Schedule Now on Gozips.com

[GJGood]

It is actually OK for this year. My bigger concern is, as a 1st year season ticket holder that wants to continue being a season ticket holder, that I want at least 4 Saturday home games. They did it this year, but with 3 straight Fridays it doesn't seem that they are taking my advice (big surprise!!). Why can't the MAC just simply say NO MORE THAN 1 NON-SATURDAY HOME GAME PER TEAM!!!

Because it allows the MAC to get TV time. We aren't getting on TV on Saturday, that's just how it is. Friday, and mid-week games, allow us to get a game or two on ESPN network. That is a big plus for the school. I don't understand why so many people cry about a game behind on the weekday. You have to get up the next morning...ok?...You aren't going to be out there til 1 or 2 am. Im all for whatever gets the school, and this great new stadium, more exposure. Putting every game on Saturday would mean absolutely no national exposure. Which hurts the program.

Buddy, I get that. In my scenario, we get 2 games on National TV (though many don't have ESPNU!!!). And then, hopefully 2 more with MAC Champ and bowl game. Throw in the fact that PSU might be on the main ESPN networks (or Big 10), IU game will be on at the very least Big 10 Net., etc.= plenty of exposure.Andy why do people "cry"? Well, it depends on your situation. I happen to have bought tickets for my family of 4, and it is a heck of a lot tougher to go on a weeknight, especially if it is cold. And, I live 1 hour away. Not to mention, there is nothing better than a college football SATURDAY!!!! There are PLENTY of reasons that weeknights, even Friday nights, suck!!!

I don't know about the Indiana game being on the Big Ten Network. I don't know if anyone lese has notived this, but I have NEVER seen a live sporting event on that network that wasn't a home game for a Big ten school. It is like they are only allowed to broadcast from the 11 campuses and nowhere else.

[xu9697]

This is a schedule that I find hard to like. The opening is great with Morgan State and Indiana at home. But we have only one home game between Indiana on Sept 19 and Can't on Nov 7. How does that build a following? How does that create a football experience at the Info during the best Fall weather of the season? We follow Can't with 3 Friday night games. Not only do we go against the high school games but the weather will get progressively colder and possibly bring more precipitation. Loyalty is not built during lousy weather. I don't know what say we had in this, but I do think that the MAC has screwed things up once again just to get on ESPNU or ESPN360, channels that are carried in 1% of households. Real smart move MAC office! Meanwhile we once again lose a game against Miami, which was a budding rivalry. Another reason to get out of the MAC. I would love going to C-USA. But don't get me started on that rant again.

5 Fall Saturdays= 1 home game. Miami has a terrible schedule in so many ways, but they have 3 fall Saturday games.I do think this schedule could have been much worse. I do like most of the schedule up until November (one more October Saturday home game would have made it awesome!). MAC selling out as ESPN's biatch in November every year is just disgusting.

[Roo]

It is actually OK for this year. My bigger concern is, as a 1st year season ticket holder that wants to continue being a season ticket holder, that I want at least 4 Saturday home games. They did it this year, but with 3 straight Fridays it doesn't seem that they are taking my advice (big surprise!!). Why can't the MAC just simply say NO MORE THAN 1 NON-SATURDAY HOME GAME PER TEAM!!!

Because it allows the MAC to get TV time. We aren't getting on TV on Saturday, that's just how it is. Friday, and mid-week games, allow us to get a game or two on ESPN network. That is a big plus for the school. I don't understand why so many people cry about a game behind on the weekday. You have to get up the next morning...ok?...You aren't going to be out there til 1 or 2 am. Im all for whatever gets the school, and this great new stadium, more exposure. Putting every game on Saturday would mean absolutely no national exposure. Which hurts the program.

People cry about a weekday game because some people need to travel from a long distance to get to the game. I used to have to travel 4 hours to get to Akron. People have limited amounts of vacation time and are forced to burn it because some prick in Cleveland thinks it's more important for the Zips to be on some side screen at BW3 in St Louis. People also have kids and can't tailgate before the game because the kids who have activities during the week. I know, I know, I should just suck it up and buy season tickets and miss the games so those guys totally hammered in St. Louis can spend 3 seconds looking up at the screen and say "What's a Zip?"

