AKRON, Ohio — Usually the calls come at night, long after business hours. It’ll be 9, 10 p.m. and Matt Pottorff’s phone will light up with a call from his boss that starts: “What if we tried this?”
Pottorff, the chief operating officer for Akron athletics, has gotten used to the litany of ideas that follow that framing — some good, some unfeasible and some just wild enough to be worth a try.
The really big one though came in late March, on a flight from Tampa, Florida, where the Zips’ men’s basketball team had just been bounced from the NCAA tournament by Texas Tech, and athletics director Andrew Goodrich offered another of those “what if” scenarios.
What if … Akron let a fan call a play?
A few years earlier, the question might’ve drawn laughs or groans, and the idea would’ve died there. But in 2026, for all but the most affluent of schools, revenue generation is paramount, and when it comes to creative ways to engage fans, there’s no such thing as a bad idea.
“We were just pitching the craziest ideas we could,” Pottorff said.
The hook for this one, Goodrich explained, was that Akron didn’t even have a true offensive coordinator, as head coach Joe Moorhead calls the plays. But if Moorhead could be convinced to turn over the job to a fan, it could be a great way for Akron — with less than 10,000 undergraduates and a decade removed from its last bowl game — to sell some tickets and generate a little attention.
It shouldn’t just be one play though, Goodrich suggested. It had to be bigger. What about calling a full offensive drive? The first drive of the year at home, in fact — that might really move the needle.
It worked.
“I had people in marketing [departments at other schools] reach out to me,” Pottorff said, “telling me their AD was mad at them for not thinking of it.”
🚨IT’S OFFICIAL…
Martin Allan Whims II is named OC of the Game presented by @Arbys Steak Nuggets‼️#GoZips 🦘 #MakeTheClimb pic.twitter.com/3VHtodEq07
— Akron Football (@ZipsFB) August 25, 2026
The response underscored just how deep the need for engagement and new revenue streams runs among smaller programs in the new — and increasingly expensive — era of college football. Schools are going to great lengths to reach new customers and keep their existing fanbase coming back, and doing so is a matter of survival. Power 4 schools with richer TV deals routinely field rosters worth north of $20 million. Most Group of 6 schools struggle to afford a small fraction of that.
The results have showed on the field, where Group of 6 schools are pulling fewer upsets. And while UMass and Tulsa garnered headlines for big Week 1 wins this year, it was otherwise a dismal set of games in which the Group of 6 went 2-26 and were outscored, on average, by nearly 27 points. Add in the increasingly transitional rosters — with top players leaving for bigger paydays at power programs — it’s harder than ever to engage with fans. (70% of Group of 5 all-conference players from 2025 with remaining eligibility transferred at year’s end.) Charlotte athletic director Kevin White compared it to minor league baseball, where attracting fans is as much about the game-day experience as the product on the field, and schools have to pull out all the stops just to get fans into the stadium.
“We’re even leveraging our partnership with [local hospitals] to get 49er bibs and blankets to newborns,” White said. “Talk about grassroots marketing. We’re going all the way to the first hours they’re on this earth.”
Akron didn’t need to go quite that far, though Goodrich admits that first conversation with Moorhead was a tad intimidating. But Moorhead got on board and the plan came together. So when Akron posted to social media announcing the contest in which one season-ticket holder would be selected to help script the Zips’ opening drive against Robert Morris, it generated more than a billion impressions on Instagram and X in the following weeks. Akron became the talk of college football, generating media buzz in all corners of the sports ecosystem. The contest’s winner, longtime season-ticket holder Marty Whims, became an instant celebrity.
Pottorff said Akron sold roughly half its total season tickets in the two weeks after the announcement, and it sold tickets in 38 different states as well as Germany and Canada.
Not all moon shots work like this one, Pottorff said, but try enough big ideas, and sometimes the stars align. Given the financial peril for so many small schools in the revenue-sharing age of college football, it’s worth thinking big.
“Then having a local guy — an Akron grad and longtime fan,” Pottorff said, “it’s just been the icing on the cake.”
