AKRON, Ohio – The University of Akron will hire Tom Arth, 37, as its next football coach Akron officials confirmed Friday evening.
The Chattanooga Times Free Press and footballscoop.com first reported the hire earlier in the day. Arth, a St. Ignatius graduate and former head John Carroll, has been the head coach at the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga for two seasons.
There will be a 4 p.m. press conference, Monday in InfoCision Stadium. For Akron athletic director Larry Williams, it marks the first football coaching hire of his career which had previous stops at Portland and Marquette.
In a release on Akron’s website Williams said; “Tom’s experience in leading two programs (John Caroll, UTC), his ties to Northeast Ohio, his tremendous football IQ and his passion for developing student-athletes for their future endeavors made him the perfect candidate to elevate our program.”
Akron fired Terry Bowden on Dec. 2. Bowden earned a $315,180 base salary and had two years remaining on his contract. Akron was 35-52 in seven seasons at Akron, including two bowl bids.
The Chattanooga Times Free Press reported Arth signed a five-year deal at UTC in December 2016 with an annual salary of $185,000. If Arth leaves the prior to Dec. 31 this year, he would owe the UTC in buyout clause $370,000. Combined, for the cash-strapped University of Akron, that’s $685,000 in buyouts for the two contracts, plus what would likely be roughly a five-year deal for Arth in the neighborhood of $350,000 per year.
UTC was 3-8 in Arth’s first season at UTC, a Football College Subdivision school. The Mocs started this season 4-0, but finished 6-5. While Arth had strong defenses both seasons at UTC, his offenses struggled. In six of the Mocs last seven games the team failed to score 30 points.
However, Arth does follow the trend of recent hires in the Mid-American Conference with previously struggling programs hiring head coaches from lower division programs. Eastern Michigan’s Chris Creighton was plucked from Creighton while Buffalo’s Lance Leipold came from Wisconsin-Whitewater. And both of their teams are playing in bowl games this season.
The difference between them, however, is Creighton and Leipold had extended runs building and rebuilding championship teams in the Division III ranks where Arth only has his tenure at JCU and UTC to fall back on.
Arth is a Westlake native and St. Ignatius graduate who played at John Carroll and was a backup quarterback for the Indianapolis Colts, behind Peyton Manning. Arth later left the private sector to get back into football at John Carroll. He led the Blue Streaks to a 40-8 record in four seasons, and built the program from a .500 team to a historic victory over Mount Union and a spot in the NCAA Division III semifinals.