GP1

Akron is in a great spot to be aggressive, or not. The website shows Ford as the Head Coach. Akron is the gold standard for MAC basketball and I'm not sure a career assistant is the right person.

In all seriousness, I agree. Fans are too quick to panic when there is turnover. Honestly, I've been guilty of it in the past. Again, my experience following a well run athletic department is Wake Forest. When I saw Dave Clawson getting hired after Grobe around 10 years ago, I thought they were doomed because I simply didn't know who he was or much about him. As it turned out, he was the right guy, at the right place, at the right time. When they hired Jake Dickert I thought they were screwed for the same reasons and he won 9 games in his first season and were better than the last two years of Clawson. He was the right guy at the right place at the right time. Wake finds football coaches who are right for Wake Forest. Akron has successfully found two consecutive successful coaches in a row who were the right guys for Akron at the right time. At some point, we have to admit that the culture around Akron basketball is a good one. Culture matters and leads to good decisions. In recent years, Akron has through the TP and NIL brought in high quality players and people. Akron isn't desperate and doesn't need to abandon this cultural foundation. The question isn't about who is out there to hire. The question revolves around who is out there and who is a good fit for Akron. There are many good coaches. We need to find the best one for Akron.

I don't think a young Gerry Faust is the answer.

Maybe it's not just about the job.

Akron is being left on solid footing. You may need to plan better.

They could have asked to be given the last look, JG shows them the offer and they told they couldn't do it. Decision made.

I'm hoping there were enough conversations behind the scenes so that the AD was not caught off guard and already has formulated some thought about where he will go next.

Is Jim Grobe available?

Excellent points. Americans seem to have lost the appreciation of watching people compete for the sake of competition. The word "competition" throughout history has had nothing to do with winning or losing. When one competes at any level, that means to bring out the best in yourself AND the person who is your opponent. The worst thing to do is to win a game against someone who isn't trying hard. The best thing to do is to win against someone who has given it their all for the entire game and you also had to give it your all to win. It's hard to imagine how great UConn players must have felt after beating a Duke team that played at an extremely high level. Like the attendance issue, there are many variables as to why this is. In some ways, I am guilty of this. I don't like going to high school sporting events. I don't even like going to college football and basketball games below the G5 level. In fact, I won't go. I have not always been like this. Over time, I think my tastes have been "refined" for lack of a better term. What may have solidified this for me was having Wake Forest football tickets for 18 years. It is high level college football in person very close to the field because their stadium is so small. Guys on both teams will play in the NFL and the fan experience is still good, but not as good as it used to be (see all of my comments on games lasting entirely too long).

The purposeful devaluation of college basketballs regular season by those who run it. Make everything about March Madness and nobody pays attention until March Madness. There are many other problems, but I think that's a big one.

I love discussions about attendance. It lets me watch fan misjudge all of the variables that go into attendance. Moreover, it allows fans to believe the fiction (lies) athletic departments publish about their attendance. Compounding all of that, it allows fans to apply those misjudgements and lies into motivations for a coach's decision making.

And the food.

Someone once told me that a manager must be able to manage two things: safety and turnover. If this all goes down, we'll find out how good the ad really is.

It's partly about attendance. It's mostly about other things. Some say MACtion is a great brand. It's a catch phrase. The MAC is a conference and a brand. A brand is how others see you and you have to do things to make yourself more attractive. Playing on weeknights in empty stadiums is horrible for the MAC; therefore, it is horrible for the brand. I'm sorry if there are some athletic directors out there who may shy away from MAC schools because they gave up weeknight games. Maybe they can find other universities to run into the ground. Either way, they need to go away.

He wouldn't find himself in a better position to win an NCAA game. Charleston is one of the few places he should leave for. At his age and close to being or is an empty nester, living somewhere like Mt. Pleasant could be awesome. I'm in Charleston at least once a month. With the kind of money he probably has, the lifestyle could be great.