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During the past week or so, a confluence of college football events has occurred that could both delight and dismay Northeast Ohio fans, particularly those of the University of Akron. (UA does have fans, doesn’t it? I’ve seen so few over the years, I cannot be sure.) One of the two events occurred on the field, the other off of it—at the highest level of what has been hard-to-come-by sound thinking about intercollegiate athletics.
The on-field event, while delightful, should not be taken too seriously as a sign of things to come: Akron crashed through and beyond its 21-game losing streak with a decisive 31-3 victory over Bowling Green. Seventeen of those losses belonged to coach Tom Arth and amounted to the entirety of his tenure as Zips head coach.
Let me say right now that despite evidence to the contrary, I think Arth might be a capable coach. He was in big way (40-8) at Cleveland’s John Carroll University, a Division III school, and also effective when he jumped to the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga in the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS). Arth has not had the most pleasant of experiences since he came to Akron before the 2019 season. He probably welcomes the order to wear a mask in case irate fans might be looking for him.
Even coaches of teams with next to no fans and minimal student support know they must win if they hope to keep their jobs. I have seen this again and again since UA moved from Division I-AA (FCS these days) to Division I-A (now the Football Bowl Subdivision that includes Power 5 conferences such as the Big Ten). I have also seen it from the inside. Gerry Faust allowed me access from A to Z at Akron, where he became the first coach to attempt to take a team from Division I-AA to I-A independent.
At first, Faust had grand ambitions. They came with his hiring by then UA President William V. Muse. A visionary, Muse had goals that matched the Faust storyline. Faust had jumped to Notre Dame—think Evel Knievel leaping the Grand Canyon and living to tell about it—from Cincinnati Moeller High School, where he created a program that won so many championships they should have retired the trophy.
As the title of the book I wrote with Gerry, implies, The Golden Dream was a leap too far. I can tell you, however, that even with shortcomings, which every coach has, Faust could coach. I saw it. I felt it. He was as good a college recruiter as I have seen, and I was writing columns in Oklahoma when Barry Switzer was the Sooners coach that took Oklahoma back to Bud Wilkinson’s national championship glory days. Faust’s eventual removal from coaching to a UA administrative position is the reason that I am cautious about predicting where it will end for Arth—though I can guess.
What I do have confidence in is the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics, which has proposed sweeping changes to the Division I football model. The Knight name alone would give me faith in the commission’s recommendations. I worked for years for Knight-Ridder newspapers, the Miami Herald, the Wichita Eagle, and the Akron Beacon Journal, first of the Knight papers that became a part of Knight-Ridder.
The fact that Knight-Ridder has vanished from the face of the earth, like Knight Newspapers founders John S. Knight and James L. Knight, who took their father’s newspaper and built an empire, troubles me. They built something admired, when journalism was respected and not considered “fake news” by an “alleged president.” But all is not lost. The Knight brothers, true philanthropists, left behind, first and foremost, The Knight Foundation, the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics, and more. The Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics has a track record.
Though without power to effect change in intercollegiate athletics on its own, the Knight Commission’s vision for improving student-athlete graduation rates eventually became NCAA policy that tied those rates to teams’ bowl eligibility. And it only took 10 years. The NCAA is slow to change and often hidebound in its thinking, as it proved when the commission suggested segregating the FBS from other NCAA sports by creating a National College Football Association. Football is the tail that wags the NCAA’s dog.
NCAA President Mark Emmert was quick to react. He told The Associated Press that the commission’s suggestion would be “exactly the wrong thing to do.” In a conclusion dripping self-interest, Emmert fails to appreciate the choice it would give schools to best serve their student-athletes. Power Five schools might conclude athletes should be compensated for their investment of time and energy to their institutions’ bottom lines. If the Akrons and Kent States of collegiate football could not afford such costs, they could remain in the NCAA structure, while giving the rich programs an opportunity for what Carol Cartwright, commission co-chair and former Kent State University president, termed a “reset opportunity.” It can seem a difficult choice.
When Akron, in a budget crunch exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic, looked for $65 million in cuts, Beacon Journal sports columnist Marla Ridenour warned decision-makers that targeting sports was foolhardy. She cited the marketing value of sports to the university as a whole and pointed out the attention that Pro Football Hall of Famer Jason Taylor, Academy Award-winner Matthew A. Cherry, and the NASCAR racing team of Matt Kaulig brought and continue to bring UA. All played football for the Zips.
I can attest that this value extends beyond the national spotlight to student recruitment, and it happens at every level, if in different ways. When I ended my daily journalism career, one of my subsequent positions was director of college relations at Hiram College. Sports information fell under the college relations umbrella, and I came to appreciate what athletics could mean to a Division III school in terms of enrollment. Not only did it attract student-athletes more suited to Division III than the FBS but it also enhanced and broadened the college experience for others at Hiram, including me.
One size does not fit all but the athletics tool belongs in the college toolbox. Hiram could not do without it, and Akron might be better served with the altered structure that could come from the Knight Commission’s proposed National College Football Association.
