GP1

The Toledo AD can put an actual great idea on his resume.

That's OK. The idea goes past most people because most people think of reasons why things can't be done. So, why don't we play Toledo every year?

OK. I understand. I'm still confused though. Please help me. Why don't we play Toledo every year?

Commenting to both of your comments. First one, you would think the they could develop a rivalry. I have an idea. Let's first crawl. Just declare it a rivalry. Years ago, the mayor of Atlanta inserted the word "international" into the name of their airport and they didn't have a single international flight at the time. Today, I believe it is the busiest airport in the world with it's own international terminal. It's all so simple. The one I quoted. Why not give YSU the boot and play Toledo every year? Playing YSU is Mickey Mouse. I know this because it is the kind of idea Terry Pluto would think was a good idea. Akron would, at that point, play every Ohio MAC school every year. Not to be a jerk, but your last paragraph over complicates the issue. It isn't that hard. The AD of Toledo and the AD of Akron get together and contract an annual game against one another. Does this sound impossible? If anyone would like, I can provide an example of a case where it worked perfectly, last season. Schools like ours never think outside of the box in a realistic manner.

I'm still waiting. Some help please.

The post from Pluto above has really rubbed my rear end the wrong way. I'm trying to keep my comments isolated to the athletic department as the football team just drives me insane, but I'll try to post about the football team anyhow without going insane. Why do people like Pluto look at a situation and always compare what goes on at Akron to OSU? Extreme thinking is not what we need. Extreme thinking is frequently magical thinking. There are better comparisons to many other schools. Crawl-walk-run. Why can't we start with being like Northwestern in comparison? They were a horrible program until 2000 and are respectable now. They have been through two coaches and have remained good. Their fans aren't even that picky. Committed coaching, a few solid players committed to the program, some confidence and the inevitable choking of your opponent if you can keep from shooting yourself in the foot is just about all it takes to get to 6-8 wins as a MAC team and be a favorite to win your division. Friends, family, the community and alumni are happy....what's not to like? There has not been a Clemson of the MAC for a long time now. At least since Roethlisberger was at Miami. The league is there for the taking if you can just do those four extremely basic things. “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.” - Sun Tzu. I ask you my fellow Zips/G5 fans, do we know who our enemies are? Do we know ourselves? Are we relying on magical thinking too much and if we just stopped could we win where and at what we want to do? I'd love a discussion where we define our enemies because I think the first on those lists should be the athletic directors at our schools. They are without a doubt the biggest problem we have. Future big picture decisions of our leagues should not include ADs. Their only job should be to push the paper. G5 ADs are blithering morons who only have their sights set on their next job and will make one bad decision after another for the schools they work at to get their next job.

Uh, no. Pluto is ignorant of the landscape of college athletics and should not be posting such ignorance. He is now, always has been and always will be the guy who misreads every situation. The guy has been a plague on the sports fans of NE Ohio for decades now. The answer is not "what's the best way to give up?". The question is, "how do schools like us to maximize our potential?". I don't believe that is dropping down a division. It might be creating our own division/conference/whatever, but it isn't dropping down. If the benchmark for whether or not schools make money with their athletic departments determines their level of football, there would only be around 20 high level football teams. If it all narrowed down to money, there should be no college athletics at all, which is never going to happen because so many traditions in the USA revolve around it. College athletics would become club sports. Besides, if we made a unilateral move, who would want us? Is the commissioner of the powerhouse Pioneer League putting on his best 1970s era polyester suit, getting in his Honda Fit, driving to Akron and begging us to join over a lunch at Rockne's? Some people really need to put some thought in to this and it can't be people like Terry Pluto or worse, the athletic directors who got us in this mess. Ask the right questions, you get the right answers.

"You only find out who is swimming naked when the tide goes out." - Warren Buffett

Nice schedule. I have one question. How come Toledo isn't on the schedule every year?