AT DELAWARE, A group of administrators meet regularly to kick around ideas for new and creative ways to drive engagement. They call it “Project Maguire,” athletic director Jordan Skolnick said, named after the movie “Jerry Maguire” and the iconic catch phrase it spawned: “Show me the money.”
“We don’t want to just rely on ticket sales, and we’re already going to our donors and asking them for philanthropic support,” Skolnick said. “You’ve got to find ways that people can invest into what you’re doing without it feeling like it’s another ask.”
Any idea is worth considering, but there are four key baselines Delaware uses to evaluate whether one of those wild suggestions should become reality.
First, how much money can it generate?
The more, the better. Programs are taking big swings on jersey patch sponsorships or hosting concerts at their home stadiums that can generate millions in revenue.
Akron’s viral contest caught the attention of fast-food giant Arby’s, which then sponsored it. Pottorff said the school is hopeful to spin the moment into even more deals with companies that have now seen firsthand that Akron can capture the nation’s attention with the right idea.
“This thing cost us a dime,” Pottorff said. “We put out a graphic, and it took off from there.”
Second, how sustainable is the idea over time?
One-offs have value, but a repeatable success is the gold standard. At Charlotte, White has helped spearhead the “Charlotte’s Stock is Rising” program — a play on the city’s reputation as a financial hub — that allows anyone who donates $100 to the athletic department to buy a “share” of stock in the program. Those shares can then be used to vote on uniform combinations or concession offerings and offer access to insider events. Within hours of its launch, Charlotte got a $10,000 donation from a C-suite exec who had never given money to athletics before. White sees the program as something that can grow with the program, and rather than getting fans invested for a game, this hooks them for the long term.
“Like owning a stock,” White said, “you watch it and support it.”
Third, how will it look?
Akron’s “offensive coordinator” promotion was a huge hit but, Akron administrators admit, it wouldn’t be for everyone. Investment in athletics — football in particular — is considered a supplement to the university’s overall marketing strategy, so there needs to be alignment, not just in things such as getting a coach to agree to let a season-ticket holder run his offense, but in getting the school administration on board with the unique messaging. Whims, Akron’s contest winner, is an alum, who said he sees his viral moment as something more than his 15 minutes of fame.
“The university and the football program — it’s a spotlight on them, and a spotlight on the kids on the field,” Whims said. “We’ve had some rough seasons here, and I feel like this is starting to turn.”
And fourth, how much of a strain is it on the staff?
Most schools at the lower end of the FBS spectrum such as Akron or Delaware don’t have the resources to ask their staff to keep putting in hours on labor intensive projects, so while dreaming big is the ask, practical implications still matter.
At Akron, the staff figured the coordinator contest would gain some local traction and sell a few tickets. By Saturday’s kickoff against Robert Morris, support staff was busy shuffling Whims around the facility, organizing TV crews eager to follow the winner and setting up a Zoom with ESPN’s “College GameDay.” It was worth the effort, Pottorff said, but it turned out to be a bigger lift than anyone had anticipated.
Still, if an idea can check all those boxes, the results can be immense.
Last year, Delaware’s first as an FBS school, the school pitched a marketing plan encouraging people to play as the Blue Hens in that year’s version of the EA Sports college football video game. EA had recently changed its licensing distribution model, rewarding schools that had more plays with more money, and for Delaware, simply getting people who might not be able to locate the state on a map to engage with the team through the game seemed like a win.
The result was the “Delaware Dynasty Challenge,” where game players were encouraged to take the Hens to the national championship then submit a video of the trophy presentation or reaction video, with one fan winning a prize pack that included a VIP experience for a UD game day. The school got submissions from 44 different states, and it ended up as the second-most played school in the Group of 6, beating out 17 Power 4 schools. Perhaps as important, it added a six-figure increase to the school’s balance sheet, Skolnick said.
