Big MAC attack

By Vince Guerrieri
210 west Managing Editor [send email]

There is no better conference right now in college football than the MAC
--Tony Kornheiser, Pardon the Interruption, Sept. 22, 2003

On one of the too many days I spent in the BG News newsroom, the college football schedule came out. It included the unlikely matchup of Nebraska (then in its Tom Osborne-led heyday) and Akron, and prompted one of my colleagues at the time to ask, “Has any Division I team ever scored 100 points in a game?”

Oh, how times have changed. Major schools are no longer looking past those early-season non-conference opponents, particularly if they’re in the Mid-American Conference, and MAC schools are no longer just taking a payday for a butt-kicking.

The irony in all of this, though, is that every MAC victory this year – including this past fantastic weekend, which saw Toledo and Marshall upset Top-10 opponents, and Northern Illinois move into the Top 25 in both the Associated Press and ESPN polls after beating Alabama – is even less meaningful than it might have been had it occurred while I was in college.

In 1998, six major conferences – The Atlantic Coast, Big East, Big 12, Big Ten, Pacific-10 and Southeastern Conferences – combined (or colluded, depending on how you look at it) to form the Bowl Championship Series with the University of Notre Dame, which is its own entity. The BCS was offered as a solution for college football, where the top two teams could play for a national championship.

However, teams in other conferences, such as the MAC, are shut out in theory and in practice from the hint of a national championship. Apparently, the powers that be in college football decided that they liked the competitive imbalance of baseball, and wanted to be a part of it. BCS-conference schools get $85 million. The rest get $5 million annually, according to The Associated Press.

Once upon a time, major colleges (i.e. the ones that regularly appear in Top 25 polls) used the beginning of the season to tune up for the conference season, and smaller conferences enjoyed the brief glare of a national spotlight and a hefty payoff (for Bowling Green’s 1997 game against Ohio State, the Falcon athletic department took home $250,000).

But scholarships to big schools have decreased, and top talent can go to places like Bowling Green or Toledo. And the Falcons, in the ebb and flow of most college programs, have put some good teams on the field lately. They beat Missouri and Northwestern in 2001, Kansas and Misouri (again) last year, and Purdue - which was ranked No. 16 at the time, this year. They kept it close against Ohio State on Saturday, but really, who hasn’t lately?

And now, representatives of smaller conferences – most notably Scott Cowen of Tulane University – are calling for a change. Congress recently convened hearings on the disparity in college athletics. College basketball has a playoff among 64 Division I schools, with some weight toward conferences, but it’s not out of the realm of possibility that Bowling Green can win a basketball championship. Unless they’re ranked within the top six in college football, they can’t even play in one of the big bowls (Sugar, Rose and Orange).

Maurice Clarett is suing the National Football League because they won’t let him play. One of the points he raises is that the NFL essentially allows college football to serve as a farm system for their players. But like a farm system, there’s division within the programs. Some coaches cut their teeth in small conferences, and then move up (Urban Meyer’s a good example, he took over at Bowling Green in 2001 and left for Utah and a $500,000 raise this season).

But if nothing else, the recent spate of upsets should make people sit up and take notice of the MAC. We can run with the big dogs, screw with their rankings, and maybe crush the Bowl Championship Series.

Not bad for a bunch of small colleges in strategically-located cornfields and cities.