2015 Boca Raton Bowl: Toledo beats Temple in controversial finish

It was a pretty damn good year for the MAC. Toledo beat a couple of power-conference teams (but didn’t win its own division, which gives the impression of solid depth), and more importantly, fewer teams were outright bad.

Only one MAC team ranked worse than 111th in the F/+ rankings heading into bowl season, compared to six Conference USA teams, four Sun Belt teams, and two each from the Mountain West and American.

However, a Toledo defender came out of the pile with the ball, and the referee declined to overturn the call on the field, giving the Rockets possession and an eventual victory.

The onside controversy threatened to overshadow a stellar performance from Toledo senior quarterback Phillip Ely. Ely, who played his first two seasons at Alabama before transferring to Toledo and missed almost all of last season after a Week 2 knee injury, was making a homecoming of sorts: The Tampa prep product was playing for the first time in his home state of Florida. He finished his last collegiate game with 285 yards and two touchdowns on 20/28 passing. It was Ely’s fourth consecutive game with more than 200 passing yards and seventh multiple-touchdown game this year.

When you’re a mid-major, your reward for making a good hire is having to make another one. When Tim Beckman left for Illinois at the end of 2011, Toledo promoted offensive coordinator Matt Campbell, who had just turned 32.

Campbell was an interesting combination of small-school mentality (he played at Mount Union) and high-caliber recruiting chops, and he ended up winning nine games in three of four seasons at the Glass Bowl. He couldn’t secure a MAC West title, but he did well.

You know the argument: Team X beat Team Y, and Team Y beat Team Z, so Team X is way better than Team Z. The transitive win -- an application of mathematics’ transitive property to college football -- is as old as the sport, a severely skewed measuring stick for a sport that has 128 teams, 12 games and three months of debate.

But what if we took the transitive property to its most extreme levels? What would happen if college football’s most successful teams were measured by transitive wins? Let’s set the world on fire.

_{Confused? Check out the advanced-stats glossary here.}

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The time has come. The regular season is almost over and bowl season is just on the horizon. Sadly, that means your opportunities to watch good Group of Five football before next fall are almost dried up. Sorry, Army - Navy may be a good historical game, but it’s not going to be competitive this year. Navy will blow the Black Knights out of the water before halftime.

And with more bowl games than ever before, it can be hard to maximize your opportunities to take in good football before we enter the void. Don’t stress. This week, we’re changing things up a bit and putting together a bowl guide to ensure you know which games featuring Group of Five teams are worth your time.

The second-ever Boca Raton Bowl will pit the MAC against American Athletic Conference at FAU Stadium.

In the inaugural Boca Raton Bowl, the Marshall Thundering Herd capped a 12-1 season by rolling over the MAC champion Northern Illinois Huskies, 52-23. Marshall just missed out on a trip to the Fiesta Bowl and instead represented Conference USA, which had a tie-in to the Boca Raton Bowl in 2014.

Toledo has hired offensive coordinator Jason Candle to replace Matt Campbell as head coach, first reported by WTOL’s Jordan Strack and confirmed by Fox Sports’ Bruce Feldman. Campbell was announced as Iowa State’s head coach Sunday after a 35-15 record in four years with the Rockets. An official announcement is expected Wednesday afternoon.

Candle was initially going to be one of the assistants Campbell took with him to Ames, likely as Iowa State’s offensive coordinator. He had actually already made it there, reportedly recruiting for the Cyclones.