That's great that you travel to see the Zips, but I would venture to say that you are in the very small percentile of fans that would have that issue. We are looking for students and the Akron area to fill the stands. Face it, kids want exposure. I could care less about some fan in St Louis wondering what a Zip is, I am concerned when a kid from Florida gets a letter from Akron wondering what the hell kind of joke that is because they never play on TV.

[Z.I.P.]

The opening is great with Morgan State

You can all expect to start seeing billboards across the Buckeye state with '72's poetic statement any day now. And he can expect to get the same cut of the action I got for "Fear the Roo!".

[Roo]

This is a schedule that I find hard to like. The opening is great with Morgan State and Indiana at home. But we have only one home game between Indiana on Sept 19 and Can't on Nov 7. How does that build a following? How does that create a football experience at the Info during the best Fall weather of the season? We follow Can't with 3 Friday night games. Not only do we go against the high school games but the weather will get progressively colder and possibly bring more precipitation. Loyalty is not built during lousy weather. I don't know what say we had in this, but I do think that the MAC has screwed things up once again just to get on ESPNU or ESPN360, channels that are carried in 1% of households. Real smart move MAC office! Meanwhile we once again lose a game against Miami, which was a budding rivalry. Another reason to get out of the MAC. I would love going to C-USA. But don't get me started on that rant again.

We can't compete in the MAC and you want this program to be the doormat for the CUSA? Marshall dominated the MAC and went to the CUSA and have gone 4-8, 3-9, 5-7, and 4-7. What do you think is going to happen to Akron?People need to realize what Akron is, people are out here thinking we can compete with Penn St and the Big Ten and we should be in CUSA.....we need to compete in the MAC before we think about competing with good programs.

[g-mann17]

This is a schedule that I find hard to like. The opening is great with Morgan State and Indiana at home. But we have only one home game between Indiana on Sept 19 and Can't on Nov 7. How does that build a following? How does that create a football experience at the Info during the best Fall weather of the season? We follow Can't with 3 Friday night games. Not only do we go against the high school games but the weather will get progressively colder and possibly bring more precipitation. Loyalty is not built during lousy weather. I don't know what say we had in this, but I do think that the MAC has screwed things up once again just to get on ESPNU or ESPN360, channels that are carried in 1% of households. Real smart move MAC office! Meanwhile we once again lose a game against Miami, which was a budding rivalry. Another reason to get out of the MAC. I would love going to C-USA. But don't get me started on that rant again.

We can't compete in the MAC and you want this program to be the doormat for the CUSA? Marshall dominated the MAC and went to the CUSA and have gone 4-8, 3-9, 5-7, and 4-7. What do you think is going to happen to Akron?People need to realize what Akron is, people are out here thinking we can compete with Penn St and the Big Ten and we should be in CUSA.....we need to compete in the MAC before we think about competing with good programs.

And you need to realize that we do compete in the MAC. We were 8 points away from being 8-4 this year. We nearly beat the Big East Champions, we made Syracuse look like rightfully like the bottom of FBS. If you keep thinking small time and letting the fact that a couple things don't go your way in a given year, you are always going to be small time. Futility is not a team that has been D-1 for all of 20 years and has recently garnered enough respect to be able to recruit talent get 10's of millions of dollars in donations to fund facility improvements and been to a bowl game in the last 4 years. No futility is being a D-1 football program for the entirity of existance and having your most notable season being in 1972.Marshall was failing as they left the MAC and hell UCF went 0-12 they just won a C-USA tile last year or the year before. So the "can't compete" argument is pretty useless. Cincinnati won a C-USA title once (2002) and they just went to the Orange Bowl.

