GP1

There are doing this for one reason, to raise cash! And NO it would not work here on a large scale. Would the Die Hards pay? Of course, but must fans are too cheap to "pay, just to pay" Doing it to raise cash? EXACTLY! That's the purpose of the Marketing Department, Development Staff and the entire reason for selling tickets. If we can't do things like this here at Akron, we don't belong in Division I-A football. I hate to keep bringing up UNCC (I really didn't notice them until my wife pointed out their internet marketing of PSLs), but all they really have (they have other sports that nobody pays attention to) is a basketball team and a I-AA football team that won't be on the field until 2013. This link takes you to their Foundation site. They raised $64,000 in ONE golf outing. It takes us two to reach that dollar limit. They raised $90,000 at a womens lunch. They raised $200,000 at their Gold Rush Auction. We can do things like this, we just don't even try. Step one: Put a winner on the field.

Because any effort spent on getting him to Akron is a waste of time.

I hear this question a lot. It doesn't make a difference or not if it goes on at even one other place. Tressel has a history of breaking the rules. He was caught and lied to his boss and caused his boss to be untruthful to his boss. The culture of corruption he created at tOSU is going to cost that school millions of dollars....including his buyout. I have a relative who is close to the tOSU program and very close to a couple of starters. We talked this morning. The car dealership is a HUGE problem and when that poop hits the fan, it is going to make tatgate look tame. This entire story is just getting going. I wish Dave in Green would report on this real story instead of the uninteresting Auburn/State of Alabama story. There are real dots to be connected in the tOSU story.

sorry Johnny but I can't side with you on this one. he did request to have his suspensions extended to match the players. Maybe he was hoping the extended suspension would cover up his lies.

seriously GP1? someone lost their job today and this is how you're gonna act about it? Yes, he made a mistake, but for the most part he was a stand up individual. Why don't you set your OSU jealousy aside for a little bit and show some class. This is one giant jealousy circus and you sir are the ring leader. You make it sound like he "lost his job" at some factory because of the slow economic times. Just some poor middle class guy who will struggle while he looks for another job. He didn't lose his job, he resigned in disgrace because he built a dirty football program. The depth of how dirty the program was hasn't even been revealed yet. Mistake means one. He ran a dirty program at YSU and continued from day 1 at tOSU starting with MoC, followed by Troy Smith and now Tatgate. Now we all are going to have to listen to how he was a "really good person". Tressel is just another college football coach and is as dirty as the next. There is nothing special about the guy. All the tainted wins aginst Michigan, the national championship, the Big Ten championships don't look so good now. Tressel can go coach a positon in the NFL next year in a second. Guys do it all the time. Cooper went to work as a consultant for the Bengals when he was fired. Tressel could work for a lot of NFL teams next year.

This is how you treat the community and small business owners who could buy tickets to your events. I belong to an organization that has nine meetings a year on various topics in the construction industry. I'm in charge of putting together the dinner presentations next year. After our discussion last week, the idea of having the AD at UNCC speak on the planning of the new stadium. On Saturday morning at 8:46, I sent the note below to the Athletic Director UNCC: Dear Judy, I am writing on behalf of the Charlotte Chapter of the Construction Specifications Institute. We are a Professional organization in the construction industry. Our members are the architects, specification writers, contractors and manufacturer's representative that work together to build structures in Charlotte. We are currently planning our membership meetings for the Fall of 2011 and Spring of 2012. At each meeting, we have a dinner presentation relevant to something interesting going on around Charlotte. I believe the development of a football team along with building a new stadium would be of interest to this group. The presentation would be to 40-60 professionals and would last 40-50 minutes leaving time for questions. Would you or someone from your office be interested in speaking to our members about your new football stadium and some of the planning that went on around this new structure? At 9:22, the following note came back: We would be happy to present. I assume you want one of the architects,general contractor and myself. What dates are available and where do you meet? Organizations like I belong to struggle to get speakers to come to dinners. There will be 10 owners of large architectural firms around Charlotte at this one meeting. There will be many people interested in sports and many UNCC graduates of their Architecture Department at the meeting. The AD at UNCC knows how valuable these types of meetings are and will come herself and make her architect and general contractor come as well. She responded in less than 45 minutes. That's how you treat the community. That's how you sell PSLs. That's how you have a successful program two years out from even having a team. She's coming to the meeting herself, not having a low level employee do the speaking. The UofA grad in me even gave here the option of sending an employee of her department thinking she wouldn't do it herself. You guys say it can't be done. I say it can be done. Gaining public support is the most important thing Akron could do right now. We built a new factory (InfoCision Stadium). You have to use the factory to make money or the factory was a waste of money to build. If we could just get that darn team fixed....

