ANN ARBOR -- Saturday's a doughnut game.

Brady Hoke likes doughnut games.

The Michigan football coach has long referred to noon kickoffs -- his favorite start time -- as "doughnut games," referring to his memories as a youth football player growing up in Ohio.

Michigan and Akron will kickoff at noon Saturday inside Michigan Stadium, and the first 5,000 students to show up for the game will receive a treat from Hoke and Tim Horton's.

"We've got 5,000 doughnuts to our students this Saturday," Hoke said Thursday during an interview with 97.1-FM in Detroit. "This is a glazed doughnut game.

"(They'll go to) those who get there early. It's an early game, it's a doughnut game. We call them glazed doughnut games. Tim Horton's is helping us out, we've got 5,000 donuts."

The snacks will be provided by local branches of Tim Hortons. They'll be distributed beginning at 8 a.m. Saturday to the student line. Students can start lining up for entry at 7 a.m. Saturday and at 9 a.m. they'll be let into the stadium.

The doughnuts will be distributed by student athletes.

Hoke, who makes glazed doughnuts available to his players before each noon kickoff, has told the story behind his "doughnut game" reference several times.

On Wednesday, during his radio show in Ann Arbor, he got eve more specific, discussing his youth football team, the "Tiger Sharks" in Kettering, Ohio.

"You'd get up in the morning, right, and the first thing you'd do, I had one of these bikes that had the handlebars -- with a wheelie bar and a banana seat," Hoke recalled. "I'd put my uniform on, and my helmet -- I usually wore it. I'd go to the doughnut shop and get a glazed doughnut.

"Then I'd go to the ball field and go play. And so, any time we play at noon (or earlier), we call it a glazed doughnut game."

Kellie Woodhouse contributed to this report.

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