MDZip

Just as an aside, Zeke is only 16 blocked shots from setting the all time MAC record. At his current pace of 4.3 per game, he could break the record against Coppin State on January 2nd. So his defense is still pretty good too.

Sports Illustrated names #MACtion one of the top 112 sports stories of the year. It is at #82. 82. #MACtion! Nothing to watch on a Tuesday night? The Mid-American Conference has you covered. Entertaining, high-scoring football games were the norm as the MAC enjoyed a breakout year. Northern Illinois became the first MAC team to make a BCS bowl game, winning the conference title in predictably thrilling style (a 44-37 double-overtime victory against Can't State). Six MAC teams are in bowl games. It was all summed up with one Twitter-friendly buzzword: #MACtion. And in perhaps the biggest sign that the MAC has truly embraced being a part of big-time college sports, commissioner Jon Steinbrecher confirmed that the league has applied for a trademark. T-shirts will be available soon. And #9 in Stewart Mandel's wrap-up of the College Football Season. 9. #MACtion heads to South Beach. When I first started covering college football in the late '90s and early 2000s, the MAC was the most noteworthy of the non-BCS conferences. It produced stars like Chad Pennington, Byron Leftwich and Ben Roethlisberger. Then it slipped into oblivion for about eight years. But starting midway through last season, when Toledo seemed to be putting up 63 points every Tuesday night, MAC football regained an identity -- and a hashtag. The league took things to historic heights this year, notching a record 16 nonconference wins over FBS foes (including Cincinnati, Rutgers, Iowa and Indiana) and seven over bowl teams. The zenith moment was Northern Illinois' 44-37 overtime win against Can't State in a conference championship matchup of 11-1 teams. The Huskies will now represent the league in the Orange Bowl, where quarterback Jordan Lynch (1,771 rushing yards) will enjoy a brighter stage than any of those previous stars ever did. But let us not forget my favorite MAC player in 2012, Can't State's indescribably fast Dri Archer.

Did anyone hear that the MAC got seven teams into Bowl Games this year?

Being the leading rebounder in the game doesn't hurt either, there are lots of ways to help your team on nights when you are not shooting well.

Six points in one minute of play? Why isn't this guy playing more?!?

An absolute beatdown by Dayton. They have definitely improved but have a long way to go before becoming a really good team.

MAC conference RPI is going to kill the Zips again anyway. Ken Pomeroy is usually a little more generous to the MAC than the actual RPI. Currently he has Ohio and Akron are at #46 and #60 respectively out of 337 teams, but no other MAC team is above 150. Including Akron and Ohio, the MAC composite would be at around 198. Ugh. Include only the MAC West and it's an even uglier 254. Zips would have had to have had a stellar OOC run, looks like March will be the determining factor again. but it should still be a really fun year.

If the Big-East non-FBS schools do break off from the rest of the Big East, that leaves UConn and UC floating untl the rest of the "Big East" football schools join. Since that makes a mockery of that league, the MAC ought to be proactive and extend an invitation to both as football only members for the MAC, and let them go off and join the the rest of the Big East for their other sports. UC is certainly in the MAC footprint and UConn would be a good partner with UMass. And then I'd go find one more to bring the league to 16. Temple, all is forgiven.

He would have to buy a vowel, because he'd need to remove the 'E".

Also impressive is that they only have one senior that they rely on, this team could be even better next year.

Nice reaction.

If I was Can't, I'd tell him the same thing Wisconsin told Bret Bielema when he said he wanted to coach Wisconsin in the Rose Bowl, thanks but no thanks. As it ends up it looks like Barry Alvarez is going to come back and coach them for this one game.

One year and gone - back to Auburn.

I actually went to the game tonight to check them out since they were in my neck of the woods and I was impressed with what I saw. They do a lot of things fundamentally soundly like boxing out and playing defense with their hands up to force turnovers. One concern might be depth as the 5 starters probably got 80% or more of the available minutes. The Patriot Center would be an excellent facility if we could move it about 400 miles North and change the color scheme.

Please see troll posts earlier in the threads and perhaps you can understand this one particular instance.

