GP1

What is making college basketball more competitive is the one and done rule. Most schools cannot keep up if they get too many of these players. Kentucky seems to with the exception of this year. I would also argue that if it wasn't for the volume of games on in the first two rounds of the ncaa tournament, those games would mostly be a complete bore. Most end up blowouts and the only thing that keeps me tuned in is I can turn to another game.

It sure is. However, I have rediscovered this year how much I really like watching college football and it has nothing to do with some silly playoff the money grubbers who run college football designed. The BYU vs. CCU game was the best of the season and neither team is in the "playoffs". I can't remember the last time I watched at least 50% of a Clemson, Alabama or OSU game. They simply are not entertaining because they ultimately end up being blow outs. If I had to make a list of positives and negatives for buying Wake Forest tickets, a negative would be having to watch Clemson humiliate them every other year in Winston-Salem. The game is almost always terrible. If the Athletic Directors who run college football were National Park Rangers, their solution to a small and controllable forest fire would be to throw gasoline on it. I am sure that at some point, they will come to the conclusion the only solution to the boring system they created is to expand it. It will do nothing to change the competitive advantage those 5-6 teams at the top have in terms of recruiting. The rich will get richer and the rest of us will become more indifferent and stop watching.

This lady saved me a lot of typing. Article

I would like to congratulate those of you who were able to watch more than 2 hours of the season. They averaged 16 points per game. Not exactly entertainment. As a reward, espn will be sending you a set of Chris Berman salt and pepper shakers from their 1998 collectors series.

I am/was a huge Biggs fan. Was he the most talented RB? Not by a long shot. He knew one important thing. It takes zero talent to work hard. Through hard work, he transformed a team that was destined for a miserable season and turned them into winners. I haven't seen the Zips play a single play this year, but if this RB is working as hard as advised and is transforming the culture of the team, we may have someone far better than Biggs.

I would add that Coach Arth needs a little work on his cliches.

I have one better. The taxpayers of Ohio. Back out ESPN and P5 games and it's around two million per school. Six mac schools in ohio and that's 12 million dollars. Around one dollar per ohio citizen.

The NCAA is a membership organization and the members did not want it.

I agree with everything you said. In addition, schools like ours can do even better. We can make college athletics something that binds students, alumni, fans and the greater community to the school.

Thanks for posting this Sergeant Zip. I would have never found the article without your post. I had no idea the NCAA was taking advice from ZipsNation.org....but whatever it takes. For once, the NCAA may be on the verge of something that makes complete sense. I would hope that those of us who are G5 fans wouldn't look at this as a negative. The reality of the current situation is too great to pretend that we can just continue on as is with the dream of one day having all of the resources of the P5 conferences. That ship has sailed. We can be great in our own way. Let's do that. The first step on the journey for the NCAA should be firing Mark Emmert. He is a paper pushing fool stuck in an era long past. BTW, does anyone know where I can send a bill for my advice to the NCAA?

Sounds like a fun team to play for.

In addition, there is an endless stream of negative news coming out of the administration creating uncertainty about the University. Further, the negative publicity generated by the faculty senate as it relates to the status of the athletic department is not helpful. I don't know much about Arth and I'm pretty indifferent (sort of my feelings about the football program in general at this point). However, he has a ton of headwinds working against him. Arth has taken a job in one of the most toxic environments in FBS. Given all of that, they are better this year than last year. Not enough to win games, and winning is how careers are measured in college athletics.

So, I had a cobb salad at Sam Sneed's restaurant here in Orlando before the game. What did everyone else have? This has to be better than discussing the game.

Clickbait like this is always interesting. I spent most of my adult life traveling for work and I can tell you Akron is better than half of the cities ahead of them....probably more. I moved away 14 years ago after living there almost 20 years after high school. Anyone who lives in northeast Ohio and tells you they don't like it because it is boring is a boring person. It's a great place to live and I hope the people who live there know that.

Some day archeologists are going to dig up land fills around the United States and be astonished at the number of small dolls with bobbling heads on them.

ESPN computer servers do not get overwhelmed with people tuning in to watch.

I'm guessing it is 9:22 PM PST. The time slot ESPN has allocated to MAC games.

I want you to know that if you ever lose your job, with ideas like this, you are MAC Athletic Director material. I'd say MAC Commissioner, but you left out the game being played at 8 AM eastern on Christmas morning in Fairbanks, Alaska. Keep working, you have a lot of potential.

Will the current Akron president hold a press conference tomorrow stating how much further in debt this decision will put the university?

For the love of God mac schools, please take some time to decide what you want to be. The league can be much more than this, but you actually have to try.

This decision was very calculated. Calculated in the way that the conference leadership looked at all of the decisions other conferences made this year and supplied an answer to a very basic question, "How stupid can we make ourselves look?".

Just when you think it can't get any worse....

Thanks for the link ZZZips. I'm going to ask a favor out of one of you, but many may have the qualifications to do the task. The first one to meet the qualifications gets to do me the favor since I live so far away. Your only compensation will be a feeling of 100% satisfaction. If you have access to the following items, meet the physical requirements and know the location, please raise your hand. 1. A five gallon bucket 2. Three gallons of water 3. Two pounds of crushed ice 4. You know where Buchtel Hall is 5. You have the means to get to campus and can walk to Buchtel Hall 6. You are capable of integrating the crushed ice into the water and letting it almost completely melt before completing the task 7. You have the physical strength to lift the bucket of water over your head First one to volunteer wins.

Nice post. I'll focus on this last sentence. I don't know if I would use a word referencing lack of inspiration. I would probably use the word "misguided". The leadership at the University (my guess is at almost every G5 school right now) looking in the same place for a different solution. Misguided means, among many things, sending someone along a path that is not going to get them where they need to be. The way college athletics works in 2020 dictates that UofA is spending in the range of normalcy for similar athletic departments. In reality, the well is pretty dry at this point. Chiseling out an extra million dollars is not going to be easy. By guiding the committee in this direction, the leadership of the University is setting them up for failure.

Article UofA receives a significant amount of state funding. "directly" is an interesting word. I guess the money does go directly there from student fees, but in reality, without state funding, there is no UofA and no athletic department. The same probably goes for the rest of the Ohio MAC schools. Taxpayers should support public universities. I also believe taxpayers should pay the bill for college athletics as part of public universities, within reason. I also think it would be nice if for their tax dollars, taxpayers could go see what they are paying for within reason. There are very few places in Ohio that are not within 2 hours of a MAC school. Wouldn't it be nice if a taxpayer woke up on a Saturday, looked at his wife and discussed what to do that day, looked in the news and saw (insert MAC school) WBB was playing and told his wife, "Let's take those two tickets from our taxes and buy two more GA tickets and take the girls to a game this afternoon. They like playing basketball.". And then to top it all off, when they got to the game, there were clean parking lots, clean bathrooms, clean seats, maybe some decent food/drinks and an entertaining game that didn't start at the girls bedtimes. I think a family of four would be pretty happy with this minimal effort on the part of the school they went to see. The might even go again. They might even see the benefits of their tax dollars. I do not know how coaches get their retirement. Saban is set to get a huge one at Alabama. Not every coach is breaking the bank. Assistants at places like Akron do OK, but they aren't breaking the bank. I have no problem with a couple of people making a lot off of the Ohio system if others can take advantage of it as well. In reality, there are only a handful taking advantage of that. Solich, Tressel and Fickel are the three that come to mind that may or will have 20 years in. Maybe Faust, but I'm not sure he had 20 total years at UofA or how his employment was structured after coaching.