Meet Sean Struncius, your (potential) next Akron football offensive coordinator

Earlier this week, Sean Struncius, a restaurant franchise business advisor, got a phone call while at work.

When he saw a number he didn't recognize, he hung up. Understandable, since it was a Syracuse, New York number trying to get hold of someone in Kansas City, Missouri.

But then something else happened right after: a text message from a second unknown number arrived– this time from Akron, Ohio.

"Hey, Sean, this is Matt, the COO from Akron," the text read. "Do you have time to talk to my athletic director?"

"I'm at work right now," Struncius replied, "but is this real?"

"Yes, 100%," Matt replied back.

From there, Struncius had to sneak away from the restaurant he was in, compose himself in his car, and take the phone call from that mysterious Syracuse-area number... which turned out to be Akron athletic director Andrew T. Goodrich.

"I had heard about [the promotion] on [the Pat McAfee Show]," Struncius recalls about when he first heard about the Offensive Coordinator of the Game promotion Akron introduced earlier in the month. "At first, I didn't think anything of it, was never something that I was going to be involved in."

But his main friend group, composed of childhood buddies and former football teammates, insisted Struncius reconsider.

"I got sent the article about this promotion by at least seven people that said, '[Y]ou have to do this, this is your opportunity. This is your shot to go coach and call plays'," Struncius said. "And you know what? I said, 'why not? Let's do it. Let's throw my name in the ring'... And I ended up just buying a couple season tickets thinking, you know, maybe I go to at least one of their games."

Now Struncius, who has never stepped foot in Akron, Ohio in his life, is one of nine finalists to call plays for the Akron Zips for a day.

Struncius was born and raised in Point Pleasant Beach, New Jersey, a tourist town along the Jersey Shore which swells from a population of 5,000 residents in the winter to over 100,000 in the peak of the summer.

"It's a little bit of a ghost town in the winters," Struncius said with a laugh. "But a very, very tight-knit small community."

Many of Struncius' childhood friends (who affectionately call him "Strunch") are still around Point Pleasant Beach today, and at the time of the interview, Struncius was home to celebrate his 30th birthday.

"... [E]verybody knows everybody around here and you stay close throughout your whole lives," Struncius said. "I mean, [my father] still hangs out with his best friends from growing up that live around the corner still."

His father, Paul, a former Division I quarterback at Lafayette, was instrumental to Sean's love of the game of football.

Paul was also a Pop Warner head coach and an assistant assistant coach at Point Pleasant High School, where he broke Joe Thiesmann's passing record as a student-athlete, for over two decades before retiring in 2015.

Sean also recalls fondly his boyhood love for the Rutgers Scarlet Knights– "we always loved Greg Schiano growing up," he quipped– and staying up to watch Big East football games in the mid-2000s, in the days where the likes of Pat White and Jason Pierre-Paul took to the field.

Like many sons are liable to do, Sean followed in his dad's footsteps, earning his way onto the football team at Division III Ursinus after winning the New Jersey high school state championship alongside his father in his senior season. A shoulder injury in his freshman campaign, as well with his mother being diagnosed with stage four breast cancer, forced Sean to move closer to home and finish his education at nearby Monmouth University.

Football was almost always on his mind, though.

"I learned a lot of what a college football program is like and how much goes into it," Struncius said about his time in Collegeville, Pennsylvania. "It's like a job, right? I mean, it's meetings, it's lifting in the morning, it's practice right after, classwork ... it's a full-time gig. It's morning till night.... [M]y biggest takeaway from being part of that experience of just realizing how much goes into a collegiate football program, whether that is D-III or not. It was, you know, it was a lot. It was an all-day experience."

Nowadays, Sean watches hours of football games in NFL Plus' All-22 film in his spare time, analyzing the offensive and defensive schemes at the game's top level and taking notes, talking to his friends about the trends he sees and wondering how he could apply it should be ever get an opportunity to coach a team.

"I really got into more wanting to coach football as I got older and just give back what I got out of the sport, which you know was much more than just playing," Struncius said. "It was about loyalty and about accountability and about how to how to be a man. I think a lot of a lot of life lessons are taught through football, so I started to kind of look at the game differently than a lot of people do in the aspect of being a fan."

So, the question is inevitable: what happens if he wins?

"I'll just be overjoyed to even be around a football program again." Struncius said, beaming through the phone. "That sounds kind of like a different answer than I'm sure a lot of people are looking forward to, but that is a big thing for me."

Struncius is taking the opportunity as seriously as he can; he mentioned during the interview he and some friends were setting up to cut tape from Akron's 2025 campaign to analyze, and he himself has already started scouting Robert Morris' defensive coordinator.

"I think this is a unique experience to open a door that for me would be a bigger takeaway than just getting to go and do this as calling plays on the first drive, right?," Struncius states. "To me, I think I'm actually taking a lot away from being around Coach Moorhead and just even learning whatever I can for a short amount of time."

As mentioned before, Struncius is one of nine finalists; amongst the other big names include Dan Katz (aka Big Cat of Barstool Sports) and YouTuber James Bordeaux. Both have astronomically massive followings in the content creation space, with Katz co-hosting "Pardon My Take" and streaming games online, while Bordeaux focuses primarily on EA Sports College Football builds.

Struncius, who consumes Katz's Barstool content, immediately went to text his friends about the reveal he would be going up against one of his favorite creators, calling it "awesome" and tracking the story on social media and television over the rest of the day.

"I think there's a lot of question of what the winner will eventually be able to do," Struncius said. "I was listening to some of the other introductions and guys talked about throwing the ball deep a bunch... And I know Big Cat... if you look under his mentions, everyone talks about the shark wheel, which is a play from NCAA Football, the video game. For me, it's more about getting to see the team and working with Coach Morehead and being around what they do."

Struncius appreciates the opportunity, and understands the position Akron is putting themselves in, trusting a relative stranger to call plays in a game which could mean a lot for the team down the stretch.

"The game is Week 2 for [Akron]," Struncius said. "[I'd] be working with the coaches to try to put them in the best position possible, right? I don't think that there's some video game experience where you're trying to go out there and do crazy things and, put them in a bad position. I think this really is about trying to win a football game and putting the players in the best spot to be."

Alas, being one of nine finalists means an 11 percent chance of having your name called to the sidelines.

"I'd be excited to be an honorary member of the Zips for a short time," Strincius said. "But if I won, I would try to represent the university and the football team in the best light. And these guys have been nothing but good to me and had great conversations. I think this is a unique, very cool experience, but I'd just be excited to be a part of Zip Nation for a little bit and just do everything I could to hopefully be welcomed in by them."

Struncius has already considered his next steps should be lose; he has plans to donate his unused ticket inventory to a local charity, and is currently scouting places which could accept such a gift.

That said, he's not giving all of them away.

Struncius anticipates attending at least one game this season, to finally get an in-person taste of weeknight #MACtion he's seen from afar for the last 15 years.

"We love the MAC on weekdays, that's my favorite thing," Struncius said. "To me, MAC was always more football, right?... [T]hat became that became a pretty weekly thing each year of, having excitement for when MAC football was on. It's something that, as I got older, it was a reason to go meet up with friends during the week and watch more football."

"I haven't picked a team or anything like that," Struncius continued. "I now have one, that's for sure."

"I'll be rooting for Akron."

The University of Akron is set to unveil the winner of the Offensive Coordinator of the Game promotion on Tuesday, Aug. 25th.