The MAC Is The Most Unpredictable Conference In America
Is it the greatest conference in America? Probably.
Let me paint a picture for you. You’re sitting on the couch on a rainy Wednesday night channel surfing and you flick ESPN on. To your surprise, you see a college football game on.
You think “What is this? It’s a Wednesday, usually there isn’t any football on.” You check the score board and it’s a 35-27 game between Buffalo and Ball State. You grin and whisper to yourself, “Good God, it’s MACtion”. You lean back on the couch and settle in for another quarter of unpredictable football.
The MAC was formed in 1948 and currently consists of twelve schools between New York, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, and Illinois.
What I mean when I say the MAC is unpredictable is that since 2015, six different teams have won the championship.
In 2015, Bowling Green took home the title. The following year, an electric Western Michigan squad led by Corey Davis and PJ Fleck took the crown. In 2017, Toledo topped Akron and in 2018, NIU beat out Buffalo. The 2019 season saw Miami Ohio win and then in 2020, Ball State beat Buffalo.
While the MAC may sound like some tiny and rambunctious conference that is just there to entertain you on a Wednesday night, it’s produced a lot of great football players.
Kent State has produced two NFL Defensive Player of the Year linebackers for the Steelers in James Harrison and Jack Lambert. In addition to those two bruisers, the Golden Flashes are the former home of All Pro NFL tight end Antonio Gates who was a standout basketball player.
The MAC has been very good to the Pittsburgh Steelers as Miami Ohio produced Super Bowl winning quarterback Ben Roethlisberger.
In addition to Roethlisberger, three current NFL head coaches who have made Super Bowl appearances, two of which are champions, are Miami alum. Sean McVay, John Harbaugh, and Sean Payton are all Red Hawk alum.
One of the players McVay faced off against in college was Patriot legend Julian Edelman. At the time though, Edelman was a gunslinger for Kent State.
The Akron Zips also put a Defensive Player of the Year in the NFL as former Dolphins edge rusher Jason Taylor played for the Zips.
Two of my all time favorite players are from the MAC.
Current Raiders defensive end and 202-2022 Defensive Player of the Year candidate Maxx Crosby is an Eastern Michigan alum. In his four year career in Ypsilanti, he totaled twenty sacks.
The other player never really panned out in the NFL, but was an absolute baller at Northern Illinois.
Jordan Lynch was a Heisman Trophy finalist in 2013 as a quarterback. In that unreal and electric season he tallied twenty nine hundred passing yards with twenty four touchdowns through the air. Along with that, he rushed for nineteen hundred yards and twenty three scores.
Kind of went off on a tangent there, but what I’m trying to say is mid week MACtion returned on Tuesday and I couldn’t be more excited. It really is an electric three hours of Group of Five Football.