We should not be playing weeknight games. It does nothing for us. We should not be spending money on amenities as it means nothing. We need a reality check on our athletic program.

Weeknight games are fine - within reason. MAC should limit each school to a max of 2 home games per season. Having 3 is ridiculous.

As with anything, balance is key. It's great to get on national TV...but you also want to have Saturday games for your fans.

I'm not sure I follow. Athletic Departments should NOT try to be making money?

Agree!

That doesn't really explain your statement about getting too corporate. I'm interested in what your detailed take is here.

My view is that athletic departments need corporate dollars (sponsorships, uniform deals, TV money) to survive. I'm still not sure why you are opposed to that.

The college kid today has grown up on smartphones. Due to the proliferation of family plans they all have them. Probably 80% of their information is coming from apps on a smartphone. If I were an OU student with all the programming on campus I'd want a bobcat app that gives me the latest happenings. That is where I think we've got to go. I noticed a big drop off in student attendance the moment The Post stopped with its print addition. Students today I'm afraid don't even have time for Ohiobobcats.com waiting for its frame to load.

Love this idea and couldn’t agree more!!! Not that it would solve all of Ohio’s attendance issues but it sure wouldn’t hurt.

Not sure why my response to this post was deleted, and then your response to that was deleted...

As I said, we're NOT making money. The big athletic departments make money. We do not. I'm a finance guy, so I'm talking cash flow, not any additional goodwill/marketing value we get beyond strictly the bottom line (and I'm of the belief those ARE material)

It's a rigged game. Instead of going along with the big boys and settling for hemorrhaging money in return for playing 2nd fiddle for the big schools/P5, I'd argue we'd be better off refusing to play that game. I'm not saying we drop out of D-1, I'm saying we focus on filling seats rather than selling empty seats. We can FILL this stadium rather just just sell tickets. Stop catering to ESPN & Budweiser and instead embrace small business. Remember when people claimed the Jackie O's experiment would be a failure? Despite the concerns about "pouring rights," that has not only been successful for the bottom-line BUT it has also enhanced the fan experience in Peden.

People have complained about concessions in the stadium for years. We have some corporate concessions group that sells overpriced soft pretzels and can't fire up the hot chocolate maker when it's 30 degrees out. I don't care what amount of money their contract brings in for Ohio Athletics, it's a bad deal. Our athletic department should go sign Court Street Coffee or Brennan's to have a Hot Chocolate/Coffee stand at the game. Make some revenue split or flat rate deal with them like they did with Jackie O's. Do the same thing with some local restaurants/food vendors. Fans would love it.

Don't get me started on concessions. I wholeheartedly agree that the university does not make as much as it could -- or should -- at games. It should improve.

However, getting $670K for being on ESPN would mean selling a lot of hot dogs and pretzels to make up for a revenue loss. Playing P5 teams on the road for million dollar payouts -- not ideal, but necessary. Schools like OU will never win the arms race, but they do need to be creative to survive financially.

If that involves ESPN paying us to televise games nationally, great.

If Adidas wants to pay us to wear their uniforms, go for it.

Now, when you start messing with concessions, I think you are right, even if the contractor has paid OU to provide those services and it is inadequate for fans, I do think a change needs to be made.

I see in the Athens Mesenger yesterday that student enrollment in Athens is down 3,000 on the last 3 years, but the incoming GPA is way up to 3.54. Do nerds attend football games? Anyway you look at it, student numbers plummeting by this much doesn’t help attendance. Not saying it’s the only factor, but it doesn’t look to turn around a time soon.

Are you sure about that? That's a huge drop. I thought this year was the first enrollment decrease in a long time. are you sure that's not all campuses?

I haven’t kept up with student enrollment, I'm just saying enrollment is recently significantly down. All the other entertainment choices may be the main drivers of attendance declines, but it can’t help to have fewer students in today’s environment.

When I hit Mega Millions I'm buying WWE and starting a Saturday morning studio wrestling show live from Stamford every week.