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I went with 16-19 just because they are young and have yet to muster the intensity necessary to defend consistently and win on the road. That said, 20+ would not surprise me at all. The talent is there to win 20+. This will be my first trip around the MAC so let's go beat the kitties and can't state. : )

This is where I'm at in my thinking. I'm just having fun thus far watching our chemistry develop and watching a new system. Man, are we athletic! Next year, good grief watch out!

The future looks bright at QB...

She is an Akron area girl, Jackie Windom (spelling?). I have officiated basketball games with her although I don't know if she still has time to ref. She does a very good job with the mike and on the court.

Have you been hanging around Lavarr Nelson?

After watching the FG at the 2:12 mark in the video, I no longer like our chances. Clearly you guys use witchcraft, at least in your kicking game. I also haven't heard whether or not our delayed draw play has been removed from the playbook yet.

The thing I like best about Poke is that he gets it all out of effort. Don't get me wrong, he's a freak raw athlete with his size and jumping ability, but it is obvious that the game is relatively new to him and does not come naturally. He counters that "awkwardness" by just pure effort, hard play and soaking in all he can from the coaches.

The football program had its annual awards banquet on Sunday afternoon at Quaker Station. Offensive MVP: A.J. Coney Defensive MVP: Ulysees Gilbert III Special Teams Player of the Year: Nick Gasser Outstanding Senior (Offense): Tra’Von Chapman and Austin Wolf Outstanding Senior (Defense): Andrew Hauser Outstanding Junior (Offense): Kyle Ritz Outstanding Junior (Defense): Kyron Brown Outstanding Sophomore (Offense): Trevor Brown Outstanding Sophomore (Defense):Alvin Davis Outstanding Freshman (Offense): Kato Nelson Outstanding Freshman (Defense): Justin Sampson Presented to the player who scores the most points in a season, Kwadarrius Smith Team's unsung hero for the intangibles he provides during practice and for inspiring his teammates: Offense: Stephen Ericksen Defense:Brock Boxen Iron ZIP Award: Manny Morgan Rise & Shine Award: Alex Ramart Scout Team Player of the Year: Offense:Hugh Cade Defense: Myran Mounds Academic Award: Senior:Zach Guiser, Junior:Vince Lockett, Sophomore:John Lako, Freshman:Austin Sample

Didn’t Buffalo beat you? I don’t think your better than Toledo or Troy but we know we have our hands full trying to contain your offense

That letter has been making the rounds on the internet with various university letterheads edited onto it since the days of AOL. Some memes never die. Some get so old that a new generation discovers it and finds the joke to be fresh all over again.

Akron's SOS to this point is 236. You might have it mixed up with our old coach. His squad is 347 out of 351. https://www.teamrankings.com/ncaa-basketball/ranking/schedule-strength-by-other

It's a fun style of basketball to watch, right?

Sunshine puts fans in a state of euphoria. ☀️?? I'm looking forward to hearing coach Amato talk about the Owl's offense tomorrow. Three more practices, and the team is off to Florida on Friday. I bet some young gun in our receiving group got better today.

Could very well be ignorance on my part, but I haven't seen anything that makes me have much respect for the C-USA in recent years. What was the conference's best OOC win this year? What was the MAC's? I don't think we (as in the MAC) had any notable OOC wins this year, but have beaten ranked OK St and Arkansas very recently. I believe we've strung together multiple years with wins over B1G teams as well. What I do know is we set the stadium record for points scored against Marshall last year. Different team, but still. I respect FAU. We'd all kill for a 10 win season and conf. championship. I'm just not sold that they are some Toledo-level team all of the sudden when they have historically been pretty dreadful and Kiffin has only been there one season. This is fun though playing a team we have no familiarity with who the media is somewhat infatuated with. I hope our players are up to the challenge.

At the beginning of the year: no. But after seeing Groce's offense and how the big men are coached, this doesn't surprise me. There is a lot of off-the-ball movement, back cuts, and slip screens that lead to easy points in the paint. Additionally - as I've mentioned in other posts - the strength at which our forwards go up is terrific. EMan has really found himself in a good situation all of a sudden, seemingly always finding the space behind the defense to get open. As Clark stated, his effort is nothing short of awesome. I will NEVER get upset with Olojakpoke as long as he's pouring in the constant effort we've all seen thus far. Keep it up! On a side note, this is the second MAC East Division Player of the Week honor for a Zip in this young season. That's promising.

26 a on 34 fg with this rag/tag group, I would have expected more of a YMCA style. I think they are improving individually and as a team each game. I love the zone being thrown into the mix.. I don't think we will need to wait until next year to see results. We may not win the MAC, but we won't be bottom dwellers.

I watched your game against North Texas. You are no Toledo. You make a lot more errors.

