GP1

"Questionable decisions"? I'd say disastrous decisions. If Akron won 7 games this year, it would be well exceeding expectations. That's the problem with Akron. The decision becomes between Faust and Owens, or Owens vs Brookhart. These are debates the idiots on ESPN have on TV between 8AM and, well..., the rest of the day. The failure of Akron has much less to do with coaches and more to do with University leadership up to the Board of Trustees. If Clawson wasn't having the success he is having at Wake Forest, I'm sure there would be a lot of idiotic fans debating Grobe vs Clawson, even though Grobe has only 5 winning seasons in 12 years. That's the Faust vs Owens or whatever debate. It's just people trying to be right about something not worth being right about. Throw in the Dennison vs Faust debate. A contractor once told me, "Being right is the boobie prize". Whoever wins the Faust vs Owens debate will be right. Either way everything blows up in your face.

I can't imagine going through the misery of fall camp and being half way through the year and still not having an FBS win yet. I'd like to think this team has had enough losing, but everyone finds their comfort zone. Some teams are just comfortable losing.

I'd take a young version of Dave Clawson. He's a perfect fit for Wake. We need a perfect fit for Akron. I think we may have him, but next season will inform better. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Clawson

Didn't he just win his division in 12, 15, and 17? I'll give him 22. I'm still missing the greatness of the guy. Didn't see it at Akron and I'm bored and unimpressed with anything anyone does in D2 football.

Dennison did make a playoff. He was a solid D2 and IAA coach, but not the guy to move it forward. He never won a conference title at Akron. There is this odd Dennison vs Faust debate in Akron. The real answer probably was, neither. The real answer to the key question was "no". The question was, "Is there anything about the Akron program that could make it a legitimate D1 program in the next 5-8 years." But, here we are and there's no going back. I missed the greatness of Owens. Never once did he put a complete team together. Never once did he win the division let alone the MAC. He bumbled around Ashland for a long time and never won his conference there either. The guy was just a nothing. I played at the beginning of the Faust years. Dennison didn't leave behind a stable of D1 players. There were a couple of good players, but not the 30-40 it takes to have a really good team.

Your post brings up a good point people have to keep in mind in relation to TP and the outdated idea of redshirting. The transfer portal cuts both ways. If a coach wastes a year of a really good player as a redshirt, he may only be developing that player for another team if the player uses the TP to go to a P5 school later in his career after he develops more. A redshirt player is close to being a failed recruit in 2023.

I know someone who played with him in Atlanta. He said when the doors were closed and only the team was around he was the nicest guy on the team. Sanders was cool to all the guys. A person's true character shows when nobody is watching.

It has to work next year. By that I mean 6 wins. They aren't that far away. Miami wanted Martin fired after he started his first two seasons with 2 and 3 wins respectively. Everyone wanted him fired and players were revolting. Year 3 he won 6 and went to a bowl. Dave Clawson went 3-9 both of his first two years at Wake Forest. Everyone wanted him fired. I was worried about him but didn't want him fired yet. Year 3 he went 6-6. Wake Forest is more like Akron in that it's historically a bad D1 program. I've said it a lot on this board. There isn't a single thing Wake Forest does that Akron couldn't do. It was a black hole of football programs until Clawson. Think historically Rice and Kansas level bad. They have won the second most games in the ACC since 2018. Akron doesn't have to be this bad. I don't believe Akron is far away from where they could be as far as talent. The losing culture problem is a bigger problem.

If it was a publicity stunt, it worked short term. The university got a lot of publicity. The Acme-Zip game in 1987 against Kent was the third largest crowd to ever see a football game at the Rubber Bowl. Publicity stunts can work if there is a longer term plan around it and there is where it all fall apart. The problem was there were a few issues working against Akron. First, there were no adults asking questions about the future of the program. By adults, I mean the board of trustees. Questions would be: What makes a successful D1 program and do we have any of that? Can our personnel in the athletic department get this done? If we want a D1 program, are either Faust or Dennison the right person for the job? If we waited 4-5 years and built a foundation, could we pull this off? Why is the NCAA basically begging us not to jump to D1? Almost any questions leads to a "no". Looking back it was so obvious. I feel free to say this as a Catholic, but not a person who grew up in NE Ohio. Around Akron, there was and probably still is an overblown opinion of people who went/go to the local Catholic schools. Where I grew up, the religious private schools were neither as good at sports or educating kids as well as my public school. I know they are better than APS, but are Hoban, St. V and Walsh, but are they really any better at educating kids than Copley, Hudson, Medina or Stow? Add all of that to ND being a much more important part of college football than it is today, it makes influential people already predisposed to a certain belief that Faust's connection to Moeller and Notre Dame would be enough for success. To me, this is an under explored part of the beginning of the ongoing disaster that is the football program. I'd love to know who was on the BofT at the time and what their personal backgrounds were? We're there influential people around the City/University that has this background and maybe created a predisposition leading to bad decisions? There is a fantastic book to be written around the Akron football since 1986.