Since we never tried, how would we know? UNCC is selling something. They are selling a I-AA football program that doesn't even exist scheduled to play in a bad conference, in a major city that shows little to no interest in any sport other than NASCAR. All they have is a new coach, a new stadium and an AD who is working her ass off to get the program going. If we can't do this type of marketing in Akron, everything I have ever said about UofA not belonging in D-IA is true.

People are paying these prices at UNCC just to have a seat for a team that doesn't even have any players yet.

I believe we could have done something like this. We never try. Chapel Hill is two hours away. Duke is two hours away. NC State is two hours away. USC is 1.5 hours away. Maybe they haven't been brainwashed for college football, but they have been for college basketball. UNCC struggles with alumni support the same way Akron does. The student and alumni culture at UNCC and Akron are the same. Keep in mind. The school is still two years away from having a team.

Goodbye scumbag..

Link Since we are on the topic of marketing and the need to look at what others are doing to market their programs, I have to ask if Akron ever had anything like the above link when they built the Big Dialer? Could they have done something like this at Akron? UNCC is starting a football program in 2013. They will be I-AA. They are building a new stadium. See the link for purchasing a seat license. Could they have ever done this in Akron and did they even try? Look at the three boxes at the bottom and look at the one on the far right where they list those who have purchased PSLs. It's an impressive list. That many people purchased PSLs already for a team that won't exist until 2013. UNCC is doing everything right in starting a football program. Akron has done mostly everything wrong since 1987. A successful program requires more than just a good AD. You have to have money coming in from the community. Public support, not just corporate support, is a must. I'd say by the list on that web site, they are getting plenty of support from the community. Akron is a much better school than UNCC in every way you could look at a school. Both are urban schools with a large commuter population. UNCC is an ugly campus...actually looks a lot like Can't State. Akron has a very nice increasingly modern looking campus. Allow yourself to look at other ideas.

It hasn't worked yet. My father was a really smart country doctor and he understood people well. He always said that if a cat and a person walked into a glass door, the cat would never run into it again. At some point, the person would walk into the door again because we never learn our lessons. That's what I think about the golf outing. I once heard that the expenses for the Athletic Department were $10,000,000+ (seems sort of high, but that's what I heard). $30,000 (if that is the real net) is 0.3% of that total. That golf outing is the least of their problems. They should be able to secure those corporate sponsorships by other means. Corporations support local causes many times out of a sense of local responsibility. The money would continue to come in with or without a golf outing. The people at InfoCision aren't going to stop supporting UofA because they can't go golfing for a day. The local hospital (can't think of the name) is going to support UofA regardless of a golf outing or not. People want to feel like they know a sports team or have a personal connection with a team. I believe reaching out to the local population on a more personal level, not asking 150 people to tell some of their friend to tell some of their friends, is the key to expanding revenues at UofA. There are many local business owners attending Rotary, Chamber of Commerce, etc. There are many more small and midsize businesses than the Goodyears of the world. Not all of them can or want to attend a golf outing. For example, KD is a well know/liked person around Akron. Coached at St. V, LeBron's coach and extremely successful coach at UofA. He is a person a lot of people around NE Ohio would recognize in a photo. While he is from Akron and probably knows a lot of people in the City, in the large picture, it is probably an extremely small part of the population. I think a lot of people would get a kick out of meeting the guy who coached LeBron and has been on national TV coaching in the NCAA Tournament. These people would respond well to his appeal to support the school by purchasing tickets. Let's do some math. KD speaks at the Akron Chamber of Commerce (probably a large group). While there, 60 business owners decide to buy ten of the 10 pack packages they are selling at $100 each. That's $60,000. They can give those tickets away to customers. We haven't even added up parking, concessions and possible Z-Fund donations. A little better than the rumored $30,000 at the golf outing. That's only one day. Send Coach I and Coach Kest out to do the same thing. They wouldn't get the same personal response as KD, but people would still be interested in them and there would be some response. Capt., you ask me to have an open mind. Getting away from Akron did open my mind and in my opinion, I have the most open mind on this board about what we could do better. I used to have a lot of the same ideas about what Akron should be doing as you do. The difference is, I've gotten away from it and have seen what other schools do well. Time has passed a lot of the opinions on this board by. Wake Forest tours their football and M&W BB coaches around on a regular speaking tour every summer. They sell 30,000 season tickets a year to what has become a bad football team..the same can be said about their MBB team as well only the word terrible/horrid would be used. Yes, they have a golf outing. They also have a ladies football day (great idea and I'm glad UofA is doing the same thing), tennis match and BBQ. They make is so lots of people can touch the program without going to a golf outing. Better yet, they get donations at all of these events. So put that in your pipe and smoke it. I roll my eyes when I read your marketing ideas the same way Zips Watcher may roll his eyes at my basketball opinions. It amazes me a company would put you in charge of ANY sales and marketing efforts. A golf outing in the desert...please. Go out and get some new clients. I had promotions in sales/marketing roles at two Fortune 100 companies in my life. One was to manage the product line that drove 75% of all profit dollars for a Berkshire Hathaway company. During this economic downturn, I started my own business and increased sales for the companies I represent in excess of 47% in some cases. How were your sales the past 2-3 years? You stick to what you think you know, and I'll stick to what I know I know. To you Capt. and everyone else on the board, I say have a nice weekend, remember the fallen on Memorial Day and God Bless America. Edit:...Why aren't we doing things like this? Golf outing? Please.....