E-Man all the way. If you walked up to him and called him poke, I doubt he would respond. E-Man or just E.

And did it all in just 42 minutes.

Who would have thought we would have seen this at the beginning of the year? Go Poke!

Don't get me wrong @zipsoutsider - I watched parts of your games against Toledo, Kent State, and Ohio (ESPN replays). If FAU plays the way they have played most of the past 10 weeks I think our offensive weapons and overall speed will be too much and it will be a 3-score type of spread. We have 5 or more guys who hurt teams running the ball (2 RBs but then the QB, WRs on jet-sweeps or reverses, etc.). And then when teams load the box we throw it over the top or trick them with something. We have a defense who has given up some yardage and points, but come up with big plays (sacks and turnovers). If you guys are not an elite MAC team, I can tell you for a fact at least for this season FAU is head-and-shoulders the best team in CUSA. But that is why we play the games - nobody wins on stats or what they have done (or haven't done) in past weeks. It all matters about who shows up on the 19th. And just like any game, big plays and turnovers can always make a difference.

Final Results... Z.I.P. is the Champion Prognosticator and has bragging rites and can wear the attached crown until next December, when a new Champion is selected. He had 87 points fknbuflobo and ME_87 tied (and now have to do the sister-kiss) with 67 points lilroodude charged ahead into fourth place with 62 points Zippyfan34 was next at 61 points The soothing sounds of ZipsVoice came in next-to-last with 59 points And thank God for SBZipfan for playing and finishing last with 49 points! Thanks for the seven of us who enjoyed(?) the comraderie and competition!

Thanks. I agree with this. It has been insulting to imply that FAU is too good for Akron. We have more losses, but they were to Penn State, very good Iowa State and Troy teams, and with a R-FR on only a couple of days of practice as the starter, and an high quality Toledo team. We lost to Troy in the last minute of the game. We are better than our record shows. We are clearly not an elite MAC team yet, but we have improved all season long. If we are honest, there is a lot of interest in a Kiffin v. Bowden bowl game and that is why we are playing each other.

Lane is more of a trailblazer than I thought. Hopefully the new safety thing works out for him eventually.

Question #1 I think is he will be here. Kiffin really seems to enjoy the current freedom he has, and most think it will have to be a big time job to pull him away. He will be picky, but so will those schools. None of the jobs this year were realistic from both sides - the jobs he'll want still want to see what he does for another year or maybe more. No idea on #2, but it isn't good. We were on the Stadium network, and the quality of the broadcasts were good but are not nearly as readily available as say ESPN3. If CUSA wants to get seen we need to do something different.

I'm new to supporting FAU, so trying to be realistic I would agree some of the fans have gotten a little ahead of themselves. However, this has been a record-breaking, best season in school history. All of the struggles were early on, and I would guess if FAU was playing Buffalo again we would be a similar roughly 23 point favorite to what we are against you guys. I would also guess if we played Navy again we would be favored and would win that game (terrible first game matchup for a new staff with some players who were on the field who just got on campus literally a week before). Easy to say, but if this team and staff had time together before the season we might be 11-2 or possibly 12-1. This is what is great about bowls where teams and conferences really don't know one another. CUSA has teams that are not well known, but we had 10 teams that were bowl-eligible and 9 that made it in. Our schedule included games against 9 bowl-eligible teams (8 that are playing and 10 games against bowl teams with the second game with North Texas). None of that matters, as "any given Saturday" a team can lose. And a huge point-spread and playing at home can lead to a team not getting up for the game. But I will be optimistic that the team keeps surprising me in how ready they seem since about the 5th game of the season. We have a significant amount of the team coming back plus a few transfers who are sitting out this year, so if we have 10+ wins again in 2018 then I'll start thinking we really have something going. Right now we are a hot team who wants to become a good program and after several mediocre to bad season's Owl fans are very happy about that.

I thought App State was at about the level of a middle of the road or just below MAC team. Somewhere in the range of Toledo to BG of last year.

This is a good team. Just wait until some of these guys grow up.

TennZip beat me to that correction. We have not seen David Egbo’s best stuff yet. You can bet on that one.

Please tell me our marketing department has reached out to the Football HoF to try and get Jerry Rice to make an appearance, maybe even with Jason Taylor.

Well, the Zips just played their best home game of the season against the best team they've seen at the JAR so far. Some defensive lapses early in the second half but otherwise a solid effort. Fantastic ball movement tonight. P.S. I was happy to see NWAkron come out of it unscathed by the t-shirt cannon. He flinched a little when it rolled out, but never took his eye off of it and stood in there like a champ!

Really hate their #5.

I'm sure that If things don't work out for him basketball wise he will be rewarded in the real world commensurate with the work he put into his academic efforts.

Yes, of course and I'm honored that someone reads my posts at all.