$65-75 million financial hit from coronavirus, per UA president, on top of the university's existing financial nightmare. He will have no choice but to slash funding for athletics and particularly football. I see Akron dropping to D II in the next year.

I'll guess either/or. IF they merge, they will have in excess of 60k enrollment making them one of the larger universities in the country. Hard to see a university of that size playing below FBS (for now).

Akron's enrollment is sub-20K and dropping like a rock.

A Kent and Akron merger? That’s tantamount to two garbage trucks colliding.

Agreed

Call me old school, but I'm a firm-believer in the saying "Can't Read, Can't Write, Kent State"

Wright State may not be able to make payroll, and major cuts looming for Ohio

Agreed. And as the seriousness of this pandemic forces athletic departments into the background, it will quiet dissent from the “But these schools are athletic rivals! They can’t merge!” objections.

When you’re starving, you don’t complain about the brand of spaghetti sauce the food pantry gave you. Where BG-Toledo and Kent-Akron alliances once seemed unholy, it’s now survival time.

It's weird how things work. Akron spent a boatload on campus building projects to help improve it's image, including spending a ton on a football stadium it didn't need. It was greeted with a lot of criticism, unlike Field of Dreams, "If you build they will come," didn't seem to work.

Bowling Green spent far less on their building projects, mainly designed to help the campus' aesthetic looks. It was greeted with more accolades. Indeed, BG's image appeared to be on the upswing the last couple of years. A trustee to the university told me their purpose was to make their somewhat flat looking campus look a little more appealing. He told me Akron got way in over their head and it has been downhill ever since.

Five years after the last pandemic, our nation was beginning an economic boom, the likes of which the country had never seen. However, there were some casualties along the way. For example in 1914, the state had 2,400+ public school districts. Back then township one room school houses were considered a school district. That number was cut in half by the Second World War. Who knows the same could be in the offing for many public and private Higher Ed institution across the state. My guess is that if we get a vaccine by the end of the year, and things are beginning to rapidly turn around for the economy, there will not be the political will to make such cuts. If not, all bets are off, we shall know soon enough.

In past years it was rumored that Akron and Cleveland State may merge.

I haven’t lived in Ohio in 30 years so I’m not that familiar with the UA/KSU dynamic. Why would KSU want to merge with or take over UA? Their own enrollment is down so they have plenty of facility space. A lot of UA students would transfer without the baggage. I can’t see KSU taking on the chocking debt.

Is there something valuable in UA that KSU would want bad enough to take on all the negatives?

It's like the Captain of the Titanic announcing that he expects to be underway shortly and will arrive in New York as scheduled.

+1 Very good analogy, sir! ;-)