Something I didn't realize was that all of OU's "tournament" games were home games. All six of their wins were home games and they just played their first road game and one guy beat them. Somebody named Robert Morris. Thats going to make their RPI drop. I am a little confused by Ken Pomeroy, though, OU is 6-1 with the 292nd ranked schedule and is at #36. WMU is also 6-1 with the 305th ranked schedule and is ranked 195th. Akron has had the toughest schedule in the MAC (#74, Buffalo is next closest at 92. The MAC SOS is awful many teams at 200 and above, that also hurts the league). The Creighton game should be really interesting. C'mon Zips a little soccer payback would be nice.

Memorial Hall seated about 2500. The attendance for the Zips first two home games was 2832 and 2771. That would have packed Memorial Hall and made it seem very loud and intimidating. Maybe with all of the talk about building a new larger facility, maybe we should go smaller.

This is something I am paraphrasing from the Marshall board but I thought it would work pretty well here too. If you see someone wearing an Akron shirt they probably went to Akron. If you see someone wearing an OSU shirt, they probably went to Wal-Mart.

As a side note in the vein of all publicity is good publicity, NIU has dominated the conversation. I do think they have a much better shot than Can't State would have (even though Can't State did have the "signature" win against Rutgers), but they have now been noting all of the MAC wins over BCS teams this year, Mark May (a Pitt grad) pretty much told everyone to stop whining yesterday and Lou Holtz said as a MAC grad this made him very happy. Maybe the tide is shifting the other way now (and I wish someone would point out how many built in advantages the BCS schools have). Now I want to see them talk about that in the last three years the MAC has a National Championship in soccer, a basketball Sweet Sixteen run, a CWS appearance and now a BCS bid. Not so bad. Maybe sticking with the MAC in all of the reshuffling was brilliant.

According this Dennis Dodd article, the MAC will get around $13.73M for this game, don't know how that is broken down amongst conference members (NIU should certainly get more) but I really hope it is not proportionally by number of wins. Should net Akron somewhere in the $1M range though. UMass sure picked the right time to join the league. This is Dodd's breakdown from the article, but its cool that the MAC is the highest rated non-BCS league (and I would suspect higher than the Big East as well). $7 million of the $28.2 million is divided between the five non-BCS conferences (Conference USA, Mountain West, MAC, Sun Belt and WAC). •Another $7 million is divided into 15 “units” based on conference strength. Because it is the No. 1 ranked non-BCS league, the MAC will receive five of those 15 shares, followed by the No. 2-ranked conference getting four shares, etc. •The MAC will get $8 million of the remaining $14 million as the participating conference. •The other $6 million will be split up into those 15 units. This year's bowl screwing was reserved for a non-MAC team (and I am still shocked that CMU made it), La. Tech went 9-3 and is staying home, although some of it is their fault. Good to see that 6-7 Ga. Tech made it though. Nothing seems wrong with that.

In addition to NIU getting a BCS bid, Can't State, Ohio, BGSU, Toledo, Ball State and CMU got bowl bids. Wow. Famous Idaho Potato Toledo vs. Utah State Beef 'O' Brady's St. Petersburg UCF vs. Ball State Little Caesars Pizza Western Kentucky vs. Central Michigan Military Bowl Presented By Northrop Grumman San Jose State vs. Bowling Green AdvoCare V100 Independence Ohio vs. Louisiana-Monroe Discover Orange Northern Illinois vs. Florida State GoDaddy.com Can't State vs. Arkansas State

The talking heads are whining left and right about it. Its all about poor Oklahoma being left out and no one is saying a word about NIU qualifying under the rules the BCS set up. Because Louisville and Wisconsin are so deserving. Would love to see them knock off Florida State.

The MAC is quite cyclical. One of the things that keeps the MAC mired in mediocrity is exactly what is being discussed in another thread - coaching tunrover. The MAC has had some fine coaches but as soon as they can show some modicum of sustained success in a place like the MAC, they get snapped up (as an aside this has never happened to any Akron coach unfortunately). Urban Meyer, Brady Hoke, Butch Jones, Brian Kelly, Dave Doeren - and probably Darrell Hazell soon. Its hard to keep sustained success when you turn your coaches over every few years. There have been a few failures, Turner Gill, Jerry Kill (maybe rhyming with ill is bad) but in general successful MAC coaches have done quite well when they move on. Its pretty rare for a BCS level coach to move to another school after experiencing success, in the MAC, its the norm.

That didn't take long - Dave Doeren hired as the new NC State coach.

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