• Conference races! Get your tangly conference races! In alphabetical order, the state of the mid-major fiefdoms:
Conference USA: Central Florida knocked off SMU to claim the C-USA title outright.
MAC: Miami (OH) upset Northern Illinois in a 26-21 relative barn-burner.
Mountain West: No championship game, but as one of only three remaining undefeated teams in the country, the crown of course belongs to TCU.
Sun Belt: This is your reminder that a 6-6 team won a Division I-A football conference. Congrats again, FIU!
WAC: We’ve got a lovely three-way tie atop the standings, with Nevada, Boise State, and Hawaii all finishing 7-1, and each having lost to one of the other two.
• We have run out of bowl-related puns and the regular season isn’t technically even over yet.
Mid-major teams have garnered bowl bids from the New Mexico right on up through the Rose; browse our complete list of matchups and previews page for more information.
• Fresh coaches, bought and sold!
Here’s where we stand as of Friday in the spin of the coaching carousel:
Mid-Manifest Destiny: The Calm Before The Bowls
A weekly examination of the lesser luminaries of Division I-A. On today’s agenda: Conference races wrap up and mid-major teams across the country prepare for bowls of varying degrees of respectability.
- Arkansas State's Steve Roberts ousted for Hugh Freeze (of Blind Side semi-fame).
- Ball State's Stan Parrish, let go for having the audacity to not be Brady Hoke.
- Kent State's Doug Martin is cut loose from the Golden Flashes; replacement unknown.
- Rickey Bustle out at Louisiana;
we can only hope Ed Orgeron is tapped as his replacement but have no news to report.Update! News is breaking this afternoon that Mississippi State assistant Mark Hudspeth will take the reigns of the Ragin' Cajuns.
- Dan McCarney takes over for Todd Dodge at North Texas.
- Jerry Kill leaves Northern Illinois to take the helm at Minnesota; he already has a super relationship with the AD, we can tell.
• This week in Mike Locksley Still Has A Job Theatre:
Please enjoy the list of things Mike Locksley has done in his tenure at New Mexico and the fact that he’ll be back at the wheel for the Lobos next season. We sincerely cannot wait.
Profiles in ownage.
• North Texas. In our continuing series of teams doing weirdly well without their head coaches, the Mean Green had a 20-point first quarter and only lost to a bowl-eligible K-State team by eight, 49-41.
• Fresno State. Winning with Ron Zook on the opposite sideline is no great feat, but a win is a win, and the Bulldogs got past the Illini by two, 25-23.
Not ready for primetime.
• Via Hainsey, we would just like to point out that calling a team the “Bisons” is ridiculous and weird.
Scoreboard.
Mid-majors finish the 2010 regular season with a 19-89 record against teams from BCS conferences.
Walking Dead Watch.
UP GOES AKRON! UP GOES AKRON! No winless teams remain in Division I-A, as the Zips get by Buffalo, 22-14, to notch a single victory for 2010.
Stay Tuned. One more regular-season contest remains; read our Army-Navy preview here. And you’ll get your first taste of mid-major college football action in the first bowl of the 2010 postseason: BYU vs. UTEP in the New Mexico Bowl on the afternoon of December 18, followed by Northern Illinois vs. Fresno State in the Humanitarian Bowl and Troy vs. Ohio in the New Orleans.