[RACER]

if the friday night games are on espn,or espn2 then it's worth the exposure. having the games on just espnu is a joke.why not just have the games on saturday instead.how does having a game on friday that nobody can see nationally help the program?it's funny how some fans are predicting 8 wins from this schedule.people forget we lost our last three games last year,and temple was the last one.we will most likely lose to penn state.the only game where we will be big favorites is morgan state.i think the team might win 6 gamesif we play like last year.anything after that will depend on how much the defense improves,andthe health of our running backs.i just don't see us winning 8 games this year.we lost to temple last yearwhich is one of the worst programs in d-1.this team proved last year we can lose to any team in d-1.

[Roo]

This is a schedule that I find hard to like. The opening is great with Morgan State and Indiana at home. But we have only one home game between Indiana on Sept 19 and Can't on Nov 7. How does that build a following? How does that create a football experience at the Info during the best Fall weather of the season? We follow Can't with 3 Friday night games. Not only do we go against the high school games but the weather will get progressively colder and possibly bring more precipitation. Loyalty is not built during lousy weather. I don't know what say we had in this, but I do think that the MAC has screwed things up once again just to get on ESPNU or ESPN360, channels that are carried in 1% of households. Real smart move MAC office! Meanwhile we once again lose a game against Miami, which was a budding rivalry. Another reason to get out of the MAC. I would love going to C-USA. But don't get me started on that rant again.

We can't compete in the MAC and you want this program to be the doormat for the CUSA? Marshall dominated the MAC and went to the CUSA and have gone 4-8, 3-9, 5-7, and 4-7. What do you think is going to happen to Akron?People need to realize what Akron is, people are out here thinking we can compete with Penn St and the Big Ten and we should be in CUSA.....we need to compete in the MAC before we think about competing with good programs.

And you need to realize that we do compete in the MAC. We were 8 points away from being 8-4 this year. We nearly beat the Big East Champions, we made Syracuse look like rightfully like the bottom of FBS. If you keep thinking small time and letting the fact that a couple things don't go your way in a given year, you are always going to be small time. Futility is not a team that has been D-1 for all of 20 years and has recently garnered enough respect to be able to recruit talent get 10's of millions of dollars in donations to fund facility improvements and been to a bowl game in the last 4 years. No futility is being a D-1 football program for the entirity of existance and having your most notable season being in 1972.Marshall was failing as they left the MAC and hell UCF went 0-12 they just won a C-USA tile last year or the year before. So the "can't compete" argument is pretty useless. Cincinnati won a C-USA title once (2002) and they just went to the Orange Bowl.

How do we compete in the MAC? How many winning seasons has this program had? How many bowl games? How many MAC titles?We most certainly do not compete in the MAC. Cinci had the perfect storm of a season, they have never shown that can consistently be a winner. Neither has UCF.Why do people want to be bottom dwellers and hope for a perfect storm of a season every now and then in the CUSA? That's not even a great conference to begin with.This program needs to focus on what it can do to recruit the kind of players to be sitting at the top of the MAC year in and year out. Right now, this program hasn't recruited the players needed to have consecutive winning seasons...We beat a horrible Syracuse team and we lost to an ok Cinci team and we want to make jumps to a bigger conference? People are guaranteeing a win against a soso Big Ten team that curb stomped us two years ago, we need to come back to earth.Lets just hope we are competitive this year, have a winning season, compete for the MAC title and hopefully get a bowl game before we worry about being doormates for a below avg conference when we can't even compete in a bad football conference.

[Zipsrifle]

It is actually OK for this year. My bigger concern is, as a 1st year season ticket holder that wants to continue being a season ticket holder, that I want at least 4 Saturday home games. They did it this year, but with 3 straight Fridays it doesn't seem that they are taking my advice (big surprise!!). Why can't the MAC just simply say NO MORE THAN 1 NON-SATURDAY HOME GAME PER TEAM!!!

Because it allows the MAC to get TV time. We aren't getting on TV on Saturday, that's just how it is. Friday, and mid-week games, allow us to get a game or two on ESPN network. That is a big plus for the school. I don't understand why so many people cry about a game behind on the weekday. You have to get up the next morning...ok?...You aren't going to be out there til 1 or 2 am. Im all for whatever gets the school, and this great new stadium, more exposure. Putting every game on Saturday would mean absolutely no national exposure. Which hurts the program.

