bengalboardgg

Nice plan.

It's going to take 2-3 years of winning teams, and 7+ wins to get people's attention. The first winning season we will average around 10K. The second season around 15K and then the jump to 23K will happen. Of course, the killer in all of this will be the MAC mid week games that sap out attendance and kill the overall brand of football. Sorry if I appear to be disappointed with the last man standing hire in Larry Williams. A career private school guy coming to a place where everything is micromanaged by a Board of Trustees and a loose cannon President. Someone who knows nothing about Akron, nothing about the marketplace, with only a 1 year President and Captain Bow Tie Larry Burns to guide him around. Not exactly lighting me up with optimism. The entire interview pool for this position save for Van Horne was a massive letdown, including 3 people who were fired from their last jobs, a Miami lifer in Hernandez, leaving only Williams as one who would even take the job. Van Horne should get this AD job and I would not be surprised if after getting passed over he finally leaves. Loyalty at Akron has never been rewarded as in house AD hires never happen. They didn't after Thomas when Wadell was up for it, not after Rhodes when Yurachek wanted it, and not now after Wistricil when Van Horne deserves it. The repeating cycle of the grass is always greener will repeat itself and again we will fail to achieve anything consistent or upward in motion.

Williams "resigned" from Marquette the same way that Wistricil "resigned" from Akron. Having marching orders from the top and being able to have the savvy to massage those orders along with the successful coach and keep the program moving forward is called effective leadership. Regardless of what was said by the good Reverend after the fact, Williams was fired. If he had been able to do his job effectively and not be a bull in the china shop Buzz would still be at Marquette and they would still be a program that was winning at a high level. He did not, his not, they do not. Them be da factz.

Winning and only winning matters. All other so called marketing is really just branding. It's smoke and mirrors to give cover to the lack of winning for the last decade of football. Last season's collapse was disheartening to all of us and with the likely 0-2 start to the season this year it's not like people will be flocking to Infocision for home games. Scarborough talks a big game on many fronts, but this search has been a massive fail. They have interviewed almost 10 people formally and informally so far and people keep falling off. Your idea about people dropping out because they are not going to get the job only works if the announcement is made soon after everyone drops out. It's logical to believe that the target date for the announcement was today or Friday based on the Board of Trustees meeting on Wednesday where this was likely discussed in executive session. No announcement means this is a failed search and that the candidate who the President and select members of the board fizzled out when they came to campus when interviews took place last week. The only candidates that are left are Williams, Tumey and Van Horne. Tumey has worked at UC Davis (FCS) and Dominican (D3) plus in the NFL on the player personnel side. Nothing in his past says success as he just got fired in the spring and has no marketing track record. http://www.ucdavisaggies.com/genrel/terry_tumey_816701.html He has no Ohio ties. Williams has worked as the AD at two private schools in Portland and Marquette and got fired from the last job he had after two years of publicly feuding with the head basketball coach. http://www.jsonline.com/sports/goldeneagles/departure-of-ad-larry-williams-might-be-best-for-marquette-b99164322z1-235958751.html He has never worked with a football program as an AD. He has limited Ohio ties outside of playing for the Browns for two years and knowing a former head Zips football coach in Faust. Read the link above and focus on this section when the reporter writes about the type of leader that Williams was at Marquette while dealing with then head men's basketball coach Buzz Williams - who had been to 3 straight Sweet 16s So, it was easy to see where the Williams-Williams conflict came about. The AD was laying down arbitrary law to a successful coach who had never experienced administrative pressure to up the recruiting standards at a school where academic requirements already make it difficult to attract the bluest of chips. Two very different personalities ignited friction. Weeks would go by without coach and AD speaking. At one point, Buzz Williams wanted to know what kind of basketball program Larry Williams wanted when there was little communication from either side. Did he expect really good students who were good basketball players, or generally average students who could keep Marquette at an elite level on the national scene? Van Horne is died in the wool Akron. He played here, he has dedicated his career here, has worked for Bobinski, Thomas, Rhodes, and Wistricil plus on the campus development side with Laguardia and Dufore. He knows everyone in town and has a pulse on the community. It's too bad that Scarborough has his head so far up his ass that he cannot see that Akron has produced some pretty good people and that Van Horne is the guy for this job. Instead we will get one of these other two jerkies who do not have any wow factor and who have no track record for success that will inspire Zip fans to give the program a new look. I guess it could be worse, Scarface could have moved this gomer over to athletics - Larry Burns, aka, The Joker https://www.uakron.edu/dotAsset/5ec4912a-4efc-4483-b46e-bb243a41e3fb.jpg&random=13726

It would have been interesting to see each person in an open forum, where the public could be a part of the search. Years ago that is how this was handled here and it worked fine. Mike Bobinski went through that process and to this day was the best Athletic Director we have ever had in my book.

