GP1

Like I said, when you make the University the centerpiece of activity and community involvement in your region, good things happen. Link. I don't know if Akron does things like this or not, but it can only be helpful to everything going on on campus. Summit County (population 541,000) has a massive population compared to Watauga County, NC (population 56,000). It takes quite the effort to get to Boone. Akron averaging 12,000 per game shouldn't be difficult to achieve. BTW, if you are paying to park in downtown Boone on game day, it's going to cost you around $30.00. I just don't see MAC schools doing enough to make themselves centerpieces of their communities. Maybe I'm just not close enough to it.

Sanity prevailed in the MAC today. There is hope.

Premium parking should have a cost associated. Non premium parking should be free.

Winning is the key to high volume attendance whatever that means. Akron needs to make the campus a center piece of activity in NE Ohio and the football team can be part of it. This is one of many examples I could make. On football Saturdays, organize math, engineering, debate club competitions, etc on campus for (insert grade K-12 here) kids. As part of participation, kids and their families get free GA tickets to the game that will be scheduled at a time close to the end of the kids competition. To me it's more than getting kids to show up for a game. It's about getting community activity at the University and a football game being part of the activity so they want to apply for admission. Professors, grad assistants and students could be judges for these events. There are many great professors, grad assistants and students who could humanize the school for a young kid. Wouldn't it be great if we invited a distinguished alumnus in something like engineering to judge an event? So many possibilities. I'll get off of this by saying we could be doing more than we currently are to not just promote the football team, but the University in conjunction with the team. We can do much better. EDIT:. If we don't do things like I described above, we have abandoned the whole purpose of building a stadium on campus and could have just thrown one up in the grass lot by the Rubber Bowl.

The not winning is difficult to overcome, but I'll try. I don't know that packing the stadium each week is possible. Respectable crowds are possible. The high school student id program is interesting but the free tickets are going to the wrong people. Let's review. MAC athletic departments lose a lot of money. Combined, MAC schools spend more money than the GDP of Somalia. Since the difference is made up by taxpayers, the taxpayers should get the free tickets, meaning adults. The adults go with the kids to the game. Specifically, four general admission tickets to two MAC sporting events per year. If my taxes go towards paying for state run roads, I want to use the roads. We should look at Ohio MAC schools athletic departments the same way. There are a million things they could do and don't. Too much to post. In the end, MAC schools must make themselves a draw to everyone around them. They are great institutions, with the exception of Kent, and they need to use athletics as part of that demonstration.

Ohio State doesn't aspire to ND grade points. I know a 29 year old guy who graduated from the Naval Academy and played football. He'll admit the football players are the dumbest guys on campus and endlessly on the verge of flunking out. He was the smartest kid at his high school and got an A in calculus 2 in 12th grade. Took entry level calculus at the Academy thinking he would get an easy pass and got a C minus. Barely got a D plus to pass chemistry. Navy has been good at football the past 10 years and nobody cares about grades.

A lot of last place finishers have been also. Since we never really know what happens behind closed doors we never know how many at risk kids were helped by a coach who could reach that kid on a level that guided him in the right direction. I'd bet a lot of money every MAC Champion had 2-3 that benefited from a coach like that. When you're holding a trophy above your head, nobody examines this aspect of a team. They are fantastic human interest stories that highlight the way state universities benefit the athletes, students, alumni, fans are general communities where they are.

It's also a win for society to take an at risk kid, bring him along and have him graduate. This is partly why we should expect out of taxpayer funded universities. MAC football programs should benefit the athletes, students, alumni, fans and general communities where they are.

Oh yes. He is producing the same declines as other state universities.

Hopefully a new athletic director makes a good hire. We've hired good and great coaches in the past in other sports. We can do it in football as well if we approach it from the right direction.

Both are solvable problems.

Oh well.... Out of curiosity, how does posting this do anyone any good?

I choose neither. I'd like a coach that can evaluate on the field talent that can graduate from Akron and get the best of those players to sign up with Akron, win on the field and get a degree even at the lowest possible GPA for some. I don't want saints who stink but allow the misguided to wax on about the good old days when there really were "student athletes" all the while the team is winning 3 games a year. I also don't want criminals who fall out leading to 3 win seasons. Somewhere in the middle is a huge pool of potential that can win a mac championship. I also understand that somewhere in between is an at risk kids(s) that a coach has to be able to keep from falling out of line. Ideally I would like a team of saints that can win the Mac. Unfortunately, that is not possible.

He should let the rest of us know where the Foundation of Youth is.

I would like to think so since he is coaching. Is the pay increase from the Owls the the Zips worth a move from Boca Raton to Akron?

Actual coaching is the most overrated thing in college football. Recruiting makes average coaches look good. It's all the other stuff that matters. Mel Tucker added 20 transfers to a halfway decent roster already during the off season and 14 of those were P5 transfers. His genius isn't on field coaching proven by yesterday's results. Purdue is not a very good team It is getting good players or better known as recruiting. Dollard was a problem coming in the door. Would different dynamics around him have produced different results? Like I said, maybe. Success comes from evaluations and recruiting. We need a coach who can connect with really good players on a personal level. Akron can't afford a bunch of guys who just recruit like the big schools do. We need a guy who can grind it out on a daily basis in living rooms, prioritize time with the best opportunities and make the connections necessary to get good players.

Polian is a private school guy from his college days and almost entirely his coaching career. This guy and guys like him simply are not a cultural fit for Akron. It's time for people to snap out of the fantasy that a guy like him can be successful at Akron. He failed in 3 years at a school like Akron in Nevada. I don't care what his philosophy is in a book. He simply isn't the right guy. He's another Notre Dame retread. Everyone, snap out of it. We need the right guy for AKRON.

Change community to recruits.

Yes, but in reality I could care less about ESPN events.

I'd like to replace the word feature with dynamic. For instance, maybe a black head coach has a different type of dynamic with a player like Dollard and is able to guide the kid better. We have failed at guiding at risk kids down the right path too many times to count and we immediately run down an unproductive path that leads to the likes of Ianello or Arth. Maybe we should stop trying to change the players and start changing how coaches interact with the kids. At risk kids want discipline and order. We just need someone better capable of providing it in a way the kids can relate or well end up with another DIII team. I could go on all day about the recruiting benefits of a black coach at Akron so I won't. Want the University to be a center piece in a Midwest city that is over 30% black? Make one of the most visible employees more relatable to the overall community. Everything has to work together.

I've brought up Hunter and Alford as guys who would be a good fit along with Blackburn and Rodriguez. I have not read every post so please forgive me if I'm wrong, but why isn't anyone even considering the possibility of the benefits of a black head coach? Who has Vince Kehres ever recruited that set the world on fire? The recruiting at Mt. Union had to be pretty easy. The guy at Hoban would quickly become a worse version of Arth. It's fun to speculate as fans, but the ultimate decision is an extremely important one. Missing on a hire is extremely expensive in any organization. Akron doesn't need to play lip service to diversity in interviewing by throwing in a couple of token interviews. They need to put action to words and give strong consideration and take the candidates seriously. In the NFL the Steelers did this and have their third in a row Hall of Fame coach.

It would be hard, not impossible, to get and NFL coach. In addition to the earnings potential, NFL guys love not having to recruit.

That's a pretty small pond.

Maybe that Bowling Green, KY media market doesn't get the exposure we are looking for.

Why shouldn't we consider Blackburn for head coach? LBs aren't looked at like this, but he was a better college football player than both Charlie and Luke. Throw in Hixson while you are at it. He also had a good NFL career and is currently the special teams coordinator for the Panthers. Food for thought.