Sunday, September 22, 2013

Fear the Roo

Buy it here.

You've got to love a school that has a kangaroo as its mascot and a football team named for goulashes.
The Zips name is unique in college athletics and comes from "zippers", rubber overshoes made by the BF Goodrich Company that were popular in the 1920s and 1930s. . . . The university's mascot is "Zippy", a kangaroo. Zippy is one of only a few female college mascots in the United States.
Akron Zips | Wikipedia
Fear the Roo? According to a University of Akron website she is a "perpetual freshman." However, she won the 2007 Capital One Mascot of the Year. (The new slogan for Capital One will soon become "What's in your pouch?")

According to Zippy's Fan Site:
Zippy is the marsupial mascot for The University of Akron . . . To win the mascot challenge, Zippy went furry head to furry head against various birds of prey, mammals and nonhuman objects from other universities.
. . . for thirteen weeks.

According to Wikipedia, "The University of Akron is regarded as a world leader in polymer research." The stadium was known as the Rubber Bowl, although it was named for the predominance of the tire industry in Akron. Also,
In 2013, the Rubber Bowl was acquired by Canton, Ohio-based Team1 Marketing Group Inc. with plans to renovate and update the structure as the home for a professional football team. Renovation work began later in 2013, but initial plans for a professional team in the revived United States Football League (USFL) have fallen through.
(Revived USFL? Really?)

University of Akron now has a new stadium, the InfoCision Stadium–Summa Field. InfoCision is the name of the stadium and Summa is the name of the field inside the stadium. There are are separate names for the premium seats, too, but they had to cut it off somewhere. Otherwise, it would be the InfoCision-Summa-FirstMerit-Towpath Credit Union Stadium, Field, and Suites. The student section, on the other hand, is known as the "Roo Zoo."

Summa Health System, an Ohio Non-Profit Hospital, purchased [it's naming rights] by means of its for-profit insurance company, SummaCare . . . I think I could write a post entirely on the subject of the previous sentence. Better still, InfoCision Management Corporation is . . . company that operates call centers. The second-largest teleservice company in the United States . . . I don't know why I find that hilarious, but I do.

I was hoping they played Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah whenever the team scored a touchdown but it's better than that. They cheer:

Zzzip! Zip go the Zippers!
Zzzip! Zip go the Zippers!

There's nothing to fear here. Except Ohioans are nuts.

From the University of Akron Facebook page.

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