People cry about a weekday game because some people need to travel from a long distance to get to the game. I used to have to travel 4 hours to get to Akron. People have limited amounts of vacation time and are forced to burn it because some prick in Cleveland thinks it's more important for the Zips to be on some side screen at BW3 in St Louis. People also have kids and can't tailgate before the game because the kids who have activities during the week. I know, I know, I should just suck it up and buy season tickets and miss the games so those guys totally hammered in St. Louis can spend 3 seconds looking up at the screen and say "What's a Zip?"

That's great that you travel to see the Zips, but I would venture to say that you are in the very small percentile of fans that would have that issue. We are looking for students and the Akron area to fill the stands. Face it, kids want exposure. I could care less about some fan in St Louis wondering what a Zip is, I am concerned when a kid from Florida gets a letter from Akron wondering what the hell kind of joke that is because they never play on TV.

OK, so now I live an hour away. My previous points are still valid. And why do I care what some kid in Florida thinks? Seriously, he probably doesn't have ESPNU and if he does, he sure as hell isn't watching it on a Friday night....he's playing football! What about all those other recruits that come for a visit on a weeknight and see an empty stadium? Do you think they are going to be more swayed by the game being on ESPNU or by walking into a shiny, new, packed stadium on a beautiful fall afternoon that is rocking??

[72 Roo]

This is a schedule that I find hard to like. The opening is great with Morgan State and Indiana at home. But we have only one home game between Indiana on Sept 19 and Can't on Nov 7. How does that build a following? How does that create a football experience at the Info during the best Fall weather of the season? We follow Can't with 3 Friday night games. Not only do we go against the high school games but the weather will get progressively colder and possibly bring more precipitation. Loyalty is not built during lousy weather. I don't know what say we had in this, but I do think that the MAC has screwed things up once again just to get on ESPNU or ESPN360, channels that are carried in 1% of households. Real smart move MAC office! Meanwhile we once again lose a game against Miami, which was a budding rivalry. Another reason to get out of the MAC. I would love going to C-USA. But don't get me started on that rant again.

We can't compete in the MAC and you want this program to be the doormat for the CUSA? Marshall dominated the MAC and went to the CUSA and have gone 4-8, 3-9, 5-7, and 4-7. What do you think is going to happen to Akron?People need to realize what Akron is, people are out here thinking we can compete with Penn St and the Big Ten and we should be in CUSA.....we need to compete in the MAC before we think about competing with good programs.

And you need to realize that we do compete in the MAC. We were 8 points away from being 8-4 this year. We nearly beat the Big East Champions, we made Syracuse look like rightfully like the bottom of FBS. If you keep thinking small time and letting the fact that a couple things don't go your way in a given year, you are always going to be small time. Futility is not a team that has been D-1 for all of 20 years and has recently garnered enough respect to be able to recruit talent get 10's of millions of dollars in donations to fund facility improvements and been to a bowl game in the last 4 years. No futility is being a D-1 football program for the entirity of existance and having your most notable season being in 1972.Marshall was failing as they left the MAC and hell UCF went 0-12 they just won a C-USA tile last year or the year before. So the "can't compete" argument is pretty useless. Cincinnati won a C-USA title once (2002) and they just went to the Orange Bowl.

How do we compete in the MAC? How many winning seasons has this program had? How many bowl games? How many MAC titles?We most certainly do not compete in the MAC. Cinci had the perfect storm of a season, they have never shown that can consistently be a winner. Neither has UCF.Why do people want to be bottom dwellers and hope for a perfect storm of a season every now and then in the CUSA? That's not even a great conference to begin with.This program needs to focus on what it can do to recruit the kind of players to be sitting at the top of the MAC year in and year out. Right now, this program hasn't recruited the players needed to have consecutive winning seasons...We beat a horrible Syracuse team and we lost to an ok Cinci team and we want to make jumps to a bigger conference? People are guaranteeing a win against a soso Big Ten team that curb stomped us two years ago, we need to come back to earth.Lets just hope we are competitive this year, have a winning season, compete for the MAC title and hopefully get a bowl game before we worry about being doormates for a below avg conference when we can't even compete in a bad football conference.