Maybe you are wrong? They never try.

This story just keeps getting better and better. His crooked lawyer knows Mr. Rogers.......I mean Jim Tressel. I wonder if the Tatgate five or six is going to turn into the Tatgate Twenty?.?.?.

And the beat goes on... Of course, Buckeye Nation is attacking the messenger and not the message. Many claim the guy was a bad guy on the team (they cheered him after every TD though). Many say he didn't go to class (shocking). Maybe all of that is true. What does it have to do with him being right about people selling their little trinkets? "Everyone" was doing it? Probably not everyone did, but if only a few were doing it, it's further bad news. My favorite line is about the guys not even thinking about NCAA rules. Can anyone say "lack of institutional control"? How would you like to be the paper pushinig compliance officer at tOSU? Here is a guy who exists only to make sure the rules aren't being broken. He spends his entire life giving compliance presentations to players and coaches in an effort to make sure they are in compliance, and guys don't even think about him for one second after they wake up after the compliance lecture. In many ways, this compliance officer's existance at tOSU is meaningless. The stance tOSU has taken throughout this entire process has been very interesting. Basically, they are saying they understand they have been caught and they don't care. They don't care to the point they aren't even going to fire a single person over this situation...not a single change. The same people who caused the problem are going to be left in place to cause the problem again. At which point, they can take the same stance. It's brazen to the point I find it somewhat admirable. tOSU is going to lead the way to making high level college football an institutionalized professional sports league (right now, it is quasi professional, not institutional).

Can you change this from a young kid to a super model?

Why would anyone think this story is coming to an end? We are only at the beginning of the book and the best pages are ahead. The morons are only half moronic...the other half is just plain stupid. Everyone does do it, but when they get caught, they don't lie to everyone around them.

Then there is no reason to do it. A golf course has 18 holes. At most, you can get 20 foursomes off in an outing. Where I had math, 20 x 4 = 80 golfers. That's $12,000 (before expenses) @ $150 per person. I'm not impressed by the golf outing. On the other hand, 20,000 fans paying to see a Zips game at $10 per ticket is $200,000. I'm impressed by that. They need to get focused on selling tickets and not a silly golf outing. Focus, focus, focus. The termination of the football golf outing is second only the parking situation at the Rubber Bowl (it was a grass field for crying out loud) on the list of non-issues that have been made important in Zips history.

