Every Man a Coach: Akron Guest Offensive Coordinator Marty Whims II Is Ready to Take the Reins

The man who will script Akron’s first drive against Robert Morris Saturday showed up to practice Friday with little technical football knowledge—and that was fine by Zips coach Joe Moorhead.

“The greater challenge would’ve been somebody walking in the door like Henry Winkler in The Waterboy with a green notebook full of plays,” Moorhead told Sports Illustrated, “wanting to install the triple option 24 hours before the game—that dog wasn’t gonna hunt.”

Moorhead spent Friday training Marty Whims II, the everyman winner of Akron’s much-hyped Offensive Coordinator of the Game competition, in the finer points of offensive play-calling. He will apply this knowledge Saturday on his team’s first series against the Colonials, as the Zips look to shake off a 38–16 loss to Wake Forest in their opener and get back to .500.

“We’re definitely at a point where I feel like we’re starting to turn a corner, over the past couple years,” Whims—already fluent in coachspeak—said. “Hopefully we can get [to six wins] this year and maybe make it to a bowl game again.”

Akron announced Whims as the winner of the competition on Aug. 25. Whims—the CFO of Stark Enterprises, a Cleveland-based real-estate development company—is a Zips alumnus (class of 2002) and multi-decade season-ticket holder.

He’s the kind of fan that truly subsidizes college football—the flesh-and-blood human game as opposed to the abstract television game. The kind who can readily recall his favorite Akron football moment (attending the 2005 Motor City Bowl, which the Zips narrowly lost to DeAngelo Williams-era Memphis) and player (quarterback Charlie Frye, who also played for Whims’s beloved Browns).

Automatically entered into the competition due to his single season ticket—he usually attends games with two close friends—Whims assumed he was an underdog to the influencers who tripped over each other to buy season tickets in droves.

“There’s celebrities out there that bought 18 season tickets,” Whims said. “You don’t think your one entry’s gonna be good enough to win it all. Just complete and utter shock and excitement—it’s been quite the ride the past couple weeks since I found out I was a winner.”

Moorhead was initially skeptical of the competition, a notion that he has underlined repeatedly in interviews. As the buzz surrounding it exploded nationwide, he changed his tune.

“I’ve been on all the big shows—[ESPN’s Paul] Finebaum, [ESPN’s Pat] McAfee,” Moorhead said. “I didn’t anticipate that it was going to lead to an appearance on TMZ Sports and be on with Pat and kind of some of the other things. It was a stroke of marketing genius if we’re being honest.”

Whims estimates he’ll have around 40 people in attendance at InfoCision Stadium-Summa Field—a development that follows weeks of people approaching him with well wishes during the football games of Cuyahoga Falls Woodridge High School, where all three of his sons have spent time.

Robert Morris is not a pushover, having won its opener over Wagner and second game over Division II West Virginia State by appreciable margins (28–7 and 29–9, respectively).

Moorhead, born a stone’s throw from the Colonials in Pittsburgh, emphasized that Akron did not want to “jeopardize our ability to win the game or disrespect our opponent.”

When the whistle blows Saturday at 3:30 p.m. ET, though, it’s Whims’s—and the Zips’—moment. A moment that, like it would a true coach, both excites and unsettles America’s offensive coordinator.

“I’ve been telling my kids—we can’t go three-and-out,” Whims said. “I think failure or even something short of that, a turnover or something, that’s what I’m definitely the most nervous about. I don’t want to be the guy whose Wikipedia page shows, you know, I had one opportunity with this and I failed with a three-and-out or a turnover.”

PODCAST: Listen to Sports Illustrated’s college sports podcast, Others Receiving Votes, hosted by Pat Forde, on Apple and Spotify. Watch the show on SI’s college YouTube channel or on SI TV.

Add us as a preferred source on Google