MDZip

Just saw a piece on Blake Bortles where he showed all of the D-1A offer letters he got out of high school: UCF, WKU, Purdue, Tulane and Colorado State. That was it for the eventual third pick in the draft.

Its only a little over three hours for me to get there and I got seats in section WE, row N so I will be fairly close to the action (last time I was at least this close at a road game was at Michigan so hoping for the same effort but different result ), sitting with a cousin who is a Penn State fan so Zips I really need this victory. I give the Zips about a 25% shot which is way better than I would have given them at this game five years ago, so a well played game could be historic for the Zips. Plus our next three opponents all got votes in the ORV category so the Zips have some real opportunities in front of them. Others receiving votes: Texas 126, Oklahoma State 94, Duke 60, Florida 49, Penn State 49, Mississippi State 49, Michigan 38, TCU 29, Washington 27, BYU 21, Marshall 18, Iowa 18, Virginia Tech 17, Tennessee 14, Cincinnati 8, West Virginia 7, Texas Tech 7, Rutgers 6, Arizona 4, North Dakota State 2, Louisiana-Lafayette 1, Pittsburgh 1 Who's with me?!?!

Were you there for the attempted breakdown of the concrete wall with sledgehammers by the players at the beginning of the game? In concept I'm sure it sounded great but the execution was so poor it ended up on a Sportscenter blooper reel and someone made a pretty good Youtube parody.

I actually walked across the Lobos field earlier this summer. I put a little hex on it.

Yeah I've heard some professors at Akron are pretty terrible. Why do you teach there anyway?

A few surprises there for me there. Hirschman not winning the backup slot (which probably says as much about Kyle Pohl's improvement as it does Tommy Woodson's). Happy Pratt got a starting spot, thought he was very impressive last year. Also happy a few local kids like him and Osborne are starting, bodes well for area recruiting too. Am surprised O'Leary beat out Stein, hadn't even heard of him yet.

Haven't you seen how Congress operates? Didn't word that well, I meant it has been the only season opening win in more than a decade, akzipper being right in that the last one prior to 2007 was in 2001. So one opening season win in the last 12 years I think we are due another one.

Ding, ding, ding. It was the 2007 "Patriot Bowl" that was played at Cleveland Browns Stadium (although the location is listed as Brown Stadium, Providence RI at the top of the ESPN recap). The Zips beat Army 22-14 for their only season opening win in more than a decade.

Pitt loses a starting cornerback.

One week to go - assuming the Zips can win this game anyone know the last time they started the season with a win (hint, no one currently in school was likely to have seen it, expect maybe if John Blutasrsky is enrolled).

Maybe the team thinks the A-Roo looks like a donkey like some on here have expressed.

Sure wouldn't seem like it. They said the old deal was $1M per year. Lets says it got upped to $1.2M. When the MAC shortly returns to 12 members that would be $100K per school per year. If the average ticket price sold over for those games was even $10, you'd only have to get 500 more fans at another couple of games instead of those Tuesday/Wednesday games if you get scheduled with two of them at home like the Zips did.

And more fine journalism AKRON, Ohio -- Before LeBron James left the Cavaliers in 2010, fans gathered there hoping to see him resign. Next month they will gather there to welcome his return. If that's what they were hoping for they got their wish. I suspect most folks there would have preferred to see him re-sign at the time.

From all the articles above, gotta be good to be DeAndre Yedlin right now, teams now fighting over his services, a nice $300K bonus from being part of the World Cup, man this young man has the world in his hands right now. And through it all it appears he is staying very humble. Gotta be happy for him (just wish they'd mention UA a few more times in the articles about him ).

Perry Kitchen also got a mention.

DeAndre gets another pop culture shout out.

Some cheap shots (for all the players they "profiled") but in the vein of all publicity is good publicity... Hey can we get the title changed to Yedlin makes the final 23? Sure hope he at least gets a few minutes in one of the matches.

And she was only 5 centimeters from tying the NCAA Championship meet record. Two sophomore pole vault champions this year, the future is bright here at Pole Vault U.

I generally like to recognize the sports that accomplish some pretty big things while not getting a lot of attention. As of this moment the women's outdoor track and field team sits tied for second with three competitors left (all in the pole vault) so while it's unlikely that the Zips will catch Oregon for the title, it is still quite possible for them to finish the NCAA runner-up. That's pretty amazing. And the men currently sit in 7th with no more events so the Zips conceivably could have a top ten finish for both the men and women. The only other schools that have a reasonable shot at doing so - perennial powers Oregon and Florida. Nice work again Coach Mitchell.

One thing that does stand out though is that none of the bowls are against any BCS conference foes. The Motor City Bowl used to allegedly be against the 7th/8th place Big Ten team but that didn't happen very often.

Just looking back on the write-up on the Reese trophy and the men really had a phenomenal year. While no huge story like a bowl game, NCAA basketball tournament appearance or soccer final four, it's pretty amazing what the teams accomplished this year. Locking up the Reese trophy without outdoor track and baseball (who came in second and made the MAC title game respectively anyway), the soccer team won the league yet again, indoor track won the title (plus an individual national champion), cross country was second, golf was second and basketball actually had a bit of a down year but still was second in the East and made the conference semi's. Even football was respectable with a third place East finish. That's a hell of a performance from the men. Women weren't quite that good but another fine showing from track (second place for indoor and outdoor), a really unexpected swimming and diving title, softball grabbing the third seed in the tournament and of course the women's basketball team winning their first ever MAC title. Quite a year. Here are the final Reese Cup standings (and the gap between Akron and second place Can't State is larger than the gap between Can't State and last place Miami - wow): Akron 8 79.5 9.93 Can't State 8 61.5 7.68 Toledo 6 45.0 7.50 Eastern Michigan 9 67.0 7.44 Ball State 6 41.5 6.91 Western Michigan 5 34.0 6.80 Central Michigan 7 45.5 6.50 Buffalo 10 61.0 6.10 Ohio 6 35.5 5.91 Bowling Green 6 35.5 5.91 Northern Illinois 7 41.0 5.85 Miami 7 39.5 5.64 Still pissed we lost the overall Wagon Wheel challenge again.

He signed with Western Michigan.

Not laughing as hard this year. Phil lists 11 Zips on his preseason all-MAC team. None are first team but things are certainly looking up.

Huh, saw that article but didn't notice the names of the coaches in the box to the right who just missed the cut. That means the author regards KD as no worse than the 75th best coach on their list. Out of 343 coaches and the only MAC coach represented that's not so bad.