The problem the program has is they don't attract new customers because they have been so bad the past couple of years. My guess is Coach I is not a golfer and doesn't have many golfers on his staff. At the end of the day, I'm not certain a golf outing for 150 of the same people who go every year regardless of how the team performs is the answer. Those people would be happy with only a good game day experience if the team won. I've been saying this for a few years and nobody listens. They need to have people in the Athletic Department (not the football office) who schedule public speaking engagements for Coach I, KD and Coach Kest that take place throughout the summer and as many as humanly possible. Targets would be Rotary (as many as possible), Chamber of Commerce (as many as possible), Akron Womens Club, etc. Use these sessions to sell tickets. If they would just ask for freaking support instead of throwing up billboards and crossing their fingers, more people might come to the games. Put a personal touch on it. The same people who buy tickets every year are not the problem. It is a small number compared to the size of the stadium. The problem Akron has are the 20,000+ empty seats at every game...the 1,500 empty seats on average at the JAR for MBB and the 5,000+ empty seats for WBB. We are going to have a little exercise to prove my point. When I was working at GP, we made a roof coverboard used in low slop roofing. Around 30% of all low slope roofing projects at the time used a coverboard. There were lots of different types of coverboards and we had the best, but there was still some level of competition. Let's say the market share broke down as follows: Board A 15%, Board B 20%, Board C 25%, Board D 10%, Board E 30%. If you are Board E, who is the real competition?......... .......A narrow minded person might pick one of Boards A-D. This person is a fool. The real competition was the architect who did not specify a coverboard at all. If you maintain 30% market share and expand the coverboard business by working with architects from 30%-40% of all low slope roofing, don't you sell 33% more product? UofA is already getting great market share from the die-hards. They are going to get that business. What they really need to do is get the business of those not attending at all. Spending a lot of time trying to please masochists is not the way to go. I'm one of the masochists and if I still lived around, all I would want is a decent place to park within walking distance to a bar and the stadium, food at the game that wouldn't choke a goat and a seat that didn't require physical therapy after a game. I could care less about the silly game of golf or ever meeting a coach...I've met enough and they really aren't very smart guys. Everyone else wants to watch winning, or at least a team that doesn't make you want to throw up when you watch them. The hardest thing to do in sales is bring on a new customer. It is also the most expensive. It's easy to throw up billboards, buy ads in the ABJ, buy a bus ad, etc. Going out and asking people for their business is hard. It's why they don't do it. It costs NOTHING to be a speaker at a public forum. Most of the time you get a free dinner and all you have to do is get yourself there. They should put up signs around the Athletic Department saying, "Get them to the game and give them something worth watching." It's so freaking simple.

This is a really good discussion. One issue that is never brought up about the ooc schedule is, "What is the purpose of the ooc schedule?" For schools like Miami, it appears as if they use their ooc schedule to rake in cash. They were doing the same thing with their ooc football schedule for a while as well. I think we need one or two more ATM games on our schedule. Other than that, the schedule is fine. The basketball team has the highest paid coach on staff and IMNHO, doesn't contribute enough to the finances of the Athletic Department. What we really need to do is win the games we should be winning at this point and stop using the ooc schedule as a lab for what the team is going to look like come MAC time. We have a solid program with solid players. At this point, KD should know who his starters are going to be, who will be coming off the bench and when they will be coming off the bench. Let's use the ooc schedule to beat some high majors and win every ooc game against mid majors for a change. The JAR would be packed come MAC season. That is how they would better contribute to the Athletic Department. We over-intellectualize the basketball team too much.

Your sense of humor is boundless.

