MDZip

I have always felt very spiritual and "connected", if you will. Giving this my best shot. You are thinking about... Chicken? Tacos, tacos, I'm betting it's taco's.

BirdZip! BirdZip! Are you OK, man? Larry Bird rebuffed the Cavaliers before they hired Byron Scott.

Cap'n - that was Temple.

http://www.thetaphouseakron.com/ He's a businessman who needs to eat and pay the bills. Few Zips show up for the shows. He's a Zip fan. What would you have the guy do? He gets a salary from the university. It is far larger than the people the University wants showing up at the games. How much do you need? Follow the posts closer and comment again. Whats your point?? If you are talking about the guy who runs the restaurant,I'll bet he brings in more than me and a whole lot of others who go to the games.

I'm going to say for polling purposes as long as we don't lose tonight we will remain #1 pretty easily. College Soccer News kept the Zips at #1 but Top Drawer Soccer dropped Akron to #2 (behind Louisville of all people). Think it was mostly just to shake things up a little bit, Lousiville really didn't deserve that kind of a leap. They also tied OSU but the rest of their schedule is not exactly composed of juggernauts.

Yet another amazing game for Kofi Sarkodie, grabbing a tie for the lead in goals scored on the team (as a defender!) and playing absolute lock down defense as well. There cannot be a better, more complete player in the country. Give it to him now before some fluke goal scorer gets a bunch against weak competition. And Perry Kitchen should come in second.

When we do beat FAU (by any margin) it will be interesting to see what the pollsters do next week. Will they knock Akron off the top spot because of a tie just for a change of pace? I say we keep the number 1 ranking because #2 in most polls right now is UNC. It would be pretty tough to say UNC is a better team even right now. Also, #2 UNC is playing #3 Virginia today - let's hope for the tie. Edit: Soccer America's polls are done on Thursdays. They still have the Zips at #1, even with the tie.

Jason Whitlock is on board with it. Mike Johnson, the 49ers new OC, is a good hire. Singletary has 13 games to evaluate Johnson, and Johnson has 13 games to figure out how to call plays. Now Singletary (and his stopwatch) needs to leave Johnson completely alone. Singletary's decision to call timeouts and run plays in the final seconds of San Fran's blowout loss to the Chiefs was one of the dumbest things I've ever seen. It also contributed to a 49ers receiver getting injured.

This week, the Zips get compared to Judge Roy Smails. Number 7 this week. "Judge Smails:" Smails asked caddie Danny Noonan if he stood for goodness or badness. We know the Zips are really bad. As the judge told Noonan, "There's a lot of, well, badness in the world today." The MAC makes up 40% of the bottom ten with one in waiting. The MAC - it's craptastic!

7,000 fans for a mid-week college soccer match? I think that might be considered a rivalry. Well, at least it would be if it wasn't so one-sided. 24-6-3 now.

NIU may not be good, but as a MAC team they are. The Zips may be improving but it won't be enough this week. NIU 24 Zips 17

Crap! There's some payback for us scoring a goal on them with 5 seconds left and knocking them out of the tournament a few years ago. Ties it with 2 seconds left. OT.

Under a minute.

We did.

Nanchoff equalizes with a PK!!!

College Soccer News predicts Louisville to make the College Cup.

Zips down 1-0. Shutout streak is over.

I won't get into all of the assumptions you made here, but at least look at your math. This year, soccer sold 750 season tickets at an average of $75 apiece, That alone is over $55,000 and that does not count GA ticket sales. And with your other assumption if we sold out every game and had 1500 students in attendance, that would still be 2700 paying customers. At $5 apiece and 14 homes games, that would be $189,000. I'm not saying it operates at a profit, but at the very least your ticket math is a bit off.

