Andrew Dolph / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images
Akron Zips football student-fans cheer before the game against Wyoming, Aug. 28, 2025, at InfoCision Stadium in Akron, Ohio.
In a world where major college football is quickly being divided into the haves and have-nots, there’s no questioning that the Akron Zips sit firmly among the have-nots.
According to the 2025 Fiscal Year school budget, the university spent roughly in the area of $30 million on athletics. Compare that to Ohio State University, which reported $320 million in athletic expenditures for the same period in time.
So in order to compete in a landscape that is becoming ever-increasingly stacked against them, the Zips are getting creative.
Akron recently announced a promotion that will allow one lucky season-ticket holder to call plays for the opening drive of the football team’s 2026 home opener against Robert Morris University. And the promotion, which is the first of its kind at this level of the sport, is working entirely as planned!
Akron Season Tickets Are Selling Fast Thanks To Crazy Promo!
Ellyn Briggs of Front Office Sports reports that the promotion was the brainchild of Akron’s senior deputy AD and COO Matt Pottorff and Athletic Director Dr. Andrew T. Goodrich.
“We’ve had an awesome, awesome 24 hours, but we’re just getting started,” Pottorff told Front Office Sports. “It’s going to be like a tsunami.”
According to the report, Akron sold out its suite inventory for the first time in program history and is already well past its annual ticket sales goals with weeks before the 2025 season.
Pottorff says the promotion is a huge reason for that, especially after the team went just 5-7 a year ago.
“We were just going through the craziest ideas we could think of to sell football tickets,” he said. “This was the one where we thought, ‘If we do this right, it could really move the needle and be a huge hit.’”
Season tickets for the Zips begin at $75 and can cost as much as $15,000 for the aforementioned suites, while club and loge level seats are “almost gone” as of Wednesday night, too.
Pottorff already has major plans for how the school will announce a winner on Aug. 19.
“First, we’re going to call that person NFL Draft–style and let them know that they got selected. Then we’ll find a time for them to come to campus, where they’ll meet with [head football] coach Joe Moorhead,” Pottorff said. “He’ll run them through what plays we would normally call in the opening drive, and then figure out what they want to do with it.”
In a world where college athletics are all about money, sometimes you need to get a little bit creative. Akron has certainly done that to an impressive degree with this promotion, and it’s paying off in spades.