Always interested in when our weeknight starts. I think Ohio has to be a weeknight this year. Will Sac State be on the schedule.
We know some already be verry interesting to see who is left out from the MAC
Good. I’m trying to plan my vacation time today, and it will be nice to know what weekends are busy.
Finally.
Woohoo! UMass on the road… and on a Saturday in October. Perfection.
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Not a horrible MAC schedule. Buffalo and OU being on weeknights sucks.
At Western is obviously the toughest game. Getting OU and Buffalo at home is nice. Hard to say how good either team will be. Buffalo was pretty disappointing last year and OU has a new coach and a new QB. At Central might be our second toughest game. After that quite manageable.
Happy to miss Toledo, although they’re also a big unknown.
12-0. Book it. Done.
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They will actually just be wearing UConn uniforms, and we play them at home
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Five Saturday home/neutral games is quite nice. Would prefer if we got OU earlier but it was probably inevitable that we play on a weeknight after they did last season.
Had an LLM evaluate MAC SOS based on 2025 year-end Sagarin. Obv imperfect - but interesting!
I ranked 2026 MAC-only football SOS using the final 2025 Sagarin “A” ratings as the team-strength input. For Sacramento State, which was still classified as AA/FCS on that page, I used its listed Sagarin rating of 56.88. I pulled the conference schedules from the MAC’s official 2026 schedule release.
For conference SOS, the plain average opponent rating and the home/away-adjusted average are the same. Also, I counted Sacramento State at Eastern Michigan on Aug. 29 as a conference game because the MAC release explicitly says conference play begins that day with that matchup.
Hardest to easiest 2026 MAC-only SOS (using 2025 Sagarin ratings):
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Central Michigan — 58.36
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Kent State — 58.33
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Eastern Michigan — 57.77
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Western Michigan — 57.76
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Ohio — 57.48
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UMass — 57.42
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Buffalo — 57.00
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Akron — 56.60
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Bowling Green — 56.50
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Ball State — 56.23
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Sacramento State — 55.46
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Toledo — 55.20
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Miami (OH) — 55.15
The Sagarin values I used were:
Akron 52.40, Ball State 49.87, Bowling Green 54.34, Buffalo 54.60, Central Michigan 59.10, Eastern Michigan 55.45, Kent State 50.31, UMass 35.60, Miami (OH) 62.83, Ohio 66.00, Sacramento State 56.88, Toledo 73.01, Western Michigan 68.87
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That’s a really good point.
Good OOC schedule! Nice to have UCONN at home.
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=>Miami’s #MACtion is all Tuesday nights.
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And the hotel is booked for UMass weekend. God I love having that overrated institution as a full MAC member.
no red bird rivalry sigh 
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Yeah, not that I give a shit, but I thought we played the other teams in our pod every year? OU and Ball State. Perhaps they did away with the pods. I really just want to play Ball State because they suck.
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Sacramento State probably screwed up the pod system.