I'm impressed honestly. The MAC just shuts up and balls - whether football or basketball. They don't get the blue-chip recruits, but they flat out compete.

And somehow when all this realignment stuff makes a mockery out of conference names and affiliations, the MAC remains the only D1 conference whose name and geographic set-up is honest.

(11-27-2012 11:23 PM)Fort Bend Owl Wrote:  I'm impressed honestly. The MAC just shuts up and balls - whether football or basketball. They don't get the blue-chip recruits, but they flat out compete.

And somehow when all this realignment stuff makes a mockery out of conference names and affiliations, the MAC remains the only D1 conference whose name and geographic set-up is honest.

At this point, stability in a conference is not a good thing.

It just means you're not adding and you don't have anyone that people want.

Temple and UMass?

No one wants them.

They did lose Marshall and UCF

Every last one of them except Buffalo and Ohio (Again Ohio is only 88 miles from Huntington) are in B10 country. Unless you start to have a season like Kent State did this year, most of the people that go to MAC schools will be in Columbus, Ann Arbor, West Lafayette, East Lancing and so on.

Only a few schools have actually carved out a substanal fanbase while in the MAC, Toledo, NIU and Ohio come to mind.

Well I don't think anybody is surprised about UCF leaving. When a good mid major league from your region asks you to leave a similar conference in a far away region you go. Marshal on the other hand...well they do keep telling us they are more southern than midwestern/NE so I guess that makes sense too.

Part of the reason the MAC has been stable (but certainly not the only reason) is that they are very similar institutions from a very similar region. They also have lots of history together and are together as a way to get support for each other. You can prey on the edges of the MAC but the core would be hard to break.

They don't have Marshall to deal with

The cascade of dominos we've all been witnessing are, for the most part, driven by maximizing the number of TV sets for ESPN and/or conference networks. Large, urban cities and population centers have those large numbers of TV,s and those FBS colleges residing in said areas will get the schmoozing. Most MAC schools, meanwhile, are in semi-rural and small cities that don't exactly deliver juicy advertising dollars.

Temple's phone rang only because it's in the smack center of a large, east coast city.

Indeed, I recognize the MAC is low on the strength ladder, low on 'brand name', and offers up meager game attendance figures. But there's something highly appealing about the closer-knit neighbor-versus-neighbor regionality of the MAC compared to the whacked out coast to coast geography of, say, the Big East.

As an grad of a MAC school, I can tell you all that the MAC is "what it is"....that being a number of like-minded mid-enrollment (15-20K) public universities in the midwest that are overshadowed by the B10. The revenues of the MAC schools (from sports) are not too impressive which I presume is one of the reasons Marshall bolted for C-USA, but the costs are also more manageble due to the proximity (bus instead of plane for non revenue sports). There has been a lot said about MAC schools just "accepting their place" and "not investing in sports" which I find to be rather ridiculous. Given the fact that these schools are limited in funds (and in fact in most cases facing declining funding from the states), their investment in facilities has been pretty impressive. In the last decade MAC schools have made numerous improvements to facilities, with EMU and NIU building new b-ball arenas, and Akron building a new football stadium WMU, OU, WMU Miami, Ball State, and NIU have all made substantial improvements to their stadiums with expansions, improvements and new work out facilties.

OTOH, MAC schools still lack good fan support, tend to be located in small towns with little population, and have pitiful TV reveneues. At the same time, the league has been reliatively stable, and the schools have put the appropriate priority on academics and fiscal responsibility as they should. Yes, UCF was in the MAC as a football only member for a few years....probably a mistake. Did you guys know that UCF was winless in the MAC the year before they joined C-USA and remarkably turned into a conference champ?

So, the "knock" on the MAC is that they are not a forward-thinking conference and willing to accept their place in the NCAA College football hierarchy? Really?? I think it's acceptance of reality.....is it not apparent to you guys that there are the "haves" and the "have nots" of the college football world? Sure, you can crash the party occasionally, as Boise did and maybe Kent or NIU will this year, but in the end the sheer difference in fan support, (attendance, contributions and revenue) is impossible to ignore.

(11-27-2012 11:43 PM)HerdZoned Wrote:  Every last one of them except Buffalo and Ohio (Again Ohio is only 88 miles from Huntington) are in B10 country.

This.. you're not going to draw attention from the major media outlets when you're in the shadow of the B10 almost entirely. As such, the MAC has made themselves happy as a "bus distance" league.

So they're not going to get much attention outside of their own boundaries, except when you have an NIU, Kent State (this year) or Toledo who can pull the nice run in a given year or two.

How do well-formed logs of feces exhibit such remarkable cohesion and homogeneity?

If you want to talk about stable look at the MVC. Also shows you the power of FBS football as well.

Ever been to a MAC game?

(11-28-2012 03:02 AM)DaSaintFan Wrote:  

(11-27-2012 11:43 PM)HerdZoned Wrote:  Every last one of them except Buffalo and Ohio (Again Ohio is only 88 miles from Huntington) are in B10 country.

This.. you're not going to draw attention from the major media outlets when you're in the shadow of the B10 almost entirely. As such, the MAC has made themselves happy as a "bus distance" league.

So they're not going to get much attention outside of their own boundaries, except when you have an NIU, Kent State (this year) or Toledo who can pull the nice run in a given year or two.

minor point- Ohio is most definitely in B10 country, only 81 miles from the Horseshoe, the shadow of all things Buckeyes looms large in Athens.