GP1

Not with Jim Dennison as AD.

If my aunt had balls, she would be my uncle. The rest is unknown.

Spare me the stats game. He was the Lee Owens of the OVC. A nice guy, but not someone to get you over the top. At least Owens has great players at Marshall and Miami as an excuses. In reality, Dennison was not the guy to take the program forward and Huggins wasn't going to be around Akron much longer. The effects of Huggy's influence would be long gone. He was a terrible athletic director. He set the program back years.

The legend of Jim Dennison is different than the reality. He was barely over .500 in I-AA. The real question is.... Where would we be if when they brought in Faust, they didn't keep Dennison around as an AD?

Stupid people need a place to go to school too.

Can the opinion writers of NE Ohio do anything else to harm the school? My goodness are these people the enemy. What do petty morons like Pluto, etc. think their endless articles about cutting sports do to recruiting, enrollment, etc. It's a conveyor belt of stupidity in NE Ohio opinion writers.

That doesn't mean it always has to be like that.

On the high end, there are only about 10-12 schools capable of winning the national championship. Everyone else is just playing games for their alumni, community and fans. At P5 schools, they do a good job of putting on those games for the fans, or I should say that those fans are in a position to enjoy a nice day at a game regardless of the outcome of the game. Let's crawl first. How do we accept our reality and move forward in a way that gives the best experience possible to our fans, students, alumni and communities? Crawl-Walk-Run

I respectfully disagree. I think the University and many universities like ours care very much about their athletic programs. So many of them are making such bad decisions around their athletic programs it just looks like they don't care and historically don't care, but they do care. I remember a time not that long ago when lot of students went to games. We haven't given them many good reasons to go to games in recent years. They are very uncomfortable. They just need to follow the first rule of getting out of a hole...stop digging.

Ludwig von Mises 3 Elements of Change. In order for someone to make a change, three elements are required. The second cannot take place without getting past the first and so on. First, the person is uncomfortable with the current state. If you think the current state of G5 sports is good, you don't go to question 2. Second, there is a vision of a better state. I don't like the current state of G5 sports and I would like one where we compete well against one another while giving communities, fans and alumni something enjoyable. Third, a belief that the vision of a better state is achievable. This is the hard one. I believe it is achievable but I don't know how to get there. I do believe things have gotten so bad compared to the P5 conferences it is going to take a lot of really smart people to figure out. See my previous comments in this topic on this subject. We are so far past deciding how much to charge for a ticket is isn't even funny. I am not sure the first questions they should ask are even about money. We and schools like ours have a lot to offer fans, alumni and communities. I don't believe it is what the P5 conferences offer but that's not necessarily a bad thing either. We just need to put our best foot forward, whatever that may be. If we go about this right, our better days are in front of us. Now is the time for optimism, not fear (unless UofA is planning another unilateral decision).

It's why schools and conferences like ours need to collectively and look at the options. One school cannot do it alone. I don't even like to look at them as cuts. As much as I hate it, I'm about to use a corporate Americaism....."right sizing". If everyone agreed to right size together, it is easier to take to the public. A school can claim to make decisions for the "greater good" or whatever sounds good at the time.

Interesting. The PR hit is not ideal for Welty or UofA, but things like this happen on state construction projects all of the time. It's just happening to us this time and why construction lawyer exist. $1 million is a lot to ask for. I'm sure they will settle out of court for a number lower than $1 million and the problems will get fixed.

Over a 10 year period, Mother Nature will be more harsh on any NE Ohio stadium's concrete than if there were weekly sold out crowds. Most new construction roofs are not expected to last very long because of the wear and tear during construction so The Big Dialer may be in need of a roof replacement in the next 4-5 years.

It helped. What really inflated salaries was the rapid influx of money into conferences, specifically P5, that allowed salaries to be driven up. This trend followed in to the P5 coordinator ranks which used to be the nursery for MAC level schools head coaches. Those coordinators are hard to dislodge from their schools at this point so we have to take risks on P5 assistants or lower level head coaches which are significantly less proven. In any event, we and schools like ours are wildly overpaying for what we are getting. This would be a question for the Matt Kauligs of the committee I propose. How do you build a great management team at a small to mid size business when you don't have the financial resources of your larger competitors to attract and maintain human talent?

