gwkrlghl

July 10th, 2013 at 12:26 PM ^

Most of them put literally anyone they can think of who was good, could be good, maybe might be good because they have basially no clue at this point. When you guess how many starting kickers were lost to graduation last year, they might be including somewhere around 1/3-1/2 of all returning starting kickers

Joined: 04/13/2012

MGoPoints: 72

LSAClassOf2000

July 10th, 2013 at 12:30 PM ^

Yahoo! has an expanded list of names here - LINK

Among some of the Big Ten candidates, they list Jeff Budzien of Northwestern, Mitch Ewald of Indiana and Mike Meyer of Iowa. Kyle Brindza of Notre Dame is on the list as well.

As for Gibbons, it would be a nice cap to a story of tremendous improvement throughout his time at Michigan. He improved his FG% from 76.5% to 88.9% from 2011 to 2012, and his longest kick is now more than double what it was in quite limited time in 2010 (24 yards in a handful of appearances in 2010 to 52 yards last year). 

Joined: 01/07/2011

MGoPoints: 130610

goblueram

July 10th, 2013 at 12:32 PM ^

I seem to recall EMU having another really good kicker a few years back who was a finalist for the award

Also, I guess Gibbons won the "Lou Groza Local Place-kicker of the Year" award in high school. 

Joined: 08/18/2009

MGoPoints: 11701

Mr. Yost

July 10th, 2013 at 8:12 PM ^

...but this is a huge "fuck you" to Rich Rod. I've put 99% of that era in the past, but it'll forever be tough to get over the 1% that yelled at a kicker and flat out blamed him for a loss in front of the entire team. You didn't win, so what...you didn't have support, so what...it didn't work out, fine. But don't tear a kid down and belittle him in front of an entire team, don't blame an entire teams mistakes that lost a game on one person, that's cowardly. Gibbons has had an incredible journey, I hope this year is a fitting (positive) end.

Joined: 07/25/2011

MGoPoints: -9898220