Big East

[zipboy]

I know the mention of Akron and the Big East in the same sentence make many roll their eyes. But here are some stats to think about which I am hoping Mack Rhodes and company are working on.Rasor had an interview with Mack about going to another conference and some of the things mentioned were facilities, community and fan support, TV market, academics, etc. Except for the community support thing, we stack up fairly well in all of the other areas. I looked at South Florida who just joined the Big East a few years ago. A few things of note1. Avg football attendance SF - 30K, Akron 16K. I know that the 16K was sold seats not who showed up. Not sure about SF if they really had 30K at their games. They also don't have a stadium of their own. They play at the Bucs stadium. Capacity is 65K. their ticket prices were $20-$30 per game.2. Avg mens bball attendance SF 3,852, Akron 3,593. Pretty comparable here. Their arena seats 10K3. Annual athletic budget - SF 25M, Akron 15MTo me here is what we need over the next 5 years in order to be thought of as serious consideration for a jump like this.1. Average 25K legitimate fans for football. With the new stadium, this is the big wild card. Will the Akron fan base grow and support the team? If we win, I think so. I like JD and hope he can pull it off.2. Average 5k for basketball. This would put us in the top 100 in the country for attendance. While I hope JD can pull it off, I know that KD can pull it off. One or 2 NCAA appearances, and I think we are there. I would be surprised if we don't average over 4K next season. KD is building something special here.3. Finish the football and soccer stadiums and do serious renovation to the JAR. If we are averaging 5K in bball, I can see the JAR expanding to 8K. An 8K arena that gets more than 2/3 full will be fine. Do what Toledo is doing with their exisiting arena.4. Increase the athletic budget almost double to 25M. Depending on what happens from 1 and 2 this will either feed itself or it won't. If we hit the numbers above. the budget still won't double but will go up a nice chunk with the extra revenue. There needs to be more committment from the community, administration or wherever but not as much as one might think.I look at those things above and think all are doable, definitely not a slam dunk but at the same time not impossible. The odds aren't that bad. Just some thoughts on a slow summer day. And I am still bitter about the basketball season and the ineptitude of the MAC.Go Zips!

[GoZips]

ZIPBOY that is as fine a set of intelligent observations regarding Zips athletics I haveever read. You certainly did your homework and understand the working environment.Excellent report.Let me add a bit of knowledge. The JAR is not able to expand its seat count readily.The four huge round concrete posts at each corner support the roof. There is no costeffective means to hold the roof up without those posts. Which as the building is builtrenders the corners useless for seating.People have proposed taking out the no longer needed running track. I have heard thatmove would add 500-700 seats. Since almost no one, me included, knows what theJAR currently actually seats, it is difficult to put a number on just what a sold out houseis. The famous Cleveland State game of 1986 is officially listed as just over 8,000.Anyone who attended that game can attest it was more like in excess 10,000. But,people were crammed in there like sardines.I believe that what KD has in mind for the JAR is to improve the facility, not expand it.The basketball offices need to be larger and more plush. The locker rooms need work.The plan seems to be, improve the current facility, build attendance, let the dust settle from the new football stadium, THEN go after a NEW basketball arena.

[Blue & Gold]

Great list! I think it's definitely do-able over the next 5-10 years! I would only change one point:"3. Finish the football and soccer stadiums and do serious renovation to the JAR. If we are averaging 5K in bball, I can see the JAR expanding to 8K. An 8K arena that gets more than 2/3 full will be fine. Do what Toledo is doing with their exisiting arena."I think we need a new arena. Now that the U owns Quaker Square, building an arena north of QS and adjacent to the John S. Knight Convention Center seems like a great move. Maybe it could be a joint facility that the Knight Center could use on ocassion? Around 10K seating capacity.

[Big Zip]

According to Wikipedia -- the Convocation Center Cleveland State plays in was built for $55 million in 1991. To think The University is spending that much on a football stadium 16 years later and then they would consider building a basketball stadium after that -- seems implausible. I dont' know whatever became of the plans from four or five years ago to blow out the wall facing Memorial Gym and retool the JAR. I had thought that plan would get us between 8-10,000 seats and round the arena out.

[Zipsrifle]

So where does the university get the extra $10 million for the athletic budget? I love Zips athetics, but unless the football team and BB teams get real good, real fast, no way the administration will add that kind of cash to the program.

