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Purpose of this topic is to discuss games during the ongoing 2022 season. Last weekend was awesome for college football on a multitude of levels. 

 

Recommendation.  Full Ride is about to air on XM Radio 84. Rick Neuheisel is a brilliant commentator. It's about to start. If you can listen and aren't, adjust your schedule.  

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47 minutes ago, Section210Zip said:

Full Ride is awesome. I always go back and listen on demand if I miss it. As I watched the end of Georgia Southern vs Nebraska, I was thinking Full Ride is going to be fun on Monday. 

Are you listening to the former Sun Belt commissioner discuss the conference? The MAC could learn a lot from the discussion. My biggest takeaway is the importance of university presidents in that conference buying into changes in scheduling that don't result in teams starting the season 1-3 every year, and how that leads to more winning and the importance of winning over money. Basically, money doesn't create winning. Winning creates a momentum the results in more winning. Success in college football for G5 schools is about winning, not gobbling up money. MAC schools have scheduling all wrong. In fact, how the MAC schedules is in direct contradiction to winning.

 

What was the key to scheduling changes for the Sun Belt you ask?  Easy..... They encouraged schools to abandon the following scheduling method: 2-3 money games and one FCS team to start the season. Replaced that failing model with: 1 money game, 2 G5 games and one FCS. Georgia Southern has a schedule like this that creates a winning culture....how did that work for them last weekend?  Marshall has a schedule like this that creates a winning culture.....how did that work out for them last weekend?  App State has a schedule close to this.....how did that work out for them last weekend?

 

Sun Belt Conference membership model does not involve admitting teams just because you think it's a good idea or the fans are bored with the current state. It purposefully brings in teams specifically in the footprint of the southeast with the exception of Marshall.  The MAC is a midwest conference and with the exception of Buffalo, who could hit the bricks and nobody would care, the conference should stay that way.  If you want a successful midwest conference at the G5 level in the midwest, keep Western Kentucky and MTSU out of the league. Get rid of Buffalo and shrink the size of the league and it will be better off for it.

Edited by GP1
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I really agree with that type of scheduling. The instant gratification to the bottom line is very short sited by these AD's and Presidents. It really sets the program back as we just seen with the damage Larry Williams and rotation of presidents. There wear tear to the roster, the mentality of the program, not to mention 1 game is big to your bowl eligibility. Not just if your eligible or not but that 1 win can move you up a bowl tear with higher payouts. The impact they have on recruiting because those "marquee games" are the games they are guaranteed to see. 

 

I do have faith in our current leadership as they seem to get it but for now they are paying for the sins of the past. 

 

One other point he made that really hit home was when we was talking about expansion. You don't have to go after a major market if you can find a big fish in a small market. He said when he was in the WAC he looked at the paper in Boise that Boise State football was always on the front page. When he was at the SunBelt and they were looking at expanding, App St. looked a lot like the Boise model and when you open the paper in Boone that it was always about  App St football. It's hard to be the team that is always buried on page 7 of your sports section. We have fought that battle with the nonAkron Beacon for a long time. 

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4 hours ago, GP1 said:

Are you listening to the former Sun Belt commissioner discuss the conference? The MAC could learn a lot from the discussion. My biggest takeaway is the importance of university presidents in that conference buying into changes in scheduling that don't result in teams starting the season 1-3 every year, and how that leads to more winning and the importance of winning over money. Basically, money doesn't create winning. Winning creates a momentum the results in more winning. Success in college football for G5 schools is about winning, not gobbling up money. MAC schools have scheduling all wrong. In fact, how the MAC schedules is in direct contradiction to winning.

 

What was the key to scheduling changes for the Sun Belt you ask?  Easy..... They encouraged schools to abandon the following scheduling method: 2-3 money games and one FCS team to start the season. Replaced that failing model with: 1 money game, 2 G5 games and one FCS. Georgia Southern has a schedule like this that creates a winning culture....how did that work for them last weekend?  Marshall has a schedule like this that creates a winning culture.....how did that work out for them last weekend?  App State has a schedule close to this.....how did that work out for them last weekend?

