GP1

Good article CK. New President+A sea of red ink+zero taxpayer support for arena=dead issue. Sanity prevails.

Beats and Coke have the money, but probably not the interest. Beats is becoming an international company and Coke is. No reason for either to invest in a regional arena. Needs to be regional company.

If you are looking for a company that might sponsor an arena in a city like Akron, you should look at the types of companies that have sponsored similar arenas in other parts of the country. Or, find one that has sponsored more than one arena. BB&T Bank and TD Bank (some of you will see this arena this fall) have both sponsored various arenas in the Carolinas and other places. It is going to take both private (personal) and corporate money to get this done in my opinion. A company can do a lot more for their shareholders than sponsor an arena. One has to be swimming in money to give away $60+ million.

Too late.

He's too busy saving the economy of Cleveland. He also has this other thing he does other than saving the economy of Cleveland and building stadiums for the Zips, and that's being a professional basketball player. Maybe the next time a reporter catches him on the sidelines of an OSU football or basketball game, they could ask him what he is going to do to support his old JCC and St. V. coach.

Goodyear has been doing well in recent years, but it looks like they have more important things going on other than donating money to build a stadium.

This always seemed a little poorly conceived and poorly launched to me. If a couple of community hacks can prevent this from going to ballot in the fall, there may not have been much to it. I'd be interested to see what the initial polling might have been on this initiative. If a lot of people were saying "no" to the tax for the outlined reasons, that isn't always a bad thing. Finding out why they don't want it is important. If I was running a poll to find out why, I would structure some questions around whether or not people really understood the issue fully. "Never" means never and most people aren't that closed minded. Ballot initiatives are very simple choices: yes or no. "No" means "not now" in many cases. This is why if you are in sales, it is just as important to find out why someone didn't buy as it is why they did buy. UofA is trying to get people to buy something in this case. Find out why they didn't buy and do a better job of selling next time. We shouldn't look past the poor showing of those who wanted this to succeed and pass some scorn their way. They have some blame here. They let a couple of loud clowns beat them down. Years from now, we might look back on this as one of the best things to ever happen to UofA. Regroup and take something better back to the community. Or, find another way all together. There's always one way to skin a cat.

You can say that again...

I'm not sure about that, but I'd be concerned about the field.

Agreed. Akron doesn't have enough of what they are looking for. Meaning, grass fields. Let's hope they don't spend any more than 15 minutes putting together a proposal.

Agreed. Akron doesn't have enough of what they are looking for. Meaning, grass fields. Let's hope they don't spend any more than 15 minutes putting together a proposal.

I'm so Akron, I actually care about what happens to the school.

The Zips 2013 NCAA Tournament appearance against VCU was similar to watching Cale Yarborough go over the wall in Darlington in 1965.

Google non-BCS schools and look at the maps. You might be pleasantly surprised how close they are to major cities. The Pacific NW would be the biggest challenge, but not everything can be perfect. This isn't really about attendance. If it was, MAClike schools would have gone under long ago. Taxpayers are more than willing to pay for their state universities to have football programs. It's really about meaningful television coverage and television rights ($). As much as I love football, a break would be a good thing. I don't watch football even when it is on every day in the fall. Give me one between the Super Bowl and the week after the NCAA Final Four. Give me another between Independence Day when my college national championship would be played and Week 1 of the NFL.

I think it is a matter of right sizing the new structure. Contrary to popular thought on this board, the arena doesn't need to be 10,000 seats. 8,000 is enough....8,500 tops. It drives me nuts when I hear about what a great arena OU as and when I see them on TV, half the arena is empty....It's a joke. Right now, the season ticket base (the real prize in ticket selling) is less than 4,000 based upon current attendance. If 8,000 is good enough for an ACC school like Miami, it's good enough for Akron. "But GP1, that's short sighted. We are in the middle of a building process that will give us that many season tickets." Probably not, but let's assume that in 50 years, UofA is selling 8,000 season basketball tickets. The simple answer is to raise ticket prices if they want more money. If season tickets are that much of a prized possession in 50 years, then everyone will be willing to pay more for tickets. BTW, Charlotte Motor Speedway has plans to tear down part of the stands they built not that long ago along the back straightaway. Outdoor stands are easy to remove. A new arena will be around for 80 years.

