7 Eagles listed across Athlon, Phil Steele preseason lists
7 Eagles listed across Athlon, Phil Steele preseason lists
Four agreed-upon first teamers, but EMU lacks depth on preseason lists.
Welcome to The Ypsilanti Eleven! This feels like the first time in a long time that I’ve been able to sit in front of my laptop and really focus on this newsletter again, and I feel guilty for the lack of posts from me this year.
But I don’t particularly feel bad for how I spent my time away from this site, either. Over the last 14 weeks, I got married in a private ceremony up at Boyne Mountain, had our wedding reception a week later in Plymouth, caught Covid (not a fan), celebrated a college friend’s wedding, then had a 9-day trip to the Greek Islands for my wife and I’s honeymoon (and a one-night stay at the Montreal airport, no thanks to Air Canada). Before all of that, I spent a lot of time planning for the wedding ceremony and reception (fellas, take notes) and now I still haven’t figured out where I’m going to move to once my apartment lease ends at the end of next month. So, I’ve been busy, but hopefully I’ve seen the peak of my busy-ness. I could always be wrong on that though.
Since I no longer have the excuse of saying that I’m too busy living my best life out on the gorgeous islands of Greece (shouts out Ios and Sikinos), let’s talk about some offseason MACtion and college football news and updates.
List Season: 7 Eagles listed between Athlon & Phil Steele preseason picks
It’s June, which means you should head over to your local bookstore and pick up a preseason college football magazine to help get through this summer. We’re all traveling to a wedding or two this summer, make sure you have one handy.
Athlon and Phil Steele both have their physical copies on stands right now, so definitely get one of each when you get the opportunity.
Seven Eagles were selected between the two preseason magazine’s all-conference picks for the year. Four were consensus first-team picks: WR Hassan Beydoun, OLs Brian Dooley and Sidy Sow, and DL Jose Ramirez.
WR Hassan Beydoun — Beydoun, a former (non-preferred) walk-on, has been a point of explosiveness for EMU’s offense, so it’s no wonder he’s listed so highly. Last year, he caught 97 passes to break a school record, and 1,015 receiving yards to be second all-time. He’s had seven career 100-yard games receiving, and caught at least 10 passes in four games last year. Not exactly a big guy, but he’s a huge difference-maker for the EMU offense.
Preseason 1st team: Athlon, Phil Steele
OL Sidy Sow — Sow was one of the more interesting players that EMU fans kept their eyes on ever since he joined the team right out of high school, probably because he’s from Quebec. He sat out the 2017 season on redshirt, but has played in every game since. Officially listed at 6’5, 334 (up ~20 pounds as a freshman, on record), Sow has the ability to play tackle, but has locked down the left guard spot over the last three years. According to PFF, Sow’s had 1,571 career pass blocking snaps, and allowed 7 sacks.
Preseason 1st team: Athlon
OL Brian Dooley — In the right tackle spot, Dooley’s been a full-year starter for the last three seasons. Before that, Dooley was a two-star recruit out of Toledo to play as a tight end, but he’d end up working his way into the O-line room.
Preseason 1st team: Athlon, Phil Steele
DL Jose Ramirez — Ramirez, listed at 6’2, 251 lbs., tries to get the most out of his speed to make an impact out on the edge. In 2021, He racked up 62 total tackles (11 for loss, 6.5 sacks), 4 passes defended, and 2 forced fumbles.
Preseason 1st team: Athlon, Phil Steele
PR Hassan Beydoun — Beydoun was already mentioned here for as a first-team receiver, but he showed some explosiveness as a returnman in 2021 (though, more as a kick returner, 18.9 yards per return, than a punt returner, 5.6, but I digress).
Preseason 3rd team: Athlon
Preseason 4th team: Phil Steele
WR Dylan Drummond — Drummond’s been a consistent presence for EMU with his quality hands at wide receiver. He’s found playing time right away as a true freshman out of Cleveland in 2018. Over his four seasons as an Eagle, he’s caught 150 passes for 1,503 yards, 11 TD. He’s not exactly the receiver EMU goes to when it needs somebody to pick up yards after the catch, but he’s still got some really reliable hands to count on in a lot of clutch situations.
Preseason 3rd team: Phil Steele
Preseason 4th team: Athlon
CB Kempton Shine — Shine returns as a starting corner for the Eagles that showed a lot of promise early on in his career. A good tackler for his position, he’s recorded 90 over 20 games played (55 solo, 1 for loss), as well as 5 passes defended, a forced fumble, and a fumble recovered.
Preseason 4th team: Athlon
LB Joe Sparacio — It wouldn’t surprise me if Sparacio had a good grad transfer year (Boston College), or at least played a huge role in the defense. It’s hard to judge guys like this, even if he was a starter for the BC defense in 2019. I’d be surprised to see if Sparacio doesn’t end up having a lot of playing time this year, because the coaches clearly like having this guy around.