I would tend to agree. I nodded off reading his sermon. I would also bet that had he had his audience that his talk would not have been as bold as his writing. Perhaps he would have had a bluetooth speaker playing the steel drum band in the room to pace his talk? Now the world will never know.

Update http://http://collegead.com/3-left-standing-university-akron-athletic-director-search/ Board of Trustees meeting this morning. Expect announcement soon.

Yes, what I was told be a search committee member today.

Williams was a 10th round draft pick by Browns in 1985 - played 5 NFL seasons on the OL for the Browns, Saints and Patriots. Big guy, maybe he can stand up to the overreaching President and Trustees who have dropped the ball on so much this summer. At this point I am starting to question how much of the last few years were really Wistricil messes and how much may have been the result of overly aggressive trustees. Wistricil hired the iCoach, which was toxic, but everyone should get at least one mulligan in the hiring category. One could also ask why Brookhart was allowed to stay as long as he did. AD Mack dropped the ball on that one in my book, as JD should have been canned after the 3rd straight losing season in 2008. Mack never hired a major coach, so to me he failed in not recognizing the failure in front of him. Mack makes the change after 2008 and heading into the new stadium and maybe we never take the dive like we did with the iCoach.

The trustees at Akron are way too involved in day to day weeds. They should stick to broader issues. Too many political frauds are on this panel. No one with any gravitas. A lot of people playing the role of the "King Maker" while propping up their paper President hired last summer.

Scarborough's next move will be to put his athletic department back together. I heard that a five more people left the department today over the current issues. Some voluntary, others were let go.

No real effort was put towards maintaining the program for years, so it was an easy cut. The dollars saved by cutting baseball will pay the cost of attendance payments to the other athletes (football, basketball) , so there is no cash savings, only money shifting from one budget to another. Captain Kangaroo was spot on in the other thread when he said that Scarborough is hurting the search for a new AD. It's a mess that is visible nationwide for all to see.

Larry Williams is the likely choice now. Some links... http://marquettewire.org/3848263/tribune/viewpoints/editorial-speculation-surrounds-abrupt-departure-of-athletic-director/ http://www.jsonline.com/sports/goldeneagles/departure-of-ad-larry-williams-might-be-best-for-marquette-b99164322z1-235958751.html http://www.jsonline.com/sports/goldeneagles/larry-williams-out-as-marquette-ad-b99163465z1-235829441.html http://painttouches.com/2013/12/13/greska-larry-williams-departure-is-marquettes-loss/ http://www.anonymouseagle.com/2013/12/14/5209696/marquette-athletic-director-vice-president-larry-williams-resigns-departs-quits-steps-down

Let's be honest here about revenues, in the MAC there is no big television contract that pays big bucks, far from it. There are also no big bowl game payouts, as back in 2005 Akron lost money on the bowl game as has every MAC team save for Northern Illinois' bowl trips over the past 3 years. The MAC television package with ESPN is a giant trade deal where the MAC plays a lot of mid week games in exchange for bowl slots that no other conference wants. The schools rarely sell their tickets to the bowl games and end up on the hook for travel, hotels, meals, etc... No one in the MAC will ever play in the College Football Playoff, so the only real source of revenue for Akron or any other MAC team is from playing the Oklahoma type games. Even the home and home series with Pitt will not yield what it should as no tickets are being sold for this game other than to Pitt fans who will outnumber Akron fans 3:1 at that game. Akron ticket sales are not going to make some mad jump and when the team starts 0-2 to begin the 2015 season people are not going to jump on board. Akron has only SIX WINNING SEASONS since 1987: which were Faust 1992, Owens 1999, 2000, 2003, Brookhart 2004, 2005. It's been a decade since Akron Football had a winning season. The largest crowds in Akron Football history came when the program played winning football at the 1AA or FCS level. These are all facts along with the reality that Akron spends 8m of a 25m total athletics budget on football, which sells so few tickets on an annual basis (season and single game) that the total gross sales cannot cover the salary of the head football coach. That's just not good business.

The act of dropping baseball is not my issue, it's the timing of the announcement as this decision was likely made many months ago. You do not eliminate 212 jobs on a whim. The announcement coming in mid July seriously injures these young men to the point that the Juniors and Seniors will not be able to find competitive homes. There will be little savings for the 2015-16 fiscal year as all scholarships will be honored and likely the coaches will be paid as well so why not let them play a final season. Why this was not done can only be billed as the Administration looking to make a statement on sharing the cuts around all of campus and not looking at this from a human perspective.