Your turn to build a Blue Hen Dynasty 🏆
🔗: https://t.co/4e6mgG8mba pic.twitter.com/X6GSjcV6qT
— Delaware Football (@Delaware_FB) July 10, 2025
“We had 5 million people playing with the Blue Hens in a game we weren’t in the year before,” Skolnick said. “It was such a huge win because nobody felt like we were asking them for anything. They all felt like they were a part of something.”
THE STAFF AT James Madison was deep into one of those “no bad ideas” meetings in the spring of 2025, trying to come up with ideas to market the Dukes’ home game against Washington State. It would be one of the biggest brands to play on JMU’s campus, but the game was also in late November, just before students were heading home for winter break. The school needed to brand the game in a unique way that would have people talking and have fans show up.
Jake Longenecker, the assistant AD for marketing, offered a suggestion: What about Marvel?
There was skepticism immediately. Yes, partnering with one of the most popular brands in the world would be great. No, Melissa Wyant thought, it would not be easy.
But big swings are the name of the game, so Wyant, who leads JMU’s fan engagement and experience wing of the communications department, started making calls.
“I didn’t want to do something small scale and avoid the branding things,” Wyant said. “We wanted to go all-in.”
Turns out, there was a company that specifically worked on co-branding opportunities for Marvel, and for a price, they were open to going big.
What began as a “what if” in early spring blossomed into a mini-ComicCon by game day.
Avengers Assemble! The Dukes are excited to wear one of five Marvel characters on one side of their helmets as part of Marvel Super Hero Day.
Tickets are still available – trust us, you won’t want to miss it!
🎟️ https://t.co/ayJChqPszZ
ℹ️ https://t.co/pMXW5AwNXM #GoDukes pic.twitter.com/HngAcQQJDn— JMU Football (@JMUFootball) October 31, 2025
JMU’s players wore Marvel-themed helmets featuring one of five different characters. The school worked with a Marvel artist to create a poster featuring the team’s mascot, Duke, as a superhero, then gave away 15,000 of them to fans on game day. There were also 2,000 co-branded hats with Marvel comic strips across the brim. JMU remade its pregame hype video to feature clips from Marvel movies. There were face painters and actors in character costumes and fans dressed as their favorite superheroes.
“It’s all about the experience,” Wyant said. “If I got a 7-year-old who came because it was Marvel, but then says they really want to come back to JMU — that’s my goal. And you saw people really buy into it. They latched on because it was something different and unique and new.”
Of course, the better the execution, the more fans expect the next time around. When JMU launched its season ticket push in 2026, the first question Wyant got was, “Where’s Marvel day?”
“It’s a little scary but also exciting to set a precedent,” Wyant said. “I’ve had calls from a bunch of schools asking, ‘Tell us how you did this,’ because everyone is having these conversations of how do we be new and creative and not make it look like every other year. Fans want that.”
And, of course, some of those conversations aren’t exactly breaking new ground so much as following schools such as JMU, Delaware and Akron down paths those schools already blazed.
Delaware rebranded its “Dynasty Challenge” for 2026 as a “Heisman as a Hen,” and immediately other schools followed suit.
“There were schools that literally took our exact graphic design, put it in AI and made it for their school,” Skolnick said.
Imitation, as they say, is the sincerest form of flattery, and Skolnick said small schools should be open to sharing ideas. Still, originality is what everyone’s aiming for, and winning ideas might come from some of the last places administrators expect.
— ESPN College Football (@ESPNCFB) September 12, 2026
Whims’ celebrity reached its crescendo Saturday, with TV appearances and a camera crew following his every move. In the locker room before kickoff, players called him “Coach,” and Moorhead — Akron’s actual playcaller — had Whims lead the team onto the field.
But the best-laid plans don’t always mean results. Rain throughout the early afternoon dampened turnout for the game, and Whims’ opening drive ended with a fumble after what appeared to be a first-down grab.
Still, success for Akron’s marketing department isn’t measured in first downs as much as first impressions and this one has gone so well that Pottorff said the school is looking at expanding the idea to other sports, or perhaps bringing it back with a few more twists next year.
“Now,” Pottorff said, “we’ve just got to come up with the next big thing.”