I guess if someone limits their thinking to an either/or proposition, then either A or B are the only choices. It's sad. Jim Lovell, one of the Apollo astronauts, called Apollo 13 a "successful failure". My guess is he is a pretty smart guy. Networks have experimented with football beyond the fall. The experimentation continues. Last night, there was a CFL game on ESPN2, not ESPN 6,000. Some years ago, ESPN gave up on the CFL and now they have brought it back (tea leaf alert, one must read them) as they claim there is a year round appetite for football in the US. I would claim there is a year round appetite for quality football and non-BCS provides that. Certainly much more than the CFL or the horrible MLS (people want quality soccer, not just soccer and US teams don't provide that....nice job against Manchester United. I wonder if chief US Soccer apologist Alexi Lalas could even apologize this one away?). In the SPRING, ESPNU televises spring practices. Networks just haven't found the sweet spot yet, but they know the market is there. What TV executives do know is it is extremely cheap to put a live event on television, whether sport or some other event, compared to other types of programming. This is why our society becomes increasingly stupid with reality TV. College football fills up 3.5 hours of television time with a limited support staff paid much cheaper than what the same amount of "on air personalities" and support staff gets paid on other programming. Additionally, the financial risks for college athletics are limited because the majority of football players are not paid on anything other than paper and their support staff is limited. When costs overrun, which they always have in non-BCS sports, the costs are absorbed by the taxpayers of those institutions. I don't even want to think about what college football has cost American taxpayers over the past 50 years. The USFL provides an interesting case study, but much has changed in the US since the 80 and there is a big difference in the dynamics between college and pro football. There has been a 12% increase in American claiming football to be their favorite sport since 1985 and it continues to become more popular. The USFL was a private business and college football is a taxpayer supported business so there is limited financial risk. Quite honestly, the financial risk MAClike schools have right now should scare the heck out of a fan of those schools. It worries me. The BCS guys are about to take all of the money and run with us holding nothing but our wieners in our hands. Now is the time to get in front of this in lieu of always following behind like MAClike schools do.

The good thing about college football is the costs are fixed to the cost of a scholarship, which is only a cost on paper anyhow, some equipment and the staffs. Our staffs are wildly under paid compared to the rest of college football. The majority of their labor is free, which is why they push back so hard on giving player some type of stipend. The stipend cuts into their profit. Essentially, college football has a monopsony over the employees. Here is a blog spot on monopsony in college athletics. My biggest complaint with this blog spot is it refers to the NCAA and membership as separate. We need to get our country to understand there is no difference between the ncaa and the membership. It is one in the same. In any school that has an athletic director that is against athlete-students making additional money somehow, those athlete-students should look and treat that AD as what it is, the enemy.

Yes. They are planning a 24 hours of football so ESPN can promote itself. We will start our game at 2AM so the AD can put on his resume he added another nationally televised game to our football schedule.

I could care less if the county leaders are happy. There is an old Ben Franklin (maybe) saying used in construction, "The bitterness of poor quality remains long after the sweetness of low prices is forgotten." Change out the words poor quality for "a bad deal" and you might have the result of this deal. UofA is going to have to live with this deal for a looooong time if it passes. Probably longer than the years many of us have left in our lives.

My back agrees.

Since I've actually taken the time to do some research on the USFL, I have learned something. There was a major television network willing to throw a large sum of money at it in the 1980s, which tells me spring football is a viable product. It seems to be a lesson many conveniently ignore. The USFL was not a failure and to classify it as such is intellectually lazy. The NFL lost a great deal of money in their early years. The Dixon Plan was written by the guy who brought the New Orleans Saints to NO and that plan even estimated years of financial losses for the USFL before making a profit. All sports leagues lost money early on. The USFL lost money, but the league was well funded and settling into upcoming markets that would have made it more financially stable. The league basically folded due to deviating from the Dixon Plan and owner disgust with other owners rather than for financial reasons. Not a single team ever filed for bankruptcy. It was only in business for 5 years and was becoming more financially stable. Given a few more years and more tv money, it could have easily survived. Lastly, let's not pretend our football programs are a money maker for our schools at the MAClike level. Most are albatrosses around schools necks. This has been going on longer than five years. If the USFL lost $150 million in five years, my guess is MAClike schools lose at least that much over five years as well. Like always, the only thing that could stop this from working is the enemy within and we know who they are.

The USFL would have been a success if a couple of owners hadn't let their ego get in the way. Looking to the 1980s to predict a more modern world is silly. There are always knee jerk reactions to new ideas. It's all about supporting the building process with TV money. The big boys know it. Our leadership is too stupid to figure it out. Someone else will need to figure it out for them, meaning TV executives. If Jones said it, there are many, many more thinking it.

It's just a reflection of their membership.

There is not a worse road to take than the one we are on currently. I prefer the one that allows us to control our own fortunes.

Link The distance between us and them is getting greater. It's not happening in theory or 20 years from now, it's happening right now. Wake up folks! How much longer do we fight this impossible battle before we head in another direction?