Preseason 3rd team: Phil Steele
It’s always a little bit exciting to see guys listed here, especially in the first-team category, but how much does this actually stack up against the rest of the MAC?
In the Athlon lists, NIU and Toledo each lead the way with 14 preseason selections each, followed by Kent State (13), Western Michigan (12), Bowling Green (11), Miami OH (11), Central Michigan (10), Buffalo, (9), Ball State (8), and tied with Akron (6).
EMU also had six placed on Phil Steele’s All-MAC list, but that’s still fewer than CMU (14), NIU (13), Miami (11), Toledo (10), WMU (10), Kent State (10), Ball State (9), BGSU (7), Buffalo (7), and, again, tied with Akron (6).
Toledo AD logs on IRL
Bryan Blair, the youthful athletic director Toledo hired out of Washington State, is doing his part to actually meet people who care about Toledo football.
Meet and greet with the message boarders.
From The Toledo Blade eight days ago:
“Everybody’s opinion matters,” he said. “I’m still in listen-and-learn mode, getting around to meet different people for different perspectives and to try to learn from them what makes this place so great and where it can grow.”
I sat in on the latest session, joining a table of eight in a private room at the Blarney Irish Pub.
Organized by Dan Savage — who joined the popular UT message board, the Launchpad, as a high school student at St. John’s Jesuit and is now 28 — the two-hour meeting of the blue and gold minds featured a fun dialogue.
Blair dished on a number of topics, ranging from potential future football opponents (don’t be surprised if the Rockets play a neutral-site game against Michigan State, either in Cleveland or Detroit) to the illogic of the MAC sticking with gridiron divisions (“I have yet to hear a good argument for why”) to his skyscraping ambitions for Toledo athletics (more in a minute).
But he also asked a lot of questions, jotting down notes on his iPhone along the way.
Cool, cool. An AD getting into an uncomfortable position and making the most of it to win people over. Now let’s find out what we actually all came here to read:
As for those who already are Rockets diehards, Blair posed a question you rarely hear so explicitly asked.
Here was the exchange, with Mike Gembreska, 63, a Toledo season-ticket holder since 1989, chiming in, too:
Blair: “What do you guys think, from the casual fan and message-board perspective, what’s the balance between the importance of having student-athletes who don’t get in trouble and perform well academically, and winning at an elite level, winning an NCAA tournament game, winning MAC championships?”
Savage: “You mean, do we care if they’re good students?”
Blair: “More or less. Or would you trade in bad students, bad behavior, for MAC championships and NCAA tournament wins?”
Savage: “Personally, I hated Kent State this year. Hated the way they were coached in basketball, and they ended up doing dumb stuff on TikTok and had four players suspended for the MAC championship game. I’d rather be us than that.”
Gembreska: “It’s a bad look for a university. I’d rather go with the way Tod [Kowalczyk] is running the program. He’s represented the school well and never embarrassed us.”
Savage: “But if you’re talking about someone getting a 3.8 GPA or getting a 3.4 and Toledo winning the MAC tournament, I’ll take the 3.4.”
Gembreska (laughs): “We’ll take a 3.1.”
Blair: “You look at the landscape of college athletics, everybody does things different ways. Sometimes how the sausage is made at some of these schools that have high levels of success isn't very pretty but, at the same time, we all want to aspire to do more, to win more. How do you balance those two worlds? ... One thing that's been emphasized, especially by people who support us at a high level financially, is how much they value the integrity of our teams and the academic performance and that our students graduate at a high rate. How do you maintain those things while always aspiring to do more?”
One way, of course, is greater investment and shinier facilities (stay tuned, though, before you ask, don’t expect the Rockets’ baseball and softball fields to move anytime soon).
While Toledo is on solid footing among its MAC peers — its athletic department had the third-highest budget last year ($25 million), per federal records, behind Miami ($30 million) and Buffalo ($27 million) — Blair’s goal isn’t just to be competitive in the conference.
This wasn’t Blair being asked to respond to the question of what the cost of winning should be. Blair’s taking advantage of how new he is to Toledo and making them answer it for him. All of this, knowing that they’re all on the record to have this conversation out in the open.
That’s the part that’s most striking to me, and it’s been an ongoing pattern in college sports since collegiate NIL compensation was legalized last year. Nick Saban bragged about Bryce Young bringing in nearly a million bucks on one NIL deal, which made things easy for a Miami-FL basketball player to speak out about how much less money he was getting in comparison to the incoming transfer next to him (which Saban ended up using as an example when he started his offseason fight with Jimbo Fisher between media quotes).
So now that Toledo’s got a fresh, young face as its new AD, this is the time for a person like Blair to have conversations with message boarders out in an actual chat room. How bad do they want it? Well, the next day, The Blade published another story about the first team collective in the MAC: Friends of Rocky, and it’s gonna take $1M to re-fuel its tank every year. So do they want it 3.4 GPA bad or 3.1 GPA bad? How much of your paycheck did you give to Friends of Rocky before you answered that first question?
