Akron Zips Drop Baseball

In a rather shocking move today the Akron Zips announced that they plan to drop baseball. It's all part of a three-year plan aimed at cleaning up the departments $60 million dollar "financial problem." In efforts of fixing $40M worth of the problem, the Akron Zips baseball program has officially been cut.

The Zips program has not won the conference since 1996 but there are far more modibund programs. This past season the Zips finished 4th in the MAC East with a 10-11 record and they took the 8th seed in the conference tournament.

After the season the Zips had two players drafted. JT Brubaker went to the Pirates and Joey Havrilak was picked up by the tigers.

The obvious question which comes up is how can Akron do this? Baseball is one of three mens sports required by the Mid American conference. I've seen some comments out on social media that the MAC no longer requires schools to field baseball or softball teams.

If that is the case the Zips may be the first of several schools who look to drop the springtime sport. Some sports like Lacrosse have a good amount of support in the east and north east but schools in the MAC have not made the investment because of the money spent on baseball.