I wrote a great post about this and lost it. In summary: OSU could afford to pay out $5 million. P5 schools not as flush as OSU are getting more creative and it doesn't include G5. Wake and UNC play football in ooc games and fans love it. This was the best part. It's about creating a great experience for fans and alumni of both schools so the contract between them makes sense. The game last year was freaking awesome. We should figure out ways to create a great experience for our fans and another school's fans similar to Wake vs. UNC. Hint: Toledo is two hours away. Why are we not scheduling them in years we are not scheduled to play them in the MAC on a nice late summer afternoon or evening? Fans need to stop counting ticket revenue. It's never going to add up. YSU is not a good replacement for Toledo in my scenario. Such a good post lost to the internet.....

He could have quietly requested the AD to do this then discussed the findings once he had more information. There are employees who make their living at UofA who are more uncertain about their futures and have no idea what's going on. Also, imagine how other schools can use this to recruit against us.

Only OSU isn't selling out their stadium for these games. Norte Dame isn't selling out games. Wake Forest doesn't sell out games. South Carolina doesn't sell out these G5 games. The face value of my Wake Forest vs. Clemson/Notre Dame/UNC tickets are much higher than for Utah State. They can charge more for ooc games against other P5 teams. The tickets are chump change anyhow. The real money is in television rights. Selling television is the key.

Scott Scarborough came from Texas A&M and he flamed out spectacularly during a period of prosperity in the USA. Miller's ham handed approach to this issue was bad form. My guess is a lot more university presidents are going to be in the same position in the near future.

My brother has two very close friends at schools you would know and one of the guys is a well known coach so I won't say where or who they are. Both at different schools, different conferences. Neither believes there will be a college football season next year and if there is there will be no non-conference games with a shortened season. Physical conditioning requires football to be a year around sport. One month of weight lifting followed by one month of practice is simply not going to be enough.

Your gut is increasingly looking to be correct. These games are not selling out. If nobody would buy a ticket to one, why would they watch it on TV? Speaking for myself, I have little interest in college football in September because the games are so lopsided. If I don't have tickets to Wake Forest, I go to the beach in September and October as they are the best months to go. OSU and Notre Dame are not selling out these games so TV becomes even more important as a revenue stream and if you can sell out, even better. The real money is in television, not ticket sales. By going on their own, they can play each other, sell out stadiums and charge more for TV as the potential TV draw is better. They win no matter what. That's their game though. How do we win with what we have is what I am interested in examining. Is it with them? Is it without them? Is there a combination where a separation takes place with contractual agreements to come together at certain points? Do we need the dead weigh of IAA, D2 and D3? I don't know these answers. If we don't look at this now, we are doing ourselves a disservice.

Agree, but we had better be read when it happens. I would also like a committee to explore what G5 schools do if it does NOT happen.

Thanks. I mean it in a good way. The My Pillow guy is a huge success story. The Title IX issue can be worked around with some challenges mostly having to do with politics. All we would have to do is be government compliant. There are over 60 G5 schools with most being state schools which would give us some legislative political support as well so we have some strength. We could put together a Title IX compliance plan and take it to the government, get their input, negotiate a resolution and proceed with the agreement. Part of the committee I propose could have a sub committee to deal with this issue and we could have a lawyer who specializes in civil rights head it up.

http://www.ncaa.org/about/who-we-are/membership/divisional-differences-and-history-multidivision-classification No, it's really the other way. Whatever took place before that was something schools did on their own, which shows how schools can get together without the NCAA and organize themselves.

If the P5 schools dump the NCAA, which they should and the idea is being openly discussed in the mainstream sports media, it won't matter if there are 600 divisions. There will no longer be an NCAA. The NCAA is almost entirely funded by March Madness and when that dries up, so will the NCAA. What if the P5 conferences start their own league/conference/division, whatever you want to call it? I think it would be nice to have a separate league with the other G5 conferences that could enter into various contractual agreement with these schools to compete against one another on terms that are best for G5 schools. I know this is hard for people to believe, but years ago colleges played each other in sports and there was no NCAA. Additionally, it wasn't until 1973 that the NCAA started divisions. That's in my lifetime. The NCAA was founded in 1906. There were more years of no divisions than with divisions. The point is, without the NCAA and their divisions, schools will find a way to contract games against one another and college football can thrive in that environment. That is just a fact. College football was waaaay more popular than the NFL until the mid 50s before divisions. Wouldn't it be nice if we could find a smart way to align ourselves with a group of like in kind schools and maximize our potential in this environment?

