Where does the axe fall next?

[Lee Adams]

Can't say the events of the past couple of days are surprising. The new Prez came in,looked around and didn't like what Proenza had left him. Its a shame that students are getting it up the wazoo for all the fluff that has been accumulated not only in the Athletic Department but all over campus.

I'll bet Dambrot and Bowden are already looking. They have obviously seen what is going on. They may not want to hang around to see the finale of this movie. Can't imagine that if the football program doesn't show some progress on the field there will not be further repercussions.

[akronzips71]

I am surprised that he did not cancel football.

But, it is not too late.

[Dave in Green]

I wouldn't worry about basketball as it's prominently featured on the big chart of UA strengths on Dr. Scarborough's office wall.

Football is a giant conundrum. While it hasn't traditionally been a UA strength, it represents by far the biggest athletic financial investment and also tends to draw the most external financial support. The recent investment in new facilities cannot easily be written off. I would imagine that Dr. Scarborough understands that Coach Bowden is the best hope UA has to produce some return on the facilities investment, and is therefore willing to give him a fair chance to turn things around. We all need to hope that Coach Bowden and company can move Zips football onto the UA strengths chart.

[urbanpreppie05]

I don't see them eliminating football because

1- info is barely five years old, cost quite a bit of money, and with a better marketing/strategy campaign and coach, could still draw bigger crowds

2- the huge black eye the university would get if they closed the program (and thus the stadium)

What I do see them doing is:

Hopefully, better and bigger student/community push

Renting the stadium out for event use like the rubber bowl was

Thinning out the sports to basic Mac sports and title 9

Barring that doesn't work, going down a division

[zipsoutsider]

Why cutting football would not make sense:

• When you consider the kids on the team (probably 125-150), the kids in the band (175?) Color guard (25?), Cheerleaders (20?), and other kids who are somehow connected to football via media, equipment, and other roles, that number is probably close to 400. That is a much bigger impact than baseball.
• We have already built the stadium. What a waste to not use it. Furthermore, the stadium is used for other events, and could probably be better utilized in this area to generate revenue. We have first class facilities and have turned the corner from the worst in college football to favored to be MAC title contenders.
• Look at the front page to the Zips Nation forums. Football is one of the top interests. Even if attendance has struggled, the interest in football is still higher than other sports.
• Football has been and can be a way to connect the university with the community. Special event days, like those for veterans, the LBJ foundation, and others connects us in ways that nothing else really can.

There will always be football haters, and those who to see only the negative, but losing football does not make sense from a strategic perspective. I think everyone outside of the Power 5 programs needs to re-think how they survive in an environment where costs are going up and funding is becoming more elusive. It's time to think outside of the box.

• There are more non-power 5 schools than there are power 5 schools. They need to coalesce to force the NCAA's hand, like the power 5 programs have. The NCAA needs to concede on things like allowing schools to get sponsors that can advertise via uniforms - patches, colors, designs, etc. Right now, D1 schools cannot give partial scholarships. Maybe they need to start allowing that.
• They need to go back to the drawing board and look for new ways to self-fund to take canceling the programs off the table. For example, there are a lot of MAC players in the NFL. The NFL has no minor league farm system - college is essentially that. For the benefit of the NFL, the NFL should start helping to fund some of these leagues.
• At Akron, they need to sell tickets. This might mean more aggressively marketing to businesses and organizations to buy tickets. There are countless ways to approach this, but what they were doing was not really working. Time for a new plan. Yes, winning, Saturday games, and good weather will all help.

Maybe those are all bad ideas. Maybe they are really bad. But my point isn't that those ideas are the answer, but that we have to start looking for new tactics to survive.

[LZIp]

They aren't eliminating football or basketball. Or soccer for that matter. Quit being so dramatic Lee.

Scarborough seems to know where the bread is buttered. I don't expect any other sports to get cut for a few years at minimum, if at all. If there is it will be another higher cost-non revenue generating sport. There was a 60m deficit. The article showed how they are going to account for it. Book shut for now, IMO.

[infofan]

While it's very regrettable to lose any sport, remember baseball has no stadium and brought in zero revenue. Even the hockey club and women's swimming and soccer bring in more than that. They faced spending money on a baseball facility or this. Perhaps it can be revived as was wrestling at Cleveland state.

[Zipgrad01]

The baseball field was also holding up some valuable real estate for say.....an on campus basketball arena down the road????

[Balsy]

The baseball field was also holding up some valuable real estate for say.....an on campus basketball arena down the road????

Based on the financial situation, and cutting an entire sport to make up for the financial situation, the outlook of a new stadium is ..................

[ZippyRulz]

The baseball field was also holding up some valuable real estate for say.....an on campus basketball arena down the road????

I still think the arena will be built down by Canal Park. The baseball field can become a general-use area for football drills, cadet/ROTC drills, intramurals, etc.