[Z.I.P.]

Well, Boise State added about $5 million to their football budget this year (assuming that pesky women's tennis program doesn't poach any of it), which is their share of the about $12M the WAC got in payout from the Fiesta Bowl. Hurry up and get us one of those paydays JD!

[skip-zip]

Some very good observations here.Even if most of these challenges are met, I believe that we will still have the same obstacle in place. We do not generate enough football revenue to draw the interest of a larger conference.If we use the S. Florida situation as a benchmark, when does anyone think we would realistically be able to demand $20-$30 per ticket and sell 30,000 of them? Right now, we're doing all that we can just to sell 16,000 tickets for $8 each to corporate interests just to stay D-1 eligible.Even if we do continue to make positive changes, it would take a very, very long time before we'd ever be able to double our paid attendance while demanding double the ticket price.

[AK-Zips]

1. Avg football attendance SF - 30K, Akron 16K.  I know that the 16K was sold seats not who showed up.  Not sure about SF if they really had 30K at their games.  They also don't have a stadium of their own.  They play at the Bucs stadium.  Capacity is 65K.  their ticket prices were $20-$30 per game.To me here is what we need over the next 5 years in order to be thought of as serious consideration for a jump like this.1.  Average 25K legitimate fans for football.  With the new stadium, this is the big wild card.  Will the Akron fan base grow and support the team?  If we win, I think so.  I like JD and hope he can pull it off.

I can answer this one very quickly. Every college football program in America uses a reported number for attendance. This number is not based on actual butts in seats, but a number that is in essence "made up" by the powers that be. Now wait, I know what you are thinking... "AK-ZIPS, don't you have to have some accountability for the reported attendance?" The answer is yes, but you can also manipulate your attendance to be reported in a variety of ways. One of the most popular is that your reported attendance number must be accounted for by tickets distributed. Tickets distributed include students, single game sales, and season ticket sales. Also, all sold tickets must be at least 33% (I believe) of the highest single game ticket price to be counted as a distributed ticket. Freebies don't necessarily count, but wait, there's more...Tickets that are given away do count in a way. For example if you have a single game ticket for $20 and for each one that you sell you also give one away you can count both tickets as distributed because broken up they avg. $10 per ticket which is higher than the 33% requirement by the NCAA and their auditing systems. This is not the way it works at Akron because of how cheap ticket prices are to begin with and the discount you get with season tickets.In conclusion, you can easily alter the student number, and fudge the sales numbers to get a pretty big variety of distributed tickets that get reported to the NCAA. If you sell season tickets to only 3,000 people with each buying 2, you get 6,000, plus add in 1,000, students, another 2,000 single game purchases, group tickets, corporate accounts, and ISP contracts; you get somewhere in the neighborhood of 9,000 people in attendance. That number quickly becomes 15,000 by adding in the "freebies" to the accounting system that will average out over 33% per ticket purchased to about 7,500 season tickets (counted as single game tickets in accounting system), 3,500 students, single game tickets are where the ticket increase is really made and now you have 4,000 of the single game buys. That’s how you get 15,000.This is a bare minimum worst case scenario. I have looked up all of this info and even checked about how this works with a few people i know that work in college athletics and entertainment. I hope this makes sense.Have a nice day!

[FMR]

4. Increase the athletic budget almost double to 25M. Depending on what happens from 1 and 2 this will either feed itself or it won't. If we hit the numbers above. the budget still won't double but will go up a nice chunk with the extra revenue. There needs to be more committment from the community, administration or wherever but not as much as one might think.

Everyone makes a good case argument. What is missing is the maintenance and payments on these new facilities. With about $0 a year going into the Rubber Bowl maintenance, this will change with a new stadium. With the projected ticket revenue (magic with numbers) a percentage will have to go back into maintenance and of course paying down the bonds that will be hanging over the heads of the administration. So what ever numbers you come up with, the money is already spent.So, raising the athletic budget to $25M will require an increase in student fees and raising more $ for athletics. I am sure the students will not like this idea as they are already taxed at a high rate. Any cuts to progams across campus to fund athletics will meet with faculty objections. And I am still waiting to see the Mack Rhoades fund raising that he promised when he was hired. I recall he was going to "get out into the community and knock on every door". Well, we are still waiting...

