Blue & Gold

I hear you @AkronAlumnus, but to mitigate your disappointment, I'm thinking we may have gotten a steal in Amani. Here is a 10-minute highlight video I found on youtube and man does he look GOOD! Dunks with both hands & shoots the 3. A true stretch 4. I'm guessing that the long talks Coach Kyle Byrd mentions in the above posted tweet ^^ were probably not so much basketball related but more related to real life and priorities, i.e., gotta grow up & get serious, kid. His tape + the fact he played for All-Ohio Red + that he was going to prep school = really makes me think his grades were the only issue keeping teams away from him. Again, I think (🤞) we may have gotten a steal. EDIT: The video is from Amani's junior (COVID) season.

Graduated from Columbus Beechcroft. Apparently he's going to prep school for a year before joining the Zips. 6-7 forward. Looks athletic. Here is a 1-minute facebook video of Amani. He's not very active on twitter though. Looks like he also held an offer from Cleveland State. Plays AAU for All-Ohio Red, which is a high level AAU team. Not much out there on him other than a handful of terribly-edited highlights. In Groce we trust 🤞

2023 Zips Basketball Commitments: Darrion Baker, Stretch 4, 6-8, 195, Hillcrest HS, Country Club Hills, IL. Had offers from: Saint Louis, Drake, Appalachian State, Toledo 🤢, Illinois State, Indiana State, Valparaiso, Wofford, Cal Poly, Cal State Fullerton, Towson, SIUE, Missouri State, UIC, NIU, Southern Indiana, and Radford. Marvin Musiime-Kamali, W, 6-6, 190, Cushing Academy, Brockton, MA Had offers from Brown, Central Connecticut State, Albany, Siena, and Towson. Below, concerning Amani Lyles, is a mistake. Amani is a 2022 Zips recruit. But I won't erase it or the following posts correcting my mistake won't make any sense. Got our first verbal commit of the class of '23 #GoZips

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I'm opened to having my opinion changed, but I'm against NIL for competitive balance. I'm all for the free market, but in a closed system/zero sum game (especial regarding sports as entertainment) you want competitive balance. NFL & NBA have salary caps so that small market teams (G5's & ~90% of P5's) can compete with the large market teams (~top 10% of P5's). This makes for a better product (NBA, NFL). I know, I know, I could have added 20 caveats to the post above. But that's my concern in a nutshell. There's not much competitive balance as is, but now I think there will be even less. P.s. As an aside, college athletes are supposed to be amateurs. They're already receiving a free education worth thousands upon thousands of $$$. Plus the athletes get a number of plush perks regular students don't.

They had one a couple of weeks ago at the Pro Football HOF. Did you go to that one? Did anyone on ZNO? I was a bit surprised no one posted about it on here.

Looks like 7 Zips coaches will be in attendance, including JoeMo & Groce. Anyone going to this?

Possibly a sign of desperation?

https://www.yahoo.com/sports/nick-saban-says-texas-am-bought-every-player-on-their-team-jackson-state-paid-a-guy-1-m-050808940.html Excellent, thought-provoking video.

Man, does Griffin look tough! I'm betting grades were his issue, as someone subtweeted this question to him after he tweeted about his offer from Akron:

LOVE the matte blue helmets!... but I also love the white... and I love the gold, which is classic. We need all three!!!

I had a nice time. Went with some friends. Nice crowd of nice people. I can't complain. And our logo is better than GT's 😤

😂 I see how that could be easily mistaken for a 205 lb. LB. But, yes, he is a WR. His weight is 205 LB lbs.

St. Ed’s Michael Kilbane committed to Northwestern.

I know they were JUCO signees, but it still feels so strange being in year #2 and losing 10 seniors. Coach Sabo's got a lot of work to do. I'm still going to the Georgia Tech game tomorrow night. Go Zips!

Agreed. I think it's perfect as is. It's classic, timeless, and should age with grace.

Classic logo. Tha’s the Flying A from the 80’s. I didn’t like the 90’s Flying A as much, but that’s when they also changed our gold to yellow, which didn’t help it at all.