[morris buttermaker]

The new basketball arena would hold all of the 2500 paying fans, right?.... and we would get to se Coppin St some years, and maybe a team like Xavier every 10 yrs? How does anyone think a new arena works for this University?

Re Zipsoutsider... the "Power 5" aren't stickin around... they have one foot outside the NCAA already. So everything will change for the remaining schools .. See Div 2

[Zipgrad01]

Based on the financial situation, and cutting an entire sport to make up for the financial situation, the outlook of a new stadium is ..................

As I stated, sometime down the road. Nobody said that we would build the arena next week.

[zip-O-matic]

Here's what I'd like to see from the admin next. A transparent account of why the cuts were needed and what were the factors involved in the decision to make the cuts where they were. Get out in front of the story and start to drive the narrative rather than wait for the inevitable howls of outrage from the various effected constituencies.

And I'll answer the question before it gets asked. You can NOT have that kind of transparency when the decisions are being made. You think the pr on the cuts is bad; imagine it if various constituencies were all creating a $#%^#storm in the press trying to lobby for their individual corner of the university before the decision was even made.

[Balsy]

Here's what I'd like to see from the admin next. A transparent account of why the cuts were needed and what were the factors involved in the decision to make the cuts where they were. Get out in front of the story and start to drive the narrative rather than wait for the inevitable howls of outrage from the various effected constituencies.

Don't hold your breath.

[K92]

It hurts to see my school being gutted. I realize that some of the changes that are happening now are inevitable, but perhaps if Dr. Scarborough had done a better job handling of the whole polytechnic fiasco, there would be more support for the current moves. However, due to his bungling of the rebranding, many alumni have labeled him as a tool. I don't see that changing any time soon either.

I am concerned that we have only just begun to see the very beginning of the wholesale transformation of our university and I'm afraid a lot of us aren't going to like the results.

[zip-O-matic]

It hurts to see my school being gutted. I realize that some of the changes that are happening now are inevitable, but perhaps if Dr. Scarborough had done a better job handling of the whole polytechnic fiasco, there would be more support for the current moves. However, due to his bungling of the rebranding, many alumni have labeled him as a tool. I don't see that changing any time soon either.

I am concerned that we have only just begun to see the very beginning of the wholesale transformation of our university and I'm afraid a lot of us aren't going to like the results.

At this point--and I consider it unfortunate--I honestly don't think the alumni are factoring too heavily into his process. His audience is the trustees, the regents and the Governor's office. How much of that is his obtuse bungling and how much of it is necessity borne of the #$^$ sandwich that Proenza left for him, I do not know.

[LosAngelesZipFan]

To your point 'matic, I'd love to get a better understanding of what happened-- a $60M deficit didn't happen overnight. It's not the debt from the stadium that did this. Dr. P didn't have forecasts that showed this hole in the budget emerging like this. Was it an unexpected drop in enrollment? I read on another thread that the drop in enrollment was actually in the plan as UA tightened up enrollment standards, but there as also a plan a couple years ago to drive enrollment to 35K.

What happened?

[zip-O-matic]

I don't know. A lot of people felt that Proenza's borrowing would prove disastrous, and I believe UA had its debt downgraded several times. I don't know if the new administration was blindsided by it or not. Was Proenza cooking the books until he could get out of town? The enrollment decline hasn't helped, and I know that UA was penalized under the state's new funding formula for low retention and grad rates, but I also don't know to what degree that contributed. I would still venture a guess that the primary factor was all the borrowing. Everything Proenza built--not just Info--was built largely with borrowed money. Akron just doesn't have the donor base to fund that kind of a building spree.

And as I've said before, athletic subsidies are unsustainable. I hope that the saving from baseball are used to lower our overall budget and subsidy as opposed to what OU did several years ago when they cut a bunch of sports just so they could plow the savings into the football budget leaving the subsidy unchanged.

[Dave in Green]

Trying to pin all the blame on any UA President for what may or may not have been a good plan that went wrong due to unforeseen circumstances overlooks the actual UA operating structure and responsibilities:

The University of Akron's Board of Trustees is the governing body for The University of Akron, pursuant to Ohio Revised Code 3359.01. The Board is composed of 11 members—9 voting members and 2 nonvoting student members—all of whom are appointed by the Governor of Ohio with the advice and consent of the State Senate. Trustees are appointed to a nine-year term of office, with the exception of Student Trustees who are appointed to a two-year term. On October 26, 2011, the Board adopted Rule 3359-1-10 thereby creating the position of Advisory Trustee and enabling the Board to add up to three non-voting members in that position, in addition to the 11 governor-appointed individuals.

The Board of Trustees has been charged by the Ohio Legislature (Ohio Revised Code 3359.03 and 3359.04) with—selecting and appointing the president; setting the operating budget; approving personnel appointments; granting all degrees awarded by the University, including honorary degrees; establishing tuition and fee rates; approving contracts; and approving all rules, regulations, curriculum changes, new programs and degrees at The University of Akron.