WE ALWAYS HEAR 'THE RULES' FROM THE FEMALE SIDE NOW HERE ARE THE RULES FROM THE MALE SIDE THESE ARE OUR RULES! PLEASE NOTE...THEY ARE ALL NUMBERED '1' ON PURPOSE! 1. MEN ARE NOT MIND READERS. 1. LEARN TO WORK THE TOILET SEAT. YOU'RE A BIG GIRL. IF IT'S UP, PUT IT DOWN. WE NEED IT UP, YOU NEED IT DOWN. YOU DON'T HEAR US COMPLAINING ABOUT YOU LEAVING IT DOWN. 1. SUNDAY SPORTS IT'S LIKE THE FULL MOON OR THE CHANGING OF THE TIDES. LET IT BE. 1. CRYING IS BLACKMAIL. 1. ASK FOR WHAT YOU WANT. LET US BE CLEAR ON THIS ONE! SUBTLE HINTS DO NOT WORK! STRONG HINTS DO NOT WORK! OBVIOUS HINTS DO NOT WORK! JUST SAY IT! 1. YES AND NO ARE PERFECTLY ACCEPTABLE ANSWERS TO ALMOST EVERY QUESTION. 1. COME TO US WITH A PROBLEM ONLY IF YOU WANT HELP SOLVING IT. THAT'S WHAT WE DO. SYMPATHY IS WHAT YOUR GIRLFRIENDS ARE FOR. 1. ANYTHING WE SAID 6 MONTHS AGO IS INADMISSIBLE IN AN ARGUMENT. IN FACT, ALL COMMENTS BECOME NULL AND VOID AFTER 7 DAYS. 1. IF YOU THINK YOU'RE FAT, YOU PROBABLY ARE. DON'T ASK US. 1. IF SOMETHING WE SAID CAN BE INTERPRETED TWO WAYS AND ONE OF THE WAYS MAKES YOU SAD OR ANGRY, WE MEANT THE OTHER ONE. 1. YOU CAN EITHER ASK US TO DO SOMETHING OR TELL US HOW YOU WANT IT DONE. NOT BOTH. IF YOU ALREADY KNOW BEST HOW TO DO IT, JUST DO IT YOURSELF. 1. WHENEVER POSSIBLE, PLEASE SAY WHATEVER YOU HAVE TO SAY DURING COMMERCIALS. 1. CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS DID NOT NEED DIRECTIONS AND NEITHER DO WE. 1. ALL MEN SEE IN ONLY 16 COLORS, LIKE WINDOWS DEFAULT SETTINGS. PEACH, FOR EXAMPLE, IS A FRUIT, NOT A COLOR. PUMPKIN IS ALSO A FRUIT. WE HAVE NO idea what mauve is. 1. IF IT ITCHES, IT WILL BE SCRATCHED. WE DO THAT. 1. IF WE ASK WHAT IS WRONG AND YOU SAY 'NOTHING,' WE WILL ACT LIKE NOTHING'S WRONG. WE KNOW YOU ARE LYING, BUT IT IS JUST NOT WORTH THE HASSLE. 1. IF YOU ASK A QUESTION YOU DON'T WANT AN ANSWER TO, EXPECT AN ANSWER YOU DON'T WANT TO HEAR. 1. WHEN WE HAVE TO GO SOMEWHERE, ABSOLUTELY ANYTHING YOU WEAR IS FINE... REALLY! 1. DON'T ASK US WHAT WE'RE THINKING ABOUT UNLESS YOU ARE PREPARED TO DISCUSS SUCH TOPICS AS BASEBALL, SEX, HOOTERS, OR GOLF. 1. YOU HAVE ENOUGH CLOTHES. 1. YOU HAVE TOO MANY SHOES. 1. I AM IN SHAPE. ROUND IS A SHAPE! STRAIGHT IS A SHAPE!FLAT IS A SHAPE! PASS THIS TO AS MANY MEN AS YOU CAN - TO GIVE THEM A LAUGH. PASS THIS TO AS MANY WOMEN AS YOU CAN - TO GIVE THEM A BIGGER LAUGH.

With the exception of only a few (the "pros/ringers" that attend these events with the expectations to shoot 18-under, and win something), everyone I know that attended the Outings was there to take a day off work, see old friends, get a little drunk, get to know the staff a bit on a personal level, and talk some Zips football in June. Golf is just something fun to do for a few hours while you're drinking and BS-ing. All the more reason to organize a group of about ten guys and invite the coaches for a golf outing. I'm sure getting some sun after spending most of their lives watching film in their offices for 22 hours a day would do them some good.

Call up some of the guys you golf with and take the coaches with you. You would probably spend less than $150. Make it about them. The difference between taking customers golfing and going on a University function is the attitude of those invited. I would hope that those invited to a University golf outing are there to support the University, not to have their asses kissed by the Athletic Department. None of us are forced to do anything for the University...not the donations, not the ticket buying, not attending games and not posting on this board. Those going to a customer golf outing are there to have their asses kissed by those inviting them and a free trip. Most people really don't like to go golfing as most aren't very good at it. My experience with golfing with customers is they look terrible after a few hours of golf. Who is stupid enough to turn down a free trip to the desert though? I'd probably suffer through a round of golf for the rest of the trip. In closing, I'm not a customer of the University when I buy something or send in a donation or buy a ticket. I'm a supporter who has never asked for anything in return and I don't expect anything in return (with the exception of my tax deduction of course). My wife and I had dinner with a real nice lady from the Development Office a couple of weeks ago in Charlotte. She offered free tickets to a football game if I come back for a game this fall. I thanked her and told her no as I would be happy to pay my own way into a game. A part of me is ashamed that she paid for dinner.

I'd ask you to be a leader in this matter and get back in the game. Round up a few of your former teammates and go to the party. Get five guys to go and then ask them to ask five others to go. Other than some of the work Gary Bogue did while working for Athletics, there hasn't been much effort to reach out to former players. This is a good effort on the part of the Athletic Department. Good effort and doing the right things should be rewarded. Something has to change and we can't sit around waiting forever for a coach or an AD or whatever that pleases 100% of the people. That's never going to happen. From what I remember through the drunken fog, the party at the Winking Lizard a few years ago was better than any golf outing they ever organized. I'd be willing to say that almost all of the guys there would agree. It was a chance for them to reconnect, with their wives/girlfriends/children if they wished, with friends. This is better than a golf outing.