GP1

I prefer discussions of food and booze over NIL or any of the other crap college athletics has become. Start times between 4-6 PM are ideal for what I like to call a Bang-Bang. This is two suppers. One supper is consumed mid to late afternoon, while the other is consumed after the game in the evening/night. Two o'clock is too early to execute a proper Bang-Bang.

When I see this article, it reminds me that college athletics in the USA are unique to the rest of the world.

When I see the word "we" in your post, I hope you mean a bigger we as in the MAC and MAClike conferences.

I think society may be going through football fatigue. The expanded CFP is not going as expected and NFL ratings are down also. I don't know if there is a correlation or causation between expanded college football playoff and decline in NFL viewers. If there is, the NFL will need to do everything it can to destroy the now minor league college football playoff. https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/43525435/cfp-title-game-most-watched-season-viewership-down

The City of Akron has Goodyear and their research center. Akron also has the Bridgestone research center. I could see how a world class research school could look regional. Akron doesn't have to leave the region in order to service research needs for companies if that is the priority in addition to education, which I feel is more important. If the cuts take into consideration maintaining the base of research demand until things improve, maybe they are making the right choices.

Blowing out bad conference opponents on the road is what really good teams do. I hate to see UB has fallen off so much. There used to be some really good matchups with them.

Actually, there are around 10 on at any one time and it's hard to find more than one. It's going to get worse and I'm not sure how it gets better after that.

I was as fair as I can be. I could have said something along the lines that the only things missing in the areas behind the baskets are parallel bars and a pommel horse like in a junior high school gym, but I refrained.....

Am I the only person who was underwhelmed with the minor league football playoff? I turned the game off at halftime. It was completely uncompetitive.

The only thing he gets wrong is calling it college football. It's professional minor league football.

Athletic Directors have already sold their souls. Selling an entire athletic department seems to be the next step. I hope there isn't anyone out there delusional enough to think it's still college football. It's a professional sports league. It's all so gross.

My view of attendance is this. The experience of those at the game is more important than those who don't go. If the Athletic Department put it's best foot forward for the attendees given what they have, I'm good. They can't control the bad time and day of the week in last night's example. Getting to a 6 PM game on Friday is difficult for a lot of people. When I go to a sporting event, I won't allow myself to be rushed. I like to go for a couple of beers, at least, before the game and take my time... maybe a decent meal. If I can't, I won't go. If I still lived in Akron, I would not have gone last night. I'd rather go to a game on Monday night than Friday night.

The empty seats weren't very noticable. It's hard to miss the bad look of the empty areas on the floor directly behind the basket. The AD should get on this......oh, wait.

I noticed this also but had to remind myself that OU is a good program. Good programs lose now and then, but rarely allow their necks to be stepped on. The take away for me is Akron soundly beat one of the best teams in the conference and should be able to make some hay with the confidence and momentum from the win.

I like "Akron". I like "Zips". I don't like "Akron Zips". I don't like logos that tell the consumer what the logo is. The rest are very good. The "Z" logo was sharp and they should have stuck with it because it had wide brand acceptance.

My first Zips game this season. Looks like a fun team. Keep up the good work.

If your goal is making March Madness, stay in the MAC.

The SEC and Big Ten should exit the NCAA and start their own football league. It's the most profitable thing to do now that it's professional football. TV networks would pay a fortune for the broadcast rights.

Respectfully, if you believe this, you aren't following the developments of college football closely. The power of the Big 12 are in the SEC now. It might be a long time before either Clemson or FSU are meaningful contenders again. Rapidly, the SEC and Big Ten took over college football and that disparity is going to get worse, not better. There will be large disparities developed within each league as well. For example, consider Wisconsin dead. College football is just minor league professional football at this point. I watched more Sopranos reruns last night than the OSU game because I'm not a fan of minor league sports. The SEC and Big Ten are completely set up to outpace the other conferences. College football is dead as we once knew it and it isn't going back.

It's been that way for a while. There has just never been a method of proving it until now. If you look at final scores, there a a ton of blowouts every Saturday. Since the best teams almost never play one another during the season it didn't stand out. The playoff is shining a light on how uncompetitive most college games are. If an NFL team loses by more than 10 points, they lost handily. There are tons of 10+ point differences every Saturday. Another way I notice this is when I sit down to try andd.find two competitive games at once to go back and forth on. At any time on a Saturday afternoon, there are 10 games on. It's hard to find two close games. Unless you have a rooting interest or a student at a school or alumnus or degenerate gambler college football isn't very entertaining.

Very interesting. Thanks for posting. I'm always skeptical of legislation designed to help organizations save themselves. The NCAA can't be saved because it's a member organization. If the members want to kill it, they can elect to do so. If 20-30 members want to leave and start their own organization, there is nothing stopping them. The best thing that could happen is for the NCAA to go away and then schools can organize themselves in a way that is best for them. Think of it as breaking up a monopoly. Can anyone give me a good reason why a membership organization like the NCAA should continue to exist when there is such disparity between the financial abilities of the members?

Basketball and March Madness isn't the future of college athletics. March Madness has the market cornered on drunks and degenerate gamblers in March. There is no room for growth. There is a lot of room for growth in the consolidation of college football into a super league with drunks and degenerate gamblers. Someone in the article uses the word "industry" and that explains everything.

What they are asking for could be the best thing for G5 conferences. They won. Let's get away from them and organize ourselves in a way that works for us. If they get rid of the NCAA it could be one of the best things to ever happen to college athletics. The inability of the NCAA to effectively look forward lead to gross mismanagement and they deserve to go out of business.

This is a good point. MAC athletic departments are hemorrhaging money. With or without NIU, the base problems don't disappear. The revenue changes marginally I'm close to 100% certain any ESPN executive didn't bat an eye at the NIU departure and the impact it will have on MACtion. The price they are paying to fill air time in the late fall is amazingly cheap all things considered.

NIU would have done less damage upgrading their logo. Putting it that way, maybe we should be happy all our last AD did was change the logo. Things could always be worse I guess.