Did you ever stand in your living room, yell at the TV after a busted play, and insist you could call plays better than the coach paid to call plays?
Akron athletic director Andrew Goodrich is counting on that.
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Akron plans to let one lucky fan find out: Are they actually any good at calling plays?
Just when you thought you’d seen it all, the Zips uncorked a promotion unlike any other. Akron will select a fan to call plays for a portion of one game this season.
You read that correctly.
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A Division I football team will appoint a fan as its “Offensive Coordinator” for a game that counts on the record.
“This is fun,” Goodrich told USA TODAY Sports. “College football is fun. We are having fun.”
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Fun is one word for it.
Unique. Bold. Risky. Zany.
All of the above.
When Goodrich brought the idea to Akron coach Joe Moorhead this summer, another word popped into Moorhead’s mind. Well, two words.
“Utterly ridiculous,” Moorhead said. “That was my knee-jerk reaction.”
The more Moorhead learned about the plan, the more he warmed up to it. Now, he’s on board.
“Listen, it’s boom or bust,” Moorhead told me, “and I’ve kind of leaned into this thing.”
OK, let’s back up and establish what this is and what it isn’t.
Moorhead won’t surrender his headset and venture into the stands while a fan takes the reins of his program. He’s still firmly at the wheel, but it is true Akron will select one lucky season-ticket holder to help script and call plays — either from the sideline or the booth — for Akron’s opening drive against Robert Morris, an FCS opponent, on Sept. 12.
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For one drive and one drive only, a fan will go from yelling at the play-caller to learning what it’s like to be the play-caller.
And if the first play of the opening drive is a pick-six? Well, that’s that.
“I will be saying my prayers that (the first drive) goes well,” Goodrich said. “It does have genuine risk involved.”
There’s also genuine reward.
The promotion went viral on social media. A program that typically operates in the shadows of the Cleveland Browns and Ohio State attracted some limelight.
Season-ticket sales surged. Akron sold out its stadium suites for “perhaps the first time ever,” Goodrich said. As of the middle of last week, 40% of Akron’s season-ticket sales came after the school announced the promotion on Aug. 4.
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“This would probably be a bad idea for the AD of Alabama,” Goodrich said, “but it’s a good idea for the AD at the University of Akron.”
You might be wondering, how does someone come up with an idea like this? He heads thousands of feet into the air for some blue sky thinking.
How Akron came up with idea to let a fan call plays
Akron basketball sold out its ticket allotment for its first-round NCAA Tournament game against Texas Tech in March. The Zips lost, but the fan enthusiasm surrounding the event motivated Goodrich to question: How can Akron rekindle that energy during football season?
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He started brainstorming with his staff on the flight home from Tampa, Florida, after that March Madness exit.
One early idea that emerged: What about a ceremonial offensive coordinator?
Akron doesn’t employ an offensive coordinator. Moorhead, a former offensive coordinator who previously coached Fordham and Mississippi State, calls the plays.
So, Akron could explore appointing an honorary offensive coordinator, sort of like teams have honorary captains for the coin toss.
That’s too bland, Goodrich and his team decided. A purely ceremonial OC wouldn’t cause even a ripple of excitement.
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Goodrich upped the ante: Could Akron let a fan call plays for a full game?
Terrible idea, his staff told him.
Fair enough. Allowing a fan to call plays for a full game would be beyond the pale.
Senior deputy AD Matt Pottorff suggested a compromise: Select a fan to call one play — the first play — of a game.
Not a bad idea, but it seemed “very, very, very safe,” Goodrich says, as he reflects on it now.
“If we’re going to do something,” Goodrich said, “we’ve got to do something pretty bold.”
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By the time they landed on that flight from Tampa, Goodrich and his team had settled on an idea: Select a fan to help script and call plays for one full drive.
Sufficiently bold, but not off the rails.
But, would Moorhead go for it?
Joe Moorhead gets on board
Goodrich sat on the idea for a while before he and Pottorff took it to Moorhead this summer.
And, well, that conversation — hey, coach, we want a fan to help you call plays — went about like you’d expect, at first.
“He had a very respectful amount of hesitation,” Goodrich said. “I think he thought this was crazy.”
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They hashed out Moorhead’s concerns.
