Army's Monken is Monday's Macon TD Club speaker, Westside the featured team
Army head coach Jeff Monken is Monday's speaker at the Macon Touchdown Club.
Westside is the featured high school team.
Monken is in his fourth season at Army, which fell to 8-3 after losing 52-49 Saturday to North Texas on a 39-yard field goal with five seconds left and despite rushing for 534 yards. That prevented Army from a 9-win regular season for the first time since 1996 when it went 10-1 and then lost 32-29 to Auburn in the Independence Bowl.
As it is, Monken has led Army to consecutive winning seasons for the first time since a pair of 6-5s in 1989-90. The 16 wins is the most in a two-year span since the Black Knights went 8-3 and 9-3 in 1984-85.
The Black Knights are headed for the Armed Forces Bowl in Fort Worth on Dec. 23.
Monken is a semifinalist for the George Munger Award, handed out by the Maxwell Football Club for national coach of the year. He joins a list that includes Mark Richt, Lane Kiffin, Gus Malzahn, Nick Saban, Kirby Smart and Dabo Swinney.
He was 38-16 in four seasons as head coach at Georgia Southern, including a win at Florida. He coached under Paul Johnson at Georgia Southern, Navy and Georgia Tech.
Monken, a Joliet, Illinois native, graduated from Millikin and was a grad assistant at Hawaii and Arizona State before starting his career at Buffalo. He followed with two seasons in high school and then joined Johnson at Georgia Southern in 2007.
Lanier grad and former Pittsburgh Steeler - and Super Bowl champ - J.T. Thomas in next week's speaker, the final meeting of the season. Mount de Sales is the featured high school team.
The club meets at the Methodist Home for Children and Youth, in the Rumford Center, at 304 Pierce Ave. It starts at 6:30 p.m. with dinner and the program to begin around 7. Cost is $30 for non-members, who needn't be accompanied by a member.
For more info, http://www.macontouchdownclub.com.
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