 

Sun Belt Conference membership model does not involve admitting teams just because you think it's a good idea or the fans are bored with the current state. It purposefully brings in teams specifically in the footprint of the southeast with the exception of Marshall.  The MAC is a midwest conference and with the exception of Buffalo, who could hit the bricks and nobody would care, the conference should stay that way.  If you want a successful midwest conference at the G5 level in the midwest, keep Western Kentucky and MTSU out of the league. Get rid of Buffalo and shrink the size of the league and it will be better off for it.

 

Get rid of the school with the most successful basketball run the MAC has had since 2002 KSUcks & 2012 O-Who? Get rid of the school that produced Khalil Mack, keeping the MAC relevant in terms of NFL talent discussion?

 

App State had 2 games against P5s, and went .500, beating the #6 team in the nation and losing in heartbreaking fashion to UNC. You don't have the opportunity to go .500 against P5 opponents if you don't schedule them. Congrats on beating a FCS school - whoopty freaking do. 1 FCS, 1 money, and 2 G5 isn't a model I exactly want to follow. Give me 2 P5 and 2 G5. Drop the FCS. 

 

The Sun Belt is a growing conference because they add schools. Their soccer conference is stellar. Their football & basketball conferences have grown to become better with additions. Period. The MAC should be looking to grow or it's going to die at the DI/FBS level. 

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9 minutes ago, Let'sGoZips94 said:

 

Get rid of the school with the most successful basketball run the MAC has had since 2002 KSUcks & 2012 O-Who? Get rid of the school that produced Khalil Mack, keeping the MAC relevant in terms of NFL talent discussion?

 

App State had 2 games against P5s, and went .500, beating the #6 team in the nation and losing in heartbreaking fashion to UNC. You don't have the opportunity to go .500 against P5 opponents if you don't schedule them. Congrats on beating a FCS school - whoopty freaking do. 1 FCS, 1 money, and 2 G5 isn't a model I exactly want to follow. Give me 2 P5 and 2 G5. Drop the FCS. 

 

The Sun Belt is a growing conference because they add schools. Their soccer conference is stellar. Their football & basketball conferences have grown to become better with additions. Period. The MAC should be looking to grow or it's going to die at the DI/FBS level. 

Yes. Get rid of Buffalo. I'll trade a conference that knows it's identity.  I'm not sure how one player keeps the MAC relevant in the NFL talent discussion, but believe what you want to believe. Living here in the Carolinas, nobody every says, "Ah, you went to Akron. Didn't Khalil Mack play in the MAC".  Seriously, nobody has ever said that to me.

 

App States wins are interesting evidence to remain in our current scheduling disaster. Their one time success is an outlier, not the norm for almost all G5 schools. Big picture says current G5 scheduling practices are horrible for their conference and the Sun Belt proved it. Winning makes for winning programs.

 

They have grown with the addition of schools....in the sun belt.  Get it?

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4 minutes ago, clarkwgriswold said:

It was 8 or 9 when they were still advertising for the Warren massage parlors and the dancer bars.

I remember a "dancer bar" in Norton called The Nest. They always ran advertisements in the ABJ and I laugh about them with a guy here in the Carolinas from Norton. He clearly remembers the ads said, "Swings, Polls. My Girls Do It All".

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1 minute ago, GoZips86 said:

I really wish Alabama would have lost to Texas week one. That would have been beautiful. So tired of Alabama. 

When Alabama plays OOC on the road, they run the risk of referees actually calling the endless pass interference penalties they commit.  

 

Alabama does the same thing the Seattle Seahawks did the year they cheated their way to a Super Bowl. They committed so many pass interference penalties on almost every pass in every game, the referees couldn't possibly call every penalty so they just stopped after the first quarter. The next season the refs actually did their jobs and guess which would be dynasty went one and done in Super Bowls?

