Here are the current MAC standings. It is very jumbled. We are in the situation where we can get to Detroit by winning our last 3 games. This week all 6 games are Tuesday and Wednesday at 7:00 and available on either ESPN2, ESPNU, or CBSSN.
Miami 4-1
Ohio 4-1
BGSU 4-1
Western 4-1
Buffalo 3-2
Toledo 3-2
Ball State 2-3
Eastern 2-3
Northern 2-3
Central 1-4
Akron 1-4
Kent 0-5
Definitely could see a bricks rematch (and I’d love for us to be the reason OU’s MACC drought gets extended) but I doubt we could rematch BG simply because I think whoever looses that game will drop out of contention
Definitely it makes things more complicated. Before you played the other 5 teams in your division and if there was a tie the winner of the head to head would go to the MACC. So every team basically had a chance to determine their fate. Now you can tie with someone you did not play and lose on secondary tiebreakers.
I prefer the divisional format. The current system allows a lesser team(WMU) with an easier schedule too simple a path.
It also does not stimulate rivalries. As many years as we ended up on the short end of the stick versus Marshall it was still riveting football. Before the season both teams had that game circled on the schedule as they knew the winner was overwhelmingly likely to be the East representative.
The divisionless model makes sense in the context of trying to get the CFP G5 bid, the MAC execs figure that if we get a team like 2012 NIU or 2016 WMU with a shot we need them strengthening their resume as much as possible. There’s some logic to that, I can see a scenario where an undefeated team has a conference championship win against some 7-5 team held against them by the committee.
The problem is that the MAC has so much parity that it’s a lot more likely for there to be a confusing mess near the top of the standings instead of a dream scenario, Exhibit A being this season. I suppose it’ll be interesting when the MACC inevitably has a rivalry matchup, but we’ll get unnecessary controversy far more often than whatever benefit the new system is supposed to bring.
I’ll be the counter-argument - I think divisionless is much better:
I don’t think any matchup except Ohio has to be annual, so this provides more variety in the schedule.
Going divisionless makes all of the MAC games in a week potentially interesting to me as a fan. Before there wasn’t much reason to care about MAC West games.
For all of the weird potential tiebreakers that are possible now, I think they’re better than the scenario where the clear two best teams are in the same division and one gets screwed out of a conference championship berth. The first five criteria are:
Record (obviously)
Head to head (if it occurred)
Record against common opponents
Record against common opponents based upon their order of finish (overall conference win percentage, with ties broken) and proceeding through other common opponents based upon their order of finish
The tied team with the higher ranking by the Team Rating Score metric provided by SportSource Analytics following the conclusion of regular season games
…and it continues from there. Those are 4 tiebreakers that are essentially in your control even if it’s not directly head to head. The MAC is so even most of the time that I wouldn’t worry too much about a super easy or difficult schedule like you could have in the Big Ten or SEC.
Right, but then why not just keep the divisions but have a computer randomly pick who is in them every year. Still creates new matchups and keeps the old format…
I don’t know if it would really be needed for the MAC since we’re smaller so less likely to have huge ties at the top but I have seen that idea for larger conferences like the Big Ten/SEC and I like it. Probably some complexity there to keep the permanent opponents still playing each other but would let you mix up the opponents and keep head to head as the primary tiebreaker.