It's called vision. Many in Akron are not used to it, but it is nonetheless there and growing stronger every year. Of course we need to dominate the MAC. Come on, everyone agrees to that. But what comes afterward? No MAC team travels well with fans. Marshall did as you could expect 6-8K every game. We needto be that type of program. Once there we will need a bigger stage. CUSA seems the most feasible to me, but conferences are changing and we must be in position to take advantage of positive growth when it is offered. Continued membership in the MAC will always limit a program's potential. If we can outgrow it I say embrace it.Until we are ready for the leap we must do all to get our house in order. That means build a fan base, bring fans to away games, create high performance expectations i.e. tradition of winning, build facilities and be a program the public wants to see (especially TV). If we do that new conferences will seek us out. As KD tells his team every year "Think big" and prepare then to make it happen. We should have a strategic plan that covers 5, 10 and 15 year goals. One of those goals should be improving conference affiliation.

[GP1]

if the friday night games are on espn,or espn2 then it's worth the exposure. having the games on just espnu is a joke.why not just have the games on saturday instead.how does having a game on friday that nobody can see nationally help the program?

I agree about the Friday games. I will also continue to argue that nationally televised games during the week (other than Thrs. Night ESPN) has been bad for the conference. The more the average fan sees the MAC, the less they like watching it. College football is made for Saturdays. We now have a beautiful new stadium. Play the darn games in the afternoon (noon is best), so people can go to a game on a nice luke warm fall afternoon with their family, walk around campus, visit local restaurants and enjoy some football. Enough with the night games already.......

[Blue & Gold]

Conference USA doesn't excite me much. Is it a better football conference than the MAC? Yes. But I think we'd be better off being the Boise State of the MAC than jumping conferences. Here is the list of C-USA schools: East Carolina Houston Marshall Memphis Rice SMU Southern Miss Tulane Tulsa UAB UCF UTEPSorry, but doesn't that just strike you as a pretty lame conference? And it's SOOO spread out!!! On a purely practical note, our traveling expenses would skyrocket. But on a more fan-friendly note, who would our rival(s) be? Who would you love to hate? Marshall is the only natural rival on that list. (As an aside, Marshall was on the way down just as they were leaving the MAC, so I wouldn't read too much into their lack of success in C-USA. Those Chad Pennington, Randy Moss, Byron Leftwich Marshall teams would have rolled C-USA just like they rolled the MAC.)In the MAC we have many natural rivals: Can't Miami Ohio Toledo BuffaloWouldn't you rather love to hate those guys than UAB, UTEP or Rice?Again, IMHO if we rule the MAC the Info would be packed - every game. People love to be associated with a winner - see our 15 minutes of glory when we won the MACC. We need sustained success. People need to be secure and confident that if they invest emotionally in the Zips then they are going to get a return on their emotional investment - not a discouraged, broken heart (which diehards like us don't understand - that's why we're diehards! That's why I love you guys!!!)If we could become the big dog MAC daddy that everyone feared - ala, the Boise State of the MAC - people would be proud as a peacock (jeez, that's what my grandpa used to say) to associate themselves with the Zips and folks would flock to the Info and the JAR.

[Zipsrifle]

This is a schedule that I find hard to like. The opening is great with Morgan State and Indiana at home. But we have only one home game between Indiana on Sept 19 and Can't on Nov 7. How does that build a following? How does that create a football experience at the Info during the best Fall weather of the season? We follow Can't with 3 Friday night games. Not only do we go against the high school games but the weather will get progressively colder and possibly bring more precipitation. Loyalty is not built during lousy weather. I don't know what say we had in this, but I do think that the MAC has screwed things up once again just to get on ESPNU or ESPN360, channels that are carried in 1% of households. Real smart move MAC office! Meanwhile we once again lose a game against Miami, which was a budding rivalry. Another reason to get out of the MAC. I would love going to C-USA. But don't get me started on that rant again.