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45 minutes ago, GP1 said:

Yes. Get rid of Buffalo. I'll trade a conference that knows it's identity.  I'm not sure how one player keeps the MAC relevant in the NFL talent discussion, but believe what you want to believe. Living here in the Carolinas, nobody every says, "Ah, you went to Akron. Didn't Khalil Mack play in the MAC".  Seriously, nobody has ever said that to me.

 

App States wins are interesting evidence to remain in our current scheduling disaster. Their one time success is an outlier, not the norm for almost all G5 schools. Big picture says current G5 scheduling practices are horrible for their conference and the Sun Belt proved it. Winning makes for winning programs.

 

They have grown with the addition of schools....in the sun belt.  Get it?

 

I don't care if Joe Carolina draws the connection between Akron - MAC - Khalil Mack - Buffalo. I care that, on primetime NFL games when they do the lineup announcements, there's a "Khalil Mack, University at Buffalo" so when Joe Akron sees Buffalo on the schedule it means a little bit more. Grow from there. 

 

Of course it's not the norm. However, East Carolina built their reputation of being Giant Killers by playing P5s regularly. Boise State did the same thing. App State now has 2 of the biggest upsets in college football history, one of which is talked about all the freaking time. In fact, the Sun Belt has 4 wins from what I'm seeing over P5s in the past 2 weeks. How many do they have if they don't play those games? 

 

Marshall is in the Sun Belt region? The team that just beat Notre Dame? Old Dominion is in the Sun Belt region? The team that just beat Va Tech? James Madison, where GameDay was just a few years ago?

 

Spoiler alert: they're not in the Sun Belt region yet they were added because of what they provide in athletic competition. 

Edited by Let'sGoZips94
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26 minutes ago, Let'sGoZips94 said:

 

I don't care if Joe Carolina draws the connection between Akron - MAC - Khalil Mack - Buffalo. I care that, on primetime NFL games when they do the lineup announcements, there's a "Khalil Mack, University at Buffalo" so when Joe Akron sees Buffalo on the schedule it means a little bit more. Grow from there. 

 

Of course it's not the norm. However, East Carolina built their reputation of being Giant Killers by playing P5s regularly. Boise State did the same thing. App State now has 2 of the biggest upsets in college football history, one of which is talked about all the freaking time. In fact, the Sun Belt has 4 wins from what I'm seeing over P5s in the past 2 weeks. How many do they have if they don't play those games? 

 

Marshall is in the Sun Belt region? The team that just beat Notre Dame? Old Dominion is in the Sun Belt region? The team that just beat Va Tech? James Madison, where GameDay was just a few years ago?

 

Spoiler alert: they're not in the Sun Belt region yet they were added because of what they provide in athletic competition. 

So, you are saying my argument is incorrect and the changes the Sun Belt has implemented to their scheduling is not the correct thing to do?

 

You're focused on the wrong things. This is one of the mistake MAC fans have been making for decades. If you want to the MAC to be viewed at as better than it currently is, Mack's mention of Buffalo on Monday Night Football has NOTHING to do with it. It's the "exposure" argument that has helped harm the league and prevented us from even becoming a Sun Belt.

 

I'm not saying don't play P5. Play 1 per year. Win that one and people will talk as long as you don't get waxed by 1-2 other P5 schools.  Everyone misses this point.....You don't go from starting the season 1-3, while playing 3 PF schools and 1 FCS, every year to 2-2 or 3-1 without breaking the lunacy of the scheduling disaster MAC athletic directors give MAC schools. For example, if you play  1 P5, 2 G5 and 1 FCS, there is a good chance of starting the season 2-2 unless you are really bad. 2-2 provides momentum and that extra win for a lot of teams is the difference between going to a bowl game and a winning season or not. Bowl games and winning count more than Mack's mention on Monday Night Football. Every few years, a team can go from 2-2 to 3-1 or even 4-0 with a win against a P5 school. It's rare, but can happen and we saw it last weekend. Winning starts with smart scheduling. I don't know why this isn't as obvious to you as it was to the Sun Belt and me. Other than money, there is no reason for Akron to play two P5 schools in a season at this point. If you are enamored with losing as much as some on this board seem to be, how about a 35-31 loss to a G5 school in lieu of a 52-0 drubbing by a P5 school. Isn't the game at least more interesting or are the blowouts too appealing? Did anyone actually watch the crap in East Lansing until the end of the game Saturday?  If you did, you need immediate psychiatric attention.

