This Saturday the Zips football team will be taking on the University of Louisiana at Lafayette Ragin’ Cajuns at InfoCision Stadium. This is one of the most important games this season, both emotionally and for the program in general. This game is so important that both students and fans should do everything in their power to pack the stadium to give the Zips the home team advantage.

Most casual fans are well aware that the Zips have had a horrendous showing over the past five years. Since 2008, the Zips have gone 11-49, which equates to a slightly more than two wins per year average. Over that time the team has seen three different coaches and almost no improvement in winning games.

InfoCision Stadium has gone from a bustling stadium that opened in 2009 to a sell-out crowd of 27,000 people, to a ghost town that regularly seats around 9,000 people on game day. There is no better indicator of the program’s dire circumstances than the near-empty stadium that haunts the campus.

Last Saturday, however, that all seemingly changed. The Zips traveled to Ann Arbor, Mich. to take on the University of Michigan Wolverines and nearly won.

The nation, even Zips fans, fully expected the Zips to be completely and utterly annihilated by one of the top programs in college football, but they weren’t. The Zips fought hard against a superior team and brought the game down to the very last play.

The Zips did not pull off the upset but they did bring new life to a program that was on the verge of the abyss, which is what makes the next few weeks very important for both the program and the fans.

As a graduating senior, I have never felt as much energy around this program as I did last Saturday in Michigan. For the first time in five years, this program seems to be going somewhere and it is our obligation — our duty — as members of The University of Akron community to get out and be part of history.

A win on Saturday means a new direction for our program, and though we as fans may not be on the field, we are just as important to the direction of this program.  Akron football is sitting at a crossroads and we are in the position to witness history. This team and this university are going places. The question that remains for all of us is if we will decide to be a part of it or not.

This is the time for us to get out, get loud and support the Zips.