We can't compete in the MAC and you want this program to be the doormat for the CUSA? Marshall dominated the MAC and went to the CUSA and have gone 4-8, 3-9, 5-7, and 4-7. What do you think is going to happen to Akron?People need to realize what Akron is, people are out here thinking we can compete with Penn St and the Big Ten and we should be in CUSA.....we need to compete in the MAC before we think about competing with good programs.

And you need to realize that we do compete in the MAC. We were 8 points away from being 8-4 this year. We nearly beat the Big East Champions, we made Syracuse look like rightfully like the bottom of FBS. If you keep thinking small time and letting the fact that a couple things don't go your way in a given year, you are always going to be small time. Futility is not a team that has been D-1 for all of 20 years and has recently garnered enough respect to be able to recruit talent get 10's of millions of dollars in donations to fund facility improvements and been to a bowl game in the last 4 years. No futility is being a D-1 football program for the entirity of existance and having your most notable season being in 1972.Marshall was failing as they left the MAC and hell UCF went 0-12 they just won a C-USA tile last year or the year before. So the "can't compete" argument is pretty useless. Cincinnati won a C-USA title once (2002) and they just went to the Orange Bowl.

How do we compete in the MAC? How many winning seasons has this program had? How many bowl games? How many MAC titles?We most certainly do not compete in the MAC. Cinci had the perfect storm of a season, they have never shown that can consistently be a winner. Neither has UCF.Why do people want to be bottom dwellers and hope for a perfect storm of a season every now and then in the CUSA? That's not even a great conference to begin with.This program needs to focus on what it can do to recruit the kind of players to be sitting at the top of the MAC year in and year out. Right now, this program hasn't recruited the players needed to have consecutive winning seasons...We beat a horrible Syracuse team and we lost to an ok Cinci team and we want to make jumps to a bigger conference? People are guaranteeing a win against a soso Big Ten team that curb stomped us two years ago, we need to come back to earth.Lets just hope we are competitive this year, have a winning season, compete for the MAC title and hopefully get a bowl game before we worry about being doormates for a below avg conference when we can't even compete in a bad football conference.

It's called vision. Many in Akron are not used to it, but it is nonetheless there and growing stronger every year. Of course we need to dominate the MAC. Come on, everyone agrees to that. But what comes afterward? No MAC team travels well with fans. Marshall did as you could expect 6-8K every game. We needto be that type of program. Once there we will need a bigger stage. CUSA seems the most feasible to me, but conferences are changing and we must be in position to take advantage of positive growth when it is offered. Continued membership in the MAC will always limit a program's potential. If we can outgrow it I say embrace it.Until we are ready for the leap we must do all to get our house in order. That means build a fan base, bring fans to away games, create high performance expectations i.e. tradition of winning, build facilities and be a program the public wants to see (especially TV). If we do that new conferences will seek us out. As KD tells his team every year "Think big" and prepare then to make it happen. We should have a strategic plan that covers 5, 10 and 15 year goals. One of those goals should be improving conference affiliation.

I didn't feel Cinci traveled that well this year. Better than a MAC school, yes, but not what I would expect from a BE School. I think the "Travel" factor is partially dictated by those who don't really travel. Lets face it, there are TONS of Michigan fans out there and when Michigan plays Northwestern, I think all the Michigan fans in Chicago show up. How would Akron achieve this?? Well, I agree it would be difficult in the MAC, and probably in CUSA. I think we'd really have to make some noise for a few years before this would kick in. I don't see that happening for a while to be honest.

[Roo]

This is a schedule that I find hard to like. The opening is great with Morgan State and Indiana at home. But we have only one home game between Indiana on Sept 19 and Can't on Nov 7. How does that build a following? How does that create a football experience at the Info during the best Fall weather of the season? We follow Can't with 3 Friday night games. Not only do we go against the high school games but the weather will get progressively colder and possibly bring more precipitation. Loyalty is not built during lousy weather. I don't know what say we had in this, but I do think that the MAC has screwed things up once again just to get on ESPNU or ESPN360, channels that are carried in 1% of households. Real smart move MAC office! Meanwhile we once again lose a game against Miami, which was a budding rivalry. Another reason to get out of the MAC. I would love going to C-USA. But don't get me started on that rant again.