Bring them under your wing during the week, Goodrich suggested. Have a conversation. Talk. Script a plan.
The idea would generate eyeballs, ticket sales, and, yes, it would infuse revenue into a football program starving for it.
Moorhead agreed. He wouldn’t let this become a circus, or do this in a way that disrespects his team or its opponent, but he’d do it.
“When you get the answer you want, you get out of the room,” Goodrich said, recalling the moment Moorhead said yes. “I grabbed Matt (Pottorff) and said, ‘Get out of here, let’s go.'”
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How will Akron select winning fan?
The promotion caught the attention of celebrities like ESPN’s Pat McAfee. Yes, a celebrity who buys season tickets or a ticket-holding booster will be eligible to win the contest. But, Goodrich insists, the contest won’t be rigged.
The more season tickets you buy, the better your odds of being selected, but every season-ticket holder will have a chance.
Goodrich designated Akron’s college of business to handle selection, to ensure the legitimacy of the process, much as a third-party accounting firm might handle counting votes for an award.
The college of business will know the winner before Akron athletics does, Goodrich says.
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The winning fan will be selected on Aug. 19.
Never mind a lucrative offensive coordinator contract. The fan will become a volunteer employee to participate. Akron will work through logistics on whether the fan will be up in the booth for their immersive drive or on the sideline next to Moorhead.
How Akron’s plan will come to life
Moorhead will open the doors of his program to the winning fan.
Want to attend practices leading up to the game? Meet the team? Get to know the staff? That all sounds good.
“If they think it’s cool enough or important enough to be around the whole week, I’m more than open to that,” Moorhead said. “That doesn’t bother me at all. I think it’d actually be kind of cool.”
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Moorhead’s play-planning process begins on Sunday, six days before game day. He starts by planning for first and second downs. As the week progresses, he plans third-down plays, red-zone plays, two-minute offense, four-minute offense, and 2-point plays. Thursday and Friday, he’s finalizing a plan and scripting “openers,” industry lingo for plays that can be prepped and practiced for first and second downs.
Moorhead anticipates the fan will be around the facility Thursday and Friday of game week, at the very least, when he’s finalizing plans, and they’ll put their heads together.
“The winner is going to come in and sit down with me,” Moorhead said, “I’m going to take them through our game plan, show them what Robert Morris does defensively, show them the ways we’re looking to attack them, and say, ‘Hey this is my plan for the openers, what ideas do you have?’ And then see if their ideas match what we do.”
The Zips don’t run triple-option, they don’t run the single-wing, and they’re not going to install it. This experiment has its limits, but if a fan wants to run triple-option, Moorhead can show the fan concepts that exist in Akron’s play arsenal that could achieve a similar goal as the triple-option.
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I asked Moorhead about another possibility: What if the fan wants to run Four Verticals? That’s a pass play where four receivers run downfield for a deep shot.
Moorhead perks up at this.
“I like Four Verticals. We run that,” he says. “I think it’s an excellent idea.”
Moorhead explained that if the fan wants to run Four Verticals, he’d talk the fan through the situations in which that play might be best used, to give it a chance of success.
That, in essence, is how this will unfold. It’ll be a collaboration, but Moorhead retains authority.
“He’s going to guide him through this,” Goodrich said. “It’s almost like fantasy camp for offensive coordinating.”
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The fan probably will emerge from fantasy camp realizing scripting and calling plays for a Division I game looks different than playing a video game on the couch.
“I do think the experience will show the person when they come in that it’s not as easy as looking at those six boxes on ‘Madden,'” Moorhead said, “and picking the triangle, and (running the same play) all the way down the field.”
And, what if the Zips march down the field and score, and the fan makes this play-calling thing look easy?
“They may rip the headset off me and take the call sheet and hand it to this guy and tell me to go get some popcorn,” Moorhead says.
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He’s joking, and what can you do but laugh? He’s leaned into this. That’s what Goodrich wanted. Something fun.
“Hell, I may hand the guy the sheet if they keep putting it in the (end zone),” Moorhead quipped. “That means a lot of points and a win for the Zips.”
Blake Toppmeyer is the USA TODAY Network’s senior national college football columnist. Email him at BToppmeyer@gannett.com and follow him on X @btoppmeyer.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Why one college football team will let a fan call plays: ‘It’s boom or bust’