[zip-O-matic]

Trying to pin all the blame on any UA President for what may or may not have been a good plan that went wrong due to unforeseen circumstances overlooks the actual UA operating structure and responsibilities:

It's not black and white. Universities have become a lot like large corporations where the boards often are simply rubber stamps for the CEO. The exception to this is OSU where Les Wexner has held the most power going back to the late 80s. I have connections to the Regents and Gov's higher ed people but not to UA's board individually, so I can't speak too knowledgeably as to what level of oversight the UA board exercised over Proenza or if they just bought a bill of goods he was selling. I'll add that I don't think this was some huge con on his part. I truly believe that he thought the "build it and they will come" myth would make it all work out in the end. It, however, didn't, and that needs to be recognized. There's a lot of blame to go around, and I agree that some it should land at the feet of the board members who enthusiastically and unquestioningly backed Proenza. At the end of the day though, this was Proenza's grand vision and most of the blame needs to be assigned to him regardless of the degree to which the board backed (enabled) him to pursue it. He gambled with the future of UA, and it's increasingly looking as though his gamble came up craps.

[LZIp]

It's not black and white. Universities have become a lot like large corporations where the boards often are simply rubber stamps for the CEO. The exception to this is OSU where Les Wexner has held the most power going back to the late 80s. I have connections to the Regents and Gov's higher ed people but not to UA's board individually, so I can't speak too knowledgeably as to what level of oversight the UA board exercised over Proenza or if they just bought a bill of goods he was selling. I'll add that I don't think this was some huge con on his part. I truly believe that he thought the "build it and they will come" myth would make it all work out in the end. It, however, didn't, and that needs to be recognized. There's a lot of blame to go around, and I agree that some it should land at the feet of the board members who enthusiastically and unquestioningly backed Proenza. At the end of the day though, this was Proenza's grand vision and most of the blame needs to be assigned to him regardless of the degree to which the board backed (enabled) him to pursue it. He gambled with the future of UA, and it's increasingly looking as though his gamble came up craps.

Bingo. The head of the University is ultimately responsible. Really no way to deflect it even if the board approves things..It happens everywhere and in every public company. I'm kind of shocked it was even brought up.

[Dave in Green]

Once again we need to separate hindsight from insight. You will find very little record of criticism of UA's building plan prior to 2007. Why? Because December 2007 is the month that the Great Recession began. Prior to that the economy was booming and larger debt loads were manageable and even recommended by financial experts. Prior to that is when one of the biggest complaints about UA was that it lacked modern infrastructure and the kind of pleasant campus environment that attracted students to other schools. Prior to that most agreed with Dr. Proenza and the BoT that modernizing UA's facilities was a sound investment on the road to making Hilltop High into a great university.

There is some irony in the fact that complaints can be found on these forums about one of UA's few remaining inadequate facilities, the JAR, alongside complaints that some of the current financial shortfall is due to "overbuilding." But that's just part of human nature. We all want more and no one wants to pay for it. We all want our leaders to make tough decisions and then we assume when something goes wrong it's all their fault and castigate them whether or not we have all the facts available to make that judgment. Truth be told, none of us is in a position to know how much of today's problems are due to bad judgment by those in charge or unforeseen circumstances such as the worst economic recession since the Great Depression.

[zipsoutsider]

Trying to pin all the blame on any UA President for what may or may not have been a good plan that went wrong due to unforeseen circumstances overlooks the actual UA operating structure and responsibilities:

Isn't this exactly why CEO's now have to sign off on all of the company's financials? The president is, ultimately, responsible.

[Dave in Green]

Bingo. The head of the University is ultimately responsible. Really no way to deflect it even if the board approves things..It happens everywhere and in every public company. I'm kind of shocked it was even brought up.

You obviously aren't familiar with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. While the CEO has traditionally taken the fall when things go wrong, Sarbanes-Oxley lays much greater accountability for oversight on boards of directors, especially in financial matters. A board that's responsible for selecting and appointing the CEO, setting the operating budget and approving all significant programs and expenditures no longer gets a free pass when things within the scope of their oversight go wrong. Blaming it all on the CEO is as simplistic and deceptive as blaming every football team loss on the quarterback.

[LZIp]

You obviously aren't familiar with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. While the CEO has traditionally taken the fall when things go wrong, Sarbanes-Oxley lays much greater accountability for oversight on boards of directors, especially in financial matters. A board that's responsible for selecting and appointing the CEO, setting the operating budget and approving all significant programs and expenditures no longer gets a free pass when things within the scope of their oversight go wrong. Blaming it all on the CEO is as simplistic and deceptive as blaming every football team loss on the quarterback.

I am actually very familiar with SOX and the events that led to the creation of it. I still see your point as a reach.

CEO's are still held accountable as they should be as they are involved in the day-to-day operations of a company unlike the board, just like the President and the trustees.

http://www.cnet.com/news/ellen-pao-out-as-reddit-ceo/

I don't see anybody trying to blame the board (and not TW) for approving the hire of Ianello