Good post. And a kicker who could make an easy game winning FG. The coach is the easiest person to blame because analyzing one person is easier than entire team. Player performance has lost Akron three games they should have never lost, but blame the coach. I'll be all over Joe next year if he doesn't bring in a high quality QB after 3 recruiting seasons. But right now I see player performance as our major problem. Heck, they had an entire defense not show up yesterday. Every one of those guys should be embarrassed.

Good post. The central problem at Akron since 1985 has been culture failure around the football program from the board of trustees to the coaching level. If a book was ever written on how to create and maintain a losing college football program, Akron would be the central character. It would give War and Peace a run for its money in terms of length.

I'm a glass half full guy. At least he didn't run for 22.0 yards per carry.

Agree. However, Sanders produced more than a talent shift. He produced a cultural shift within an organization. The first thing he did was get the players who were complicit in the failure to leave without having to give them the boot. Basically , almost all of them. I don't use this word lightly, but what Sanders has done is truly brilliant. Organizational scholars should be lining up to study what he has done at Colorado and JSU.

The transfer portal makes me think. If schools can boot kids off of teams and replace them producing immediate winning, do schools really need 85ish scholarships? Would't 53 be enough to field a college football team every year? Give 15 partial scholarships to practice squad players. NFL rosters have very large turnover year over year and somehow manage to play games and have winning teams with what are very small rosters.

Don't look now, but Colorado is winning games they should win and is 4-2. Maybe there is something to be said for jettisoning a teams worth of players to change a culture of losing.

Miami and Toledo are currently the class of the MAC. Martin won 2 and 3 games his first two years at Miami. He took over a better program than Akron. Akron is a massive turnaround that can happen with the transfer portal. Martin went 6-6 his third year. All the fire the coach clowns need to get control of their Nihilism.

Keep a list of all the quitters and give them the URL for the Transfer Portal at the end of the year.

The fire the coach crowd is very NE Ohio. Morehead has been here 1.5 years. To fire him now is Browns fans level stupidity.

I think I coined the phrase "The Graveyard of Coaches".

Just checking in. Yikes. See you next week......

Wanna bet?

I've heard this as well. It's a strange conclusion the university would draw considering they are a member of a Conference that purposely cheapens it's product playing on Tuesday and Wednesday nights. The taxpayers of Ohio are paying for Mac sports. I think if a taxpayer of Ohio wants to go to a Mac game, they should get free general admission tickets to a couple of games for any sport they want. I don't think it would be overly difficult to create a program that automatically emailed the vouchers once you filed your taxes. I don't know if the stadiums would fill or not, but at least people would get what they are paying for.

Why can't they do both? During the three minute time out, they can spend 90 seconds recognizing an important member or business of the community for their support in an an organized way in which the crowd can hear and understand what the PA announcer is saying. Then they can spend the other 90 seconds playing music and dancing around. 90 seconds is a long time. Wake Forest manages to do this several times a game. Why can't Akron? It doesn't seem all that difficult. As crazy as this sounds, it almost seems as if Wake Forest spends some time during the week preparing for this activity. Maybe Akron could spend some time during the week organizing. Here is some advice. Step one, write a script to honor someone that lasts 60 seconds allowing 30 seconds for stepping onto the field and waving at the end. Read the script out loud to make sure it fits into the allotted time. If too long, shorten. If too short, add a little. Step two, tell the band and dance team when they will be performing and for how long. They are to prepare materials to last 90 seconds. Practice during the week to make sure everything fits in allotted time slot. If too long, shorten. If too short, add some. There, problem solved. Not everyone is going to pay attention to everything, but if someone does want to pay attention, they can understand what in the heck is going on. It really isn't hard to professionally produce a football game. Akron just makes it more difficult than it needs to be.

The same reasons UNC plays Wake Forest every year regardless except for this season because WF has to squeeze in a trip to Notre Dame. It benefits all the right people. 1. Players and families don't have to travel as far. They get to play familiar faces from high school. Some are from those areas. 2. Students can travel to the game. Easy travel to take the band. 3. Alumni can go watch their school play close to home. Alumni associations can more easily have larger alumni gatherings. 4. Fans can easily drive the two hours between cities and enjoy a day at a game. 5. General communities will see a name they know and be more interested than the Temples of the world. Larger crowd can generate more excitement. If the city leaders had half a brain they could work with the universities to promote the game. Toledo is playing at UMass this weekend. I can't think of a less interesting match up for Toledo fans to think about other than Temple. A trip to Akron for a non conference game would better benefit all of the five categories above. Until the MAC wakes up, eliminates divisions and has 9 conference games per year, I'd like Akron to schedule: FCS, P5, G5, Toledo or in years when the conference schedules Toledo another G5. That is a challenging non conference schedule that prepares a team for conference play.

Every taxpayer in Ohio should get four general admission tickets to two MAC sporting events per year. They a paying for the product and should have access to their publicly funded teams.