Top Drawer Soccer also has a list of the best players by conference. Do you think Akron is dominating the MAC? The Zips have the first ten players, eleven players in all and Perry Kitchen is not listed. That's a dominant team. Also, Tulsa holds the consecutive unbeaten at home record at 39 in a row, Akron currently stands at 29. With five more home games, if the season breaks right, there would be two home games in the MAC tournament and three in the NCAA tournament (all of those would count if they are at home), so the Zips could tie the record this year. Of course I'd trade everything that could happen this year to be

If it was under old NCAA rules (20 years ago), there would be co-champions. They ended that in 1989 but there were two instances of co-champions (1989 and 1967). They have also played 4OT games that had to be decided by penalty kicks. I've advocated a system where you reduce the number of players in each successive overtime (opens space and there is a strategy of who you leave on the field. Do you keep your strong defenders or keep your strikers? In our case, we could have both just by leaving Kofi on the pitch ). In the fourth overtime, the goalies get pulled. At least you're still playing soccer and once the goalies are gone, you will get a goal at some point.

Also on the same Buckeyes site was a discussion on Akron soccer. They are actually very complimentary though it is mostly one guy.

This was in the pregame notes for last Friday: Joining Akron (5-0-0) and No. 2 Tulsa (6-0-0) in that exclusive category (undefeated, untied teams) are No. 4 Monmouth (6-0-0), No. 9 SMU (7-0-0), No. 17 Butler (5-0-0) and Towson (6-0-0). The list is now down to only the Zips, SMU and Butler. Apparently there is no stat for most consecutive wins in the regular season.

Top Drawer also released their list of the Top 100 freshman. We had three, Kitchen (#3), Mattocks (#15) and Stevenson (#77). I also think some of our excellent freshman (Ontiveros, Tulloch, Genovesi and Brenes) just aren't getting visibility because of all of the upperclass talent in front of them on their own team. Pretty good class once again.

From Top Drawer soccer today: Loved the picture of the Zips celebrating with the Rowdies and the "Domination" headline. Writeup is here, but it's pretty short so I just copied it here: An emphatic 4-0 win over previous #2 Tulsa punctuated the #1 status the Akron Zips continued to enjoy in our Men's Tournament 48 National Ranking. Caleb Porter's Zips remained perfect after the win, with the team remaining unbeaten, untied and unscored upon. Observer will now have to contemplate just how good this team can be over the course of the season, as the squad will need to look to itself for motivation and challenges through the regular season, starting with a midweek game at Ohio State. By the way, I was surprised to learn that Tulsa only has about 4200 students. We had a bigger crowd than they have students.

I had the same thought, I'm just not too lazy to do it myself. I didn't count MAC games. Akron FCS 0-1 BCS 0-3 Non-BCS 0-0 Ball State FCS 1-1 BCS 0-2 Non-BCS 0-0 BGSU FCS 0-0 BCS 0-1 Non-BCS 1-2 Buffalo FCS 1-0 BCS 0-2 Non-BCS 0-1 CMU FCS 1-0 BCS 0-1 Non-BCS 0-0 EMU FCS 0-0 BCS 0-1 Non-BCS 0-1 Can't State FCS 1-0 BCS 0-2 Non-BCS 0-0 Miami FCS 0-0 BCS 0-2 Non-BCS 1-0 NIU FCS 1-0 BCS 1-2 Non-BCS 0-0 Ohio FCS 1-0 BCS 0-1 Non-BCS 0-1 Temple FCS 1-0 BCS 1-1 Non-BCS 0-0 Toledo FCS 0-0 BCS 1-1 Non-BCS 0-0 WMU FCS 1-0 BCS 0-1 Non-BCS 0-0 So FCS 8-2, BCS 3-20, Non-BCS 2-5. Most surprising to me is how few non-BCS games there are. That may be one of the MAC's big problems, we really aren't playing like competition. Most of the BCS games are against the Big Ten which probably has to do mostly with geography and travel. I've said before, I'd take one payday game, one FCS game (since you're not going to get a payday team to come here) and then two games against whoever (BCS or non-BCS) we can get to do a home-home series. If it is a BCS team. it is likely they are not going to be a top team so then it would be like competition. I'd be fine with a schedule like that.