Even when they’re not playing Miami, the Cards keep finding Neu ways to lose.
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My brother is a BSU grad and finances a scholarship at the school every year, and tells me that the Cardinal faithful are getting very restless about Neu’s penchant for losing one score games. His late game decision-making may cost him his job
Neu has hit his expiration. He seems like a nice enough guy who loves Ball State and was able to put together a solid team in 2020 despite everything weird that happened that season, but he never had the coaching or recruiting chops to survive long-term. If he’s gone I’m curious who they’re able to get, I imagine there’s not too many people pounding at the door to work in Muncie.
CMU and Kent are other teams that are discontented with their coach.
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Even that season, in which BSU won the MAC, the bowl game, and finished in the top 25, still included losing to Miami in such a way that it would have caused this site to explode had the situation been reversed.
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At Miami, Chuck Martin is 6-0 in one possession games against Mike Neu and 16-31 in one possession games against every other coach.
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Insightful
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It turns out it was an actual fire, allegedly.
If we still had divisions, a trip to detroit & the east crown would still likely come down to the game at bg
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With 2 weeks left, it’s still hard to get a clear picture of how this will play out with 6 teams within a game of each other. I did look at some scenarios, so take these with a grain of salt as with all of the moving parts, I probably made some mistakes. But here are my takeaways:
- The no-brainer, the top 3 control their own destiny,
- All of the scenarios I looked at had us finishing at 6-2, just to see if it came to that, what would need to happen. Overall, we have a better chance at the top 2 if we beat BG instead of NIU because…
- It is likely the conference tiebreaker will make it to conference opponents’ winning percentage. Looking at the top 6, it goes Toledo, Buffalo, BG/Miami, OU, Western from highest to lowest opponents’ winning percentage (assuming all favorites win). Common opponents’ winning percentage won’t make a difference in most of the scenarios I looked at.
- So in the scenario that everyone goes 6-2, we wouldn’t make it, it would be Toledo v. Buffalo.
- If BG goes 7-1 and everyone else goes 6-2, it would be BG v. Toledo, conference opponents winning percentage making the difference.
- Making it at 6-2 would likely require Toledo and Buffalo losing another game.
- I didn’t look at every scenario, but the most likely ones in my head have Toledo making it at 6-2.
- OU would need help to make it at 6-2.
- Western is probably in need of the most help to make it at 6-2.
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Thanks for the analysis! What a tangled web of possibilities!
Here is a simulator where you can click different game results and calculate the conference standings. It’s got every FBS conference. Kind of a homespun version of the NFL playoff machine.
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So we definitely want OU to beat Toledo, correct?
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Maybe someone else can verify, but I believe the following results would clinch a championship game spot for us next week:
Miami over NIU
Toledo over Ohio
Ball St over BG
Either KSU over Akron OR EMU over Buffalo
I know midweek games are not great for many, but hopefully the university, athletics and marketing, can really drum up support for this one! Last home game of the season, on national tv (ESPN - regular, not 2 or the U!), and not sure if they are going to do a senior night since they did a senior day earlier in the year, plus a championship game literally on the line)!
At least we had a Miami U commercial last night!
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Like every single other game?
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Last nights game was the first time I saw a Miami ad run during a Miami game. Two games an OU ad ran….
We air an ad every game since the broadcasters have to give the teams a free slot. I’m not sure to what extent Miami advertises on TV, but I think it would be silly to pay to advertise during our own games.