We can't compete in the MAC and you want this program to be the doormat for the CUSA? Marshall dominated the MAC and went to the CUSA and have gone 4-8, 3-9, 5-7, and 4-7. What do you think is going to happen to Akron?People need to realize what Akron is, people are out here thinking we can compete with Penn St and the Big Ten and we should be in CUSA.....we need to compete in the MAC before we think about competing with good programs.

And you need to realize that we do compete in the MAC. We were 8 points away from being 8-4 this year. We nearly beat the Big East Champions, we made Syracuse look like rightfully like the bottom of FBS. If you keep thinking small time and letting the fact that a couple things don't go your way in a given year, you are always going to be small time. Futility is not a team that has been D-1 for all of 20 years and has recently garnered enough respect to be able to recruit talent get 10's of millions of dollars in donations to fund facility improvements and been to a bowl game in the last 4 years. No futility is being a D-1 football program for the entirity of existance and having your most notable season being in 1972.Marshall was failing as they left the MAC and hell UCF went 0-12 they just won a C-USA tile last year or the year before. So the "can't compete" argument is pretty useless. Cincinnati won a C-USA title once (2002) and they just went to the Orange Bowl.

How do we compete in the MAC? How many winning seasons has this program had? How many bowl games? How many MAC titles?We most certainly do not compete in the MAC. Cinci had the perfect storm of a season, they have never shown that can consistently be a winner. Neither has UCF.Why do people want to be bottom dwellers and hope for a perfect storm of a season every now and then in the CUSA? That's not even a great conference to begin with.This program needs to focus on what it can do to recruit the kind of players to be sitting at the top of the MAC year in and year out. Right now, this program hasn't recruited the players needed to have consecutive winning seasons...We beat a horrible Syracuse team and we lost to an ok Cinci team and we want to make jumps to a bigger conference? People are guaranteeing a win against a soso Big Ten team that curb stomped us two years ago, we need to come back to earth.Lets just hope we are competitive this year, have a winning season, compete for the MAC title and hopefully get a bowl game before we worry about being doormates for a below avg conference when we can't even compete in a bad football conference.

It's called vision. Many in Akron are not used to it, but it is nonetheless there and growing stronger every year. Of course we need to dominate the MAC. Come on, everyone agrees to that. But what comes afterward? No MAC team travels well with fans. Marshall did as you could expect 6-8K every game. We needto be that type of program. Once there we will need a bigger stage. CUSA seems the most feasible to me, but conferences are changing and we must be in position to take advantage of positive growth when it is offered. Continued membership in the MAC will always limit a program's potential. If we can outgrow it I say embrace it.Until we are ready for the leap we must do all to get our house in order. That means build a fan base, bring fans to away games, create high performance expectations i.e. tradition of winning, build facilities and be a program the public wants to see (especially TV). If we do that new conferences will seek us out. As KD tells his team every year "Think big" and prepare then to make it happen. We should have a strategic plan that covers 5, 10 and 15 year goals. One of those goals should be improving conference affiliation.

I agree almost 100%This is exactly what I am saying. There are people that are wanting to move out of the MAC NOW, like that is going to make a difference in our program, and I think it will set us way way back. But I agree with ya.I also agree with Blue and Gold.If we are looking to get out of the MAC, CUSA is not the way to do it. We need to hope we can build our basketball and football team up to the point to where we can compete in the Big East. That is the only conference move that makes sense. We can be a national power in Soccer. We can be competitive in basketball and with the right recruits, we can be right in the middle of the pack with the football teams.But even then, I would rather take the above approach and dominate the MAC and be a winner. It may not be a big conference, but Id take winning year in and year out rather than moving to the BE or CUSA and having up and down years, which would be the best we could hope for if switching conferences.I dont think it is unrealistic to say that Akron can dominate the MAC in Soccer, Basketball and Football every single year. I think that is a very realistic goal to achieve.