 

Marshall is not in the sun belt and I mentioned that above. ODU is in the sun belt as well as JMU.

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Marshall is in the Sun Belt now. 
 

And I’m out on loading the schedule with power houses. It’s fine to have years where you play a couple, but every year would be exhausting. Especially when the Zips are opening at home and then on the road for 3 in a row, potentially returning home very injured for the homecoming game. 
 

I listen to a MAC football podcast today and was very interested by one of the hosts points on this matter. 
 

In 2016, WMU beat both Northwestern and Illinois in nonconference play em route to their undefeated season and appearance in the Cotton Bowl, where they went down to Wisconsin. If they had traded NW and ILL for bigger paydays, they would have in all likelihood lost those games and never would have even given themselves a shot at playing in a bowl game like that. 
 

Look at OU’s schedules. They almost always have a home-and-home. They schedule winnable P5 opponents (Kansas, NW, etc.). They’ve hosted schools like Texas State, they opened with a home win over FAU this year. And how many consecutive bowl games did they go to, simply by scheduling winnable games? They even beat Penn State one of those years and have earned a top 25 ranking. It may not be perfect, but I’d like it a lot more than what Akron’s been doing lately. 

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Scheduling 1 FCS, 2 home and home, and 1 money bag game had been the norm for years. It's only in the last 5-10 years or so that scheduling 2-3 money games has started gaining steam at the MAC level.

 

Reality is pretty much all MAC schools were spending and expanding their campuses expecting enrollment to keep growing. Now that it's falling they're all struggling to just get by. As migration shift continues it's only going to keep getting worse. The places that have benefited are places like Georgia, Carolinas, Tennessee, etc as people are moving where the climate is better. This allows conferences like the Sun Belt to expand their budget

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2 hours ago, GP1 said:

So, you are saying my argument is incorrect and the changes the Sun Belt has implemented to their scheduling is not the correct thing to do?

 

You're focused on the wrong things. This is one of the mistake MAC fans have been making for decades. If you want to the MAC to be viewed at as better than it currently is, Mack's mention of Buffalo on Monday Night Football has NOTHING to do with it. It's the "exposure" argument that has helped harm the league and prevented us from even becoming a Sun Belt.

 

I'm not saying don't play P5. Play 1 per year. Win that one and people will talk as long as you don't get waxed by 1-2 other P5 schools.  Everyone misses this point.....You don't go from starting the season 1-3, while playing 3 PF schools and 1 FCS, every year to 2-2 or 3-1 without breaking the lunacy of the scheduling disaster MAC athletic directors give MAC schools. For example, if you play  1 P5, 2 G5 and 1 FCS, there is a good chance of starting the season 2-2 unless you are really bad. 2-2 provides momentum and that extra win for a lot of teams is the difference between going to a bowl game and a winning season or not. Bowl games and winning count more than Mack's mention on Monday Night Football. Every few years, a team can go from 2-2 to 3-1 or even 4-0 with a win against a P5 school. It's rare, but can happen and we saw it last weekend. Winning starts with smart scheduling. I don't know why this isn't as obvious to you as it was to the Sun Belt and me. Other than money, there is no reason for Akron to play two P5 schools in a season at this point. If you are enamored with losing as much as some on this board seem to be, how about a 35-31 loss to a G5 school in lieu of a 52-0 drubbing by a P5 school. Isn't the game at least more interesting or are the blowouts too appealing? Did anyone actually watch the crap in East Lansing until the end of the game Saturday?  If you did, you need immediate psychiatric attention.

