2012 MAC Football Previews: America’s Funnest Sporting Association Reloads

The checks and balances for building an annual power in the MAC are both well-established and effective. If you win big, you lose your coach. And if you win big with a certain group of players, they leave. The latter, obviously, happens everywhere in college football. But in a league where the base of talent is so even, where every roster is made up mostly of two-star recruits, one or two diamond-in-the-rough types can make all the difference in the world.

Northern Illinois has survived one check. Jerry Kill inherited a 2-10 team when he took over in DeKalb in 2008, and the Huskies went to three straight bowl games and won the MAC West by 2010. He took the Minnesota job, but his replacement, Dave Doeren, won the MAC in his first year on the job, just like Tom Amstutz did at Toledo in 2001 when Gary Pinkel left.

Over the last nine seasons, nine different teams have played in the MAC title game. Western Michigan is not one of them. The Broncos have been one of the most consistently strong teams in the conference, as evidenced by the fact that they rank second in five-year F/+. In seven years under Bill Cubit, they have finished bowl eligible five times, attended three bowls and never finished worse than 5-7. They have finished .500 or better in conference for each of the last four years and six of the last seven. In a conference with more parity than the NFL, that is quite an accomplishment. But division titles have eluded them. Even last year, when they ranked 51st overall and made their first bowl game in three seasons, they finished two games back of Northern Illinois and Toledo in the MAC West.

Still, while the lack of a 21st-century division title may be frustrating, that is at least somewhat alleviated by the simple fact that Cubit’s Broncos have made some tremendous progress over the last two seasons. They may have picked a bad year to go just 2-4 in one-possession games (they lost to Illinois by three, to Eastern Michigan by four, to Toledo by three and to Purdue by five), but they showed some incredible offensive efficiency and put together one of the best special teams units in the country. Even with a hit-or-miss defense, that combination will win you quite a few games, especially in the MAC.

The exit signs, they blend together after a while. Lots of roads named “Eight Mile” and “Nine Mile.” There is a different school every 50 miles or so, and I can no longer tell them apart. The creeping insanity sounds like every MC5 song at once. I find myself lost in a land with states named Ball and Kent, where Miami does not have a South Beach, where we are allowed to talk about Chippewas but not Hurons, where there is a North, an East and a West, but no south. The darkness, it can hypnotize.

MACdementia has set in. Call for the captain ashore, let me go home.

In last week’s Akron preview, I said that “when you are hiring a head coach at the mid-major level, you are looking for guys on the way up or on the way down.” The up- and downsides to each approach are crystal clear: a coach on the way up might succeed and leave, while a coach on the way down might not have enough juice left to win at a high level.

Ohio lucked into a nearly perfect situation when it hired Frank Solich before the 2005 season. It found a coach “on the way down” who had enough juice left to compete and was perfectly suited for competing in the MAC. Solich was not much of a big-time recruiter at Nebraska, but he is one hell of a program builder. And not only has he begun to build one hell of a program in Athens, but at 67 years old, he is not going to be leaving for a bigger job. Ohio has to figure they have him until he retires.

In 1972, the Rolling Stones’ grimiest album, Exile On Main Street, was released, and a gutty Kent State team coached by Don James, with Jack Lambert at linebacker, Nick Saban at safety, and Gary Pinkel at tight end won the Mid-American Conference and earned what would be the school’s only bowl bid to date, a trip to the Tangerine Bowl.

James would take the Washington job in 1975 and win a national title 16 years later. Lambert would end up an NFL Hall of Famer. Pinkel would go on to a successful coaching career in both the MAC (at Toledo) and at Missouri. Saban would go on to an incredibly successful coaching career, winning his third national title this past January. Kent State, meanwhile, has struggled. They have finished with just three winning seasons since James left, and only one since head coach Glen Mason departed for Kansas in 1988. But they have created an interesting formula for winning in the near future.

In 2008, Turner Gill led Buffalo to a conference title with a perfect storm of “underdog program” factors.

A good number of pieces -- Starks, Roosevelt, most of the defense -- returned for the 2009 season amid reasonably high expectations, but the luck turned and the Bulls fell to 83rd in F/+ and 5-7 overall. They lost four of six one-possession games. The formula was difficult to replicate even with a similar cast of characters.

True measures of quality sometimes stray pretty far beyond wins and losses. With an oddly-shaped ball and, at the mid-major level, such little difference in overall talent and quality, single plays and odd bounces can make an enormous difference in a team’s season. For that matter, so can schedule strength.

For no single team in the country is this more true than the Miami (Ohio) Redhawks. Here are their records and official F/+ rankings for the past six years:

Generally speaking, when you are hiring a head coach at the mid-major level, you are looking for guys on the way up or on the way down. In 2001, Bowling Green hired Notre Dame special teams coach Urban Meyer on the way up. In 2005, Ohio hired former Nebraska head coach Frank Solich on the way down. Miami (Ohio) has made a nickname for itself by hiring good coaches on the way up, but after failing with “on the way up” coach Rob Ianello -- and I mean failing -- Akron decided to go with a name most college football fans recognize when they dumped Ianello after two years and two wins: Terry Bowden. Terry “Bobby’s Son” Bowden. Terry “Not A Fan Of Bobby Lowder” Bowden. Terry “Really Not A Fan Of Bobby Lowder” Bowden. TV’s Terry Bowden.

Our old friend Terry has advanced a few years (and pounds, but hey, who hasn’t?) over time, winning 29 games at North Alabama in the three years since cutting short his broadcast career. He agreed to become the Akron head coach on Dec. 22, and he brought some old familiar faces with him. Chesty Chuck Amato, former head coach at N.C. State (and once Bobby’s righthand man), is the new defensive coordinator. Brother Jeff Bowden is the new special teams and outside receivers coach. Former Florida State All-American Terrell Buckley is cornerbacks coach. Even one-time Lord of Ohio, Jim Tressel, has at least temporarily left his coaching days behind him to become the University of Akron’s Vice President of Strategic Engagements, whatever that is. Hell, Bowden even brought “dadgum” with him from Alabama. The only thing that might not have made the trip north? Wins. Akron has been bereft of them recently, and it is difficult to see how that will change anytime soon. They have actually managed to regress in five of the six seasons following their shocking 2005 MAC championship campaign, and they weren’t exactly world beaters when that string began.