There needs to be more committment from the community, administration or wherever but not as much as one might think

When you break it down, there is a need for more commitment from all concerned. Getting a new stadium is great for the fans, but it can be a nightmare for an administration... unless they cut their losses and leave a huge albatross for the next administration (and fans). Time will tell...

[GP1]

What is missing is the maintenance and payments on these new facilities. With about $0 a year going into the Rubber Bowl maintenance, this will change with a new stadium.

FMR is right on the money. The cost of construction is on average only 20% of what a building owner will put into a structure for the life of the structure. Do the math...... Whether a football stadium or basketball arena, UofA will have trouble supporting the structure long term.While we all want a new stadium, it could become quickly run down if they don't find a regular revenue stream to keep the structure at an acceptable level for fans to enjoy a day at a game.I go back and fourth on the idea of the Big East. Immediate TV and BCS revenue is a good reason to join because UofA will have a new stadium to maintain. The money needs to come from outside of NE Ohio because historically the people of this area have not shown even the slightest interest in putting their own money into the program. TV and bowl revenue is a good source of immediate money. We'll get our ass kicked on the fields of play, but we'll have money to support the stadium.

[skip-zip]

This is always a hot topic...I only ask that everyone focuses on what we need to show to even attract the interest of one of these conferences, as opposed to focusing on what being IN the conference will do for us in terms of generating revenue.We'll need to show that our football program is a revenue-generator BEFORE any of these leagues will even consider taking a look at us. And that will be a monumental task.

[Zipsrifle]

We need to worry about consistently winning before we talk about jumping confrences. Those offers will come when no team in the MAC can touch us and we pull off some bigtime upsets!

[g-mann17]

First post so don't hate too much. But one thing that I have to agree with is that we need to build the fan base. One way we can do that is to right the editors of the Beacon and say we want to see the Zips on the front page of our newspaper every Sunday instead of the Buckeyes. No disrespect to any OSU fans, but seriously I have never understood why they garner more attention then the local Division one school. Oh yeah, because Northeast Ohio is just a bunch of dirty nut swingers. Instead of supporting the team they support the winner. But to get off my rant. We need to build excitement about the team. They do need to become more consistent. That would certainly help to get some press and fans. But we as true fans have to talk up the program and school whenever we can. We have to tell the Beacon we want coverage. And that that coverage is going to sell their paper. We have to try and convince local stations to carry these games. I would much rather flip on the CW and watch a carry over broadcast of the Akron Zips then some chopped to hell movie or fake wrestling (considering the horrible friday night lights game we have to play sometimes). The big thing will be the 2009 season. We need to have sell outs every home game. We need to get Illinois, Northwestern, Indiana, MSU to come play ball in the new stadium. But we the fans are the ones that have to make the biggest difference.

[ROCK1]

My guess is that the BE wouldn't take a new school without a 40K stadium and a 10K arena and fans to go in the seats. South Florida is in the middle of a booming area and has quite a bit of money. They are a school of the future. That attracts conferences like the BE.

[Zipsrifle]

Welcome G-Mann!

[mrelegazna]

We need to worry about consistently winning before we talk about jumping confrences. Those offers will come when no team in the MAC can touch us and we pull off some bigtime upsets!

This is the bottom line. In order for a Big East to invite us, we have to not only get the attendance and budget figures in line, but we also have to do things that no other MAC team does. The only thing we can do at the expense of other MAC teams is win. Marshall would still be in the MAC if they didn't join the league and starting whipping on it. Win. Win. Win.We can blame the media, the students, the administration, Ohio State, and the Gods all we want, but even if we did things exactly the way you (any of you) think it should be done, and the ABJ put us on the front page every day, the people of NE Ohio aren't going to start selling out the stadium (whatever stadium that ends up being) to rally around a 6-6 team. That's just reality, as much as we want to blame outside (or inside) forces for our problems and tepid fan support. It isn't gonna change. There's only one way things are gonna change. Win.(Great post too, AK-Zips. Thank God we CAN fudge the numbers or we would be headed straight back to 1-AA. First team up, first team down.)

[Zipsrifle]

It's easy to cheer for a winning team. Nobody wants to go to work and talk about how their team lost.