 

Marshall is not in the sun belt and I mentioned that above. ODU is in the sun belt as well as JMU.

 

Responding to the bold in order...

 

- You're right. It doesn't have a lot to do with it. It also doesn't hurt. My MNF reference was in response to your statement that the MAC should drop one of the most athletically successful programs in the MAC as "progress". Forgive me for viewing attendance at Akron/Buffalo games (mostly basketball with the state of our football program in recent years) vs. Akron/Directional Michigan games as an indicator that getting rid of Buffalo from the MAC would be stupid. 

 

- Why not play 2 per year? That's double the chance of having a P5 win that season. 

 

- Money is a reason to play 2 P5 schools. We need it. Now, do we need to play 2 upper echelon P5s? Nope, nor am I advocating for that. Give me Northwestern, Nebraska, Rutgers, Virginia, Wake Forest, etc. I'll take 2 of those, and 2 G5s, like I said in my original post. 

 

- I watched the game well into the 4th quarter before switching my focus to the Guardians and other college football games. I'm an Akron fan. Win or lose, no matter how bad, I like watching the Zips. 

 

- Marshall is in the Sun Belt. This was your statement in an earlier post...

 

"They have grown with the addition of schools....in the sun belt.  Get it?"

 

I was directly responding to your geographical argument. Marshall, ODU, and JMU are not in the Sun Belt region, yet the Sun Belt Conference added them. Why? And if your response is "well, they're close enough," then wouldn't WKU and MTSU be close enough for the MAC, while also increasing the level of competition? 

 

I really don't understand your argument at all, as you advocated for the MAC to drop Buffalo, yet applauded the Sun Belt for growing. 

 

 

By the way, the Sun Belt Conference will have a bigger media deal than the MAC this next time around because they've added schools that has raised the athletic level of the conference. 

Edited by Let'sGoZips94
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9 hours ago, GP1 said:

Are you listening to the former Sun Belt commissioner discuss the conference? The MAC could learn a lot from the discussion. My biggest takeaway is the importance of university presidents in that conference buying into changes in scheduling that don't result in teams starting the season 1-3 every year, and how that leads to more winning and the importance of winning over money. Basically, money doesn't create winning. Winning creates a momentum the results in more winning. Success in college football for G5 schools is about winning, not gobbling up money. MAC schools have scheduling all wrong. In fact, how the MAC schedules is in direct contradiction to winning.

 

What was the key to scheduling changes for the Sun Belt you ask?  Easy..... They encouraged schools to abandon the following scheduling method: 2-3 money games and one FCS team to start the season. Replaced that failing model with: 1 money game, 2 G5 games and one FCS. Georgia Southern has a schedule like this that creates a winning culture....how did that work for them last weekend?  Marshall has a schedule like this that creates a winning culture.....how did that work out for them last weekend?  App State has a schedule close to this.....how did that work out for them last weekend?

 

Sun Belt Conference membership model does not involve admitting teams just because you think it's a good idea or the fans are bored with the current state. It purposefully brings in teams specifically in the footprint of the southeast with the exception of Marshall.  The MAC is a midwest conference and with the exception of Buffalo, who could hit the bricks and nobody would care, the conference should stay that way.  If you want a successful midwest conference at the G5 level in the midwest, keep Western Kentucky and MTSU out of the league. Get rid of Buffalo and shrink the size of the league and it will be better off for it.

 

Shouldn't the MAC also git rid of Northern Illinois?

And regarding your question about the outcome of the Georgia Southern, Marshall, and App State games last weekend, they all won.

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35 minutes ago, Zipmeister said:

 

Shouldn't the MAC also git rid of Northern Illinois?

And regarding your question about the outcome of the Georgia Southern, Marshall, and App State games last weekend, they all won.

Yes. Play one money game, one G5 and one FCS. 9 conference games. 

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