Thanks for bringing the bad roll out of this to the forefront. Seriously, nobody knows and that is the problem.

For now. South Carolina opens back up tomorrow. I'm going to Charleston and interacting with others in an effort to regain my humanity.

The Toledo AD can put an actual great idea on his resume.

That's OK. The idea goes past most people because most people think of reasons why things can't be done. So, why don't we play Toledo every year?

OK. I understand. I'm still confused though. Please help me. Why don't we play Toledo every year?

Commenting to both of your comments. First one, you would think the they could develop a rivalry. I have an idea. Let's first crawl. Just declare it a rivalry. Years ago, the mayor of Atlanta inserted the word "international" into the name of their airport and they didn't have a single international flight at the time. Today, I believe it is the busiest airport in the world with it's own international terminal. It's all so simple. The one I quoted. Why not give YSU the boot and play Toledo every year? Playing YSU is Mickey Mouse. I know this because it is the kind of idea Terry Pluto would think was a good idea. Akron would, at that point, play every Ohio MAC school every year. Not to be a jerk, but your last paragraph over complicates the issue. It isn't that hard. The AD of Toledo and the AD of Akron get together and contract an annual game against one another. Does this sound impossible? If anyone would like, I can provide an example of a case where it worked perfectly, last season. Schools like ours never think outside of the box in a realistic manner.

I'm still waiting. Some help please.

The post from Pluto above has really rubbed my rear end the wrong way. I'm trying to keep my comments isolated to the athletic department as the football team just drives me insane, but I'll try to post about the football team anyhow without going insane. Why do people like Pluto look at a situation and always compare what goes on at Akron to OSU? Extreme thinking is not what we need. Extreme thinking is frequently magical thinking. There are better comparisons to many other schools. Crawl-walk-run. Why can't we start with being like Northwestern in comparison? They were a horrible program until 2000 and are respectable now. They have been through two coaches and have remained good. Their fans aren't even that picky. Committed coaching, a few solid players committed to the program, some confidence and the inevitable choking of your opponent if you can keep from shooting yourself in the foot is just about all it takes to get to 6-8 wins as a MAC team and be a favorite to win your division. Friends, family, the community and alumni are happy....what's not to like? There has not been a Clemson of the MAC for a long time now. At least since Roethlisberger was at Miami. The league is there for the taking if you can just do those four extremely basic things. “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.” - Sun Tzu. I ask you my fellow Zips/G5 fans, do we know who our enemies are? Do we know ourselves? Are we relying on magical thinking too much and if we just stopped could we win where and at what we want to do? I'd love a discussion where we define our enemies because I think the first on those lists should be the athletic directors at our schools. They are without a doubt the biggest problem we have. Future big picture decisions of our leagues should not include ADs. Their only job should be to push the paper. G5 ADs are blithering morons who only have their sights set on their next job and will make one bad decision after another for the schools they work at to get their next job.

Uh, no. Pluto is ignorant of the landscape of college athletics and should not be posting such ignorance. He is now, always has been and always will be the guy who misreads every situation. The guy has been a plague on the sports fans of NE Ohio for decades now. The answer is not "what's the best way to give up?". The question is, "how do schools like us to maximize our potential?". I don't believe that is dropping down a division. It might be creating our own division/conference/whatever, but it isn't dropping down. If the benchmark for whether or not schools make money with their athletic departments determines their level of football, there would only be around 20 high level football teams. If it all narrowed down to money, there should be no college athletics at all, which is never going to happen because so many traditions in the USA revolve around it. College athletics would become club sports. Besides, if we made a unilateral move, who would want us? Is the commissioner of the powerhouse Pioneer League putting on his best 1970s era polyester suit, getting in his Honda Fit, driving to Akron and begging us to join over a lunch at Rockne's? Some people really need to put some thought in to this and it can't be people like Terry Pluto or worse, the athletic directors who got us in this mess. Ask the right questions, you get the right answers.

"You only find out who is swimming naked when the tide goes out." - Warren Buffett

Nice schedule. I have one question. How come Toledo isn't on the schedule every year?