athletics, all you have to do is keep acting like one. Brilliant.

How about the incredibly brilliant and creative "Tickets On Sale Now"

Looks like the OU game exceeded capacity also. It's time for another big winning streak.

Bingo. It was the longest winning steak in the country at the time. Those are the kinds of SIGNIFICANT things that will get people's attention. I always harp on this because I think many people are under the false notion that "just winning games" against the normal MAC teams is having any measurable impact on fans outside the normal circle. Does anyone remember what some of those student record crowds were? Numbers wise? Also, remember something. Akron needs MONEY. I would be surprised if the student allotment of passes would ever be increased at any time where there was a projection that tickets could be sold to get us to capacity for any given game.

I'd give up some of MY seats if we could get 1,000 students to a game!!

We're going to need about 5 or 6 of those this year.

To me, here's the most interesting fact about MAC players in the NFL. Through many, many of the downright horrible years on Ken+ State football in the 90's and 2000's, who do you think had the most MAC players in the NFL? Yes, Ken+ State. That says a lot about the caliber of the rest of their players. I sure wish seeing MAC players in the NFL, starters, etc., ....even in relative comparison to other conferences.....meant that the MAC should be better. It doesn't. I think that tells us (along with the Ken+ example above) that the depth of your talent means far more than having a few standout players.

Great point. From a marketing perspective, it's the old "less supply = more demand". We might even have scalpers for big games!! I've made the point many times that shutting out a few people for a couple of games per year is a very, very small price to pay for improvements for the fans that will be there for multiple games every year. Having a packed house that's closer to the floor is a much better atmosphere too. The only downside is that ticket prices will certainly increase. But, that means that the U will be able to make up the difference in the lost revenue for those couple of games where more total fans would have been in attendance.

Let me add a little more to what I said above. It's time to rally the fans!! Here's the attendance for the last 9 games of last season..... Miami - 3000 Toledo - 4500 (I wish we had this Saturday game on our schedule again this year) BSU - 3200 EMU - 3000 NIU - 3600 BG - 4000 Canada - 3200 OU - 4900 (will this even be a big game anymore?) Ken+ - 5400 (this will not be a Saturday season finale game, like it was last year..unfortunately) AVERAGE = 3,800 See my post above. We'll need to average about 4,400 over the last 9 games this year to match last year's per game average. So, we'll need about 600 more per game than we achieved during the same stretch last year, and the schedule does not look as favorable. Lets Go Akron. If we want to elevate our program, this is the time to respond!!

Dave, I won't do all of the math, but I do have enough of a statistical background to know that if we are averaging something like 2,800 (a guess) right now through half of our home games, then we'd need to AVERAGE 4,400 per game the rest of the way to match the 3,600 from a year ago. It seems we'll fall far short of that number. And as I stated, trending downwards is not a good position for us to be in right now with everything that we want to accomplish concerning renovations and/or a new complex. I think this is a call-out to our fans. If any of you were here in 1985, we had a big campaign to "Fill The Bowl", which was instrumental in helping us reach the 17k average needed to take us to D-1A in Football. With the hopes and dreams of the future of our basketball program on the line right now also, I think it's time for people to respond.

I actually tried to hide my eyes when Dave just pointed out that we averaged 3,600 per game last year. We just got 2,700 for our conference opener, in a revenge game, against the defending champs, with a soccer reunion. We did about the same for Marshall and Middle Tennessee, who would represent the other two opponents of any relevance to the fans. I guess we have to be fortunate that Bluffton brought some fans, or I don't think we've even exceeded 3,000 for any single game, which likely makes us have to pull in some HUGE crowds for the high profiles games to even get within maybe 500 or so of last year's average. It sucks, especially when we want to make seating capacity an issue as we discuss renovations and a possible new arena in the future. I don't look at those numbers very often, but someone indicated that we peaked in attendance about 2-3 years ago. This is not the time to be trending downward.

Here we go again. How about college sports fans, and more importantly Akron fans, who are tired of the cheating and corruption, tired of competing against it, and who simply point out his long, well-documented history?

By rule, it's a technical. But what really got my interest is that someone of Nyles' demeanor did this. That tells me there was a lot of frustration with the way the game was being called. French even mentioned afterwards that he was likely tired of getting hand-checked and bumped the entire game without a call. I will agree with those who feel that the officiating seemed one sided for similar type of play, but that it did not cost us this game.

Yes, as I said before this game, this isn't likely to cure itself overnight. The road vs. home games may also produce big swings in our performance. We'll see. But also, I am pretty certain that Toledo is just a much, much better team than WMU. In addition, a Wittington-less Broncos team, with a bunch of other un-athletic guys, is just a much better matchup for us than Toledo.

It was certainly nice to see Jake hit a couple of 3's. We'll need more of that.

I know this game wasn't close, but it's still hard to beat a team shooting 9 of 11 from 3-point range. The Bad News: Many of them were wide open shots. The Good News: That's likely the only time this year that someone will shoot 9 of 11 from 3-point range.

This speaks volumes about the current state of college athletics.

Lets narrow this down.... 4 Conference games should absolutely be WINS. What happens from there is anyone's guess. How many games last year had a predictable outcome? Either good or bad?

I can't speak for Keith. I don't think you can either. Every team prefers to score in the paint, if they can. But, the philosophy of playing through the post is to create open looks.

It wasn't a prediction. It was my opinion about the line. But since you brought it up, I think it would be a big mistake to base anything on what we saw at the JAR on Tuesday. I wish I could "predict" that we suddenly stopped playing inconsistently, and have suddenly started playing at a high level every night. Those transformations don't happen overnight. Toledo has the same team that dominated us at home last year. This will take a Herculean effort to get this one. But then again, it is MAC basketball, right?

Best team in the MAC (at least on paper) playing at home? I'm surprised it's not more.

I like the idea that kids from this area should get a chance to come back here an play. We could probably find dozens of higher profile teams in the country who have a player from somewhere near here I wonder if it's true that some of these games mentioned above were scheduled for that purpose. Actually, I think it's pretty fair to examine the games that Cleveland State has gotten at their place over the years. Not the games at the Q, but at the Convo. I guess that's about the best barometer we can get to have an idea of who we might be able to draw with a new arena.

True.