MDZip

Wow, could it be yet another #1 ranking for Caleb's recruiting class? Pretty hard to beat 30% of the top ten players in the country. Must be good to be Caleb Porter right now when he walks into a recruits home.

Agree on the positive press side of things, but I'd like for them to also point out this is a respected institution of higher learning, not "Southwest Central Tech" that just by random chance happens to be churning out all of these great soccer players. Part of the reason that happens is the support of a University that has the resources and student body to provide it.

No Bowling Green again and this year we hit the Directional Michigan trifecta. The schedule doesn't look that daunting overall. we ought to be able to pick up a few more wins.

Thought the original formation was for an Akron support group, if so, Porter's Army is way too specific. Love it as a soccer support group name but even then it has a somewhat limited lifespan of usefulness.

While I agree with the Cap'n that we really could use a WR with some height, both Russell and Sconiers played well at times for true FR last year. In fact, as much as I am eager to see what the final 2011 recruit list entails, I am just as curious to know if Richard Hall and Antoine Russell have been reinstated. Does anybody know? What happened to Schrock? He was supposed to be a big time WR recruit.

Its all starting to make sense now. Coach K was LeBrons original coach. This was the old Cavalier offense.

Down by 6 but like Zeke's offensive aggressiveness and D-Rob getting some good minutes.

Good article, but once again "What is it about Akron, and more specifically, Porter, that makes that small school a factory of top-flight soccer talent?". What the heck does the small school comment mean? It means the writer really knows very little about Akron. At the very least, I think he likely meant "less well known" school or something like that. But small school? That makes no sense.

I have been up the University of Maine and it is quite nice - in the summer.

It mentions that BG probably has the most favorable crossover schedule, but the Zips and BG both have the top two teams at home (Ball St and WMU), the bottom two on the road (Toledo and EMU) and just flip the middle two (NIU and CMU) so they pretty much have the same advantage in schedule. Man, wasn't it just a few years ago where Toldeo was the best team in the MAC?

BCS Cash Haul results have also been released. $170M total, $145M to the 66 BCS schools (avg - $2.2M per school) and the remaining whopping $24M to the other 56 (avg - $428K per school) a whole 19% of the BCS schools take. A very fair and equitable system since TCU, BSU, and BYU certainly did not perform at the level of BCS powers Duke, Vanderbilt and Rutgers.

And most years after we won the MAC JD's classes were rated at the top or close to the top of the MAC. That didn't pan out so well.

Ah, an old Suburban League reference (which looks nothing like it did when I was there - think we have maybe five teams left that were in it back then). Green never did much in basketball, but always used to have Hudson's number in football. Actually had a year where Hudson and Green with both 9-0 and ranked 1-2 in the ABJ poll. Then we went to Green and got our butts handed to us.

15 players and not one Zip. Oh well, we had a couple get rings a couple years ago.

Ballgame over. Flushes beat Miami 78-57. The East leaders (all 4 of them are 3-2), Zips at 2-3 and Ohio at 1-4.

Flushes up on the Sweaters by 15 with 15 minutes left. If they hang on, this is definitely anyones' division. We also have the three best teams in the West at home. There is still ground that can be made up.

I did put something together for Martin to use in his column. Can't wait to see Kitchen and Korb next year. Having followed the Akron Zips for the past 30 years, D.C. United made some smart moves during the MLS SuperDraft. I suspect most United Fans know that there was a little luck involved in having Perry Kitchen available with the third pick of the draft. I saw Ben Olsen state that if he had the first pick, he would have taken Kitchen. I believe it. There are two huge positives with Kitchen that both work very well for United. The first is that despite the fact that he is young, he is a natural leader on the pitch, taking charge for an Akron team all year long despite being the youngest player on the field. He is a very versatile player as well. The Zips generally used him as their sole defending midfielder and he was rarely beaten all the way through the Zips' National title win over Louisville. I don’t know United's plans for him, I’d love to see him paired with Andy Najar, but with some bigger defensive needs they may chose to move him to the backline as well. In a pinch he could even possibly play up front, but with the rocket leg he possesses (witness the 35 yard blast past Michigan in the National semifinals where their goalie barely even moved), midfield would be a good fit for him. The fact that he is young also means even more years of enjoying his play. Chris Korb was an excellent pick with the 31st pick of the draft. Korb was the senior leader on a defense that was one goal from setting a national fewest goals against average record last year. This year they again excelled in keeping opponents from the goal (only once did the Zips give up as many as three goals in a game in their last two years – a 50 game stretch). They tied a national record with 11 straight shutouts (five were in the 2009 NCAA tournament where they did not give up a goal in the entire tournament – but lost on PK’s to Virginia in the Championship game). Korb was the anchor of that defense. I expect to see him on the outside competing for a starting spot. There were other Akron defenders who were better known, but none who were steadier. Korb reminds me of a football offensive lineman whose name is only called when he makes a mistake. The difference is Korb’s name was never called. He never seemed to be the defender who was beaten on a play. He’s not the biggest or fastest defender I’ve ever seen, but he's very smart, very tough and rarely out of position. Neither of these guys are goal scoring threats for replacing Jaime Moreno, so help there isn’t going to come from them, but I will be looking forward to watching these young Zips grow and help return D.C. United back to their historical prominence.

Yep, I didn't get that one either. Talk about possibly alienating some fans. You need to know your market. Reminds me of the place we had a company event in Baltimore last weekend when the DJ delighted in announcing when the Steelers took out the Ravens. You really ought to know your audience, we won't be using them next year.

Nice start for Jennings and Starks in the NFC Championship game.

Finally, we have a cornerback with decent size. Yes he has good size for a CB. That should make us all happy if he has the speed. But if he truly was recruited at LB I have serious misgivings. I don't care if he has been in a weight program or not. At the desparate stage we find our team in now we need someone who can give us productive playing time after one year in our program. He may be too small for that at LB. Putting him in the average size of our current LB's means nothing because they are almost all undersized and under-performing. If we are to build the program we all want, our recruits will have to be better than what we have rather than equal to our average size. Now we are turning our noses at 3 star players because they don't fit "your" mold of what we should be recruiting. My god the negativity about everything Ianello does is getting annoying. Be thankful we got a 3 star "athlete". Let the coaching staff determine where he should play once he gets here. I've seen lots of three stars come to Akron who can't play in the MAC. The negativism comes from being 1-11 and having a coaching staff that did not make the team any better from the beginning of the season to the end, like Miami did last year when they went 1-11. This is not being negative, it's being realistic in the assessment of the program. We can't get better until we objectively assess what we have and then go get what we need. We need size and athleticism at LB. Not that I'm hanging up any banners over last year, but did you really feel that the team made no improvement from the beginning of the year? A loss to GW and a bunch of thrashings to being competetive the last three games and almost beating the MAC Champ? I saw a lot of negatives this year but not seeing some improvement over the course of the year was not one of them. And Zipmeister, I'm sorry people don't understand you.

But this give you a little idea of how far we have to go. Around 1,000 folks to celebrate the Zips soccer championship and 78,000 celebrate Auburn's football title.

Gutty win for the Zips tonight. If the Flushes knock off Miami, Zips will only be a game out of first. And we gave Ohio their only conference win so far and it was at our place. Arrgh.

And worse, Can't made their 90K goal and we helped that a lot.

I just waited to see who the most people voted for and voted for him, hoping the "wisdom of crowds" could get me through.

Not saying its equivalent but a lot of folks had Can't buried with a 1-2 start last season. It's certainly not over by a long shot but this team better wake up soon. Beating the East co-leader would certainly be a step in the right direction.