None of this maximizes our potential. I would be with CK only I'm basically out of caring about the football program. Our program is a mess right now. I watch those weeknight games until nausea sinks in, which doesn't take long, and what I see is not even MAC level football. I don't know how any of you go to the games. I really don't. The only reason I posted was because ideas are being kicked around the University about the future and we tend to not do this very well. Someone posted about the MVC which amounts to rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. No thanks. Retreat is not what we need. In military terms, the word "retreat" is not used. Retreat is running from a fight. They now call it "breaking contact". You break contact until you figure a way to move forward with reinforcements or a new strategy. Right now we need to think about how we and those like us can break contact, get our poop together and then make contact with the public (not P5 schools in football). How bored am I? I'm typing about the Zips while about to go watch a past Belk Bowl with Wake Forest I was at while listening to Yacht Rock Radio. I'm so ashamed. This is pathetic.

It's little more than saying "Make Akron Sports Great Again". We've already tried magical thinking and it doesn't work. Besides, I wouldn't want to be a D2 program in the next few years because they are sure to be on the chopping block. If you think our athletic department is stupid, ...... Almost no athletic departments in P5 conferences make a profit. In fact there is around a handful. What we do know is athletic directors have misrepresented financial potential in the past decade or so and taxpayers have been willing to pick up the difference because things have been so good. That may or may not continue. We need to be prepared for what happens if they do not in the context of our changing society and how much taxpayers are willing to pay for athletics if they are willing to pay something. The challenges are far beyond debating how much to charge for a ticket or parking pass. There is something out there for us and schools like us and if it is ALL about money, we'll fail again. It needs to be figured out before others without our interests in mind figure it out for us. Crawl-Walk-Run

I don't care if he approves or not either. I would be interested in him answering a simple question because I think it would shine a light on ideas for us competing well with what we have to offer. How did you take a small, midwest company and make it one of the best and well known small to mid size manufacturers in the country? He's our My Pillow guy.

Unfortunately, the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. A committee of like in kind schools is the only way UofA can save itself from almost certain disaster acting unilaterally.

It sure is and it's not just us. First thing first. How did the MAC and conferences like ours get worse over the past 10 years at least? I would love to see any committee answer this question first. "Con men"? What does this word actually mean? Well, it is short for "confidence men". Confidence men say things and posture themselves in a way that make those vulnerable to their ideas believe the con men are capable of accomplishing what they say they can do even if it is complete BS. Lends itself to magical thinking disguised as "big ideas". "If you build it they will come" falls in to this category. This works if you build a baseball field in Iowa with ghosts walking out of the corn in a Hollywood movie staring two great actors centering the story around Baby Boomer angst. It pretty much fails everywhere else though. Even Ohio State and Notre Dame of all places have failed to sell out games in their palaces of stadiums in very recent years, probably because people don't want to watch the game from a seat that makes the game look like you are looking at a satellite image. Vulnerable is the key word above. Schools like ours were very vulnerable to the magical thinking of athletic directors (con men) years ago. New stadiums, bloated athletic department and more stadiums bankrupted schools in the hopes they could field teams that could one day compete against the big boys. When that failed, they moved to TV contracts promising "exposure" which has turned out to be a disaster. Man did these cocktails taste good at the time, but now we are sitting around with one of the biggest hangovers in history and the ADs who caused it aren't even around anymore to hand us a glass of water and some Advil. But, here we are. Let's face reality and get moving forward. Most importantly, let's not make the exact same mistakes again.

I'm looking forward to writing an obituary for the NCAA. Mrs. GP1 is as blissfully happy as ever because of being lucky enough to be married to me.