Friday, September 26, 2003

By Chuck Finder, Post-Gazette Sports Writer

Saturdays don't get much better than this.

For one particular conference, this past one was the MAC-daddy of them all.

	MAC ATTACK Five ranked teams have been upset by Mid-American Conference teams this season. Aug. 28: Northern Illinois defeats No. 15 Maryland, 20-13 Sept. 6: Bowling Green defeats No. 16 Purdue, 27-26 Sept. 20: Marshall defeats No. 6 Kansas State, 27-20 Sept. 20: Toledo defeats No. 9 Pitt, 35-31 Sept. 20: Northern Illinois defeats No. 21 Alabama, 19-16

Toledo defeated ninth-ranked Pitt. Marshall toppled sixth-ranked Kansas State on the road in a nationally televised game. Northern Illinois, snagging its second Bowl Championship Series pelt of the month, rolled No. 21 Alabama in one of college football's most familiar addresses: Bryant-Denny Stadium, Tuscaloosa, Ala. Miami of Ohio stomped perennial bowl team Colorado State high in the Rockies. Bowling Green lost at the Horseshoe to fourth-ranked Ohio State in a contest that wasn't decided until the Buckeyes made an interception on the final play.

Then -- yes, there's a topper -- a student from Central Florida won Miss America.

Here it is, Mid-American...

"We should have given her a little MAC logo to wear," conference spokesman Gary Richter was saying of Ericka Dunlap the other day from the giddy MAC headquarters in Cleveland. Yeah, imagine that Christmas-colored, red-and-green symbol on the back of her bikini. As if all of college football's male demographic hadn't already heard enough that day about the little league that could.

Conference commissioner Rick Chryst was driving from Tuscaloosa. He was fiddling with the radio dial in an attempt to locate a score from Toledo, where the Rockets rallied from a 10-point deficit in the fourth quarter. Upon hearing the news about an-unprecedented third MAC victory against ranked teams in a single day, he screamed and thumped the dashboard. Said Chryst, "I thought about retiring right there."

Add to the mix Bowling Green's earlier victory against then-No. 16 Purdue and Northern Illinois' season-opening televised defeat of then-No. 15 Maryland, and the MAC has defeated teams from five of the six BCS conferences: Big East, Big Ten, Big 12, Southeastern and Atlantic Coast.

As a result, the league at long last got a little respect this week: No. 20 Northern Illinois, Toledo, Bowling Green, Miami and Marshall all received votes in the Top 25 polls, another MAC first. Tomorrow, the conference could pick up some more pelts: Toledo visits Syracuse, Miami plays host to Cincinnati, Ball State goes to Boston College and Iowa State comes into Northern Illinois' sold-out Huskie Stadium.

In view of not only this past weekend but the past decade, there is hardly any logical explanation for the MAC's many slights: a BCS shutout, an affiliation with only two bowls, an increasingly difficult time scheduling major-conference foes, a television contract that started only last month -- that thanks to the league's willingness to play any day, anywhere, on the schedule.

"It's the haves vs. the have-nots," Toledo coach Tom Amstutz said, "even though that doesn't seem like the American way."

"We've had two winning seasons back to back and been shut out of the bowls," added Bowling Green's Greg Brandon. "Yeah, I definitely think it's unfair. Two bowl tie-ins for this league, I've said all along, isn't right. As long as we keep winning and beating BCS teams, hopefully, that will change."

The MAC's tie-ins are with the GMAC and Motor City bowls. Conference USA has five.

"I think we made some progress this weekend, but people around the country -- a lot of them, anyway -- still don't quite understand how good the football is in our league," said Northern Illinois coach Joe Novak. "Plus, the other thing we're dealing with in our league, none of them are really in big markets. ... Oxford, Ohio; Athens, Ohio; DeKalb, Ill. We lack some of the exposure even Conference USA gets because they're in big cities. Correct me if I'm wrong, but going into this year I think we were 8-0 against Conference USA. I don't think there's any doubt we have three, four, five bowl-potential teams in this conference. Our league, with the success of this past weekend, shows we deserve that opportunity."

The MAC had a history, a tradition, long before Saturday. Jack Lambert from Kent State and Steelers fame leaps to mind. Miami used to pull the occasional upset but mostly was known as the "Cradle of Coaches" after launching the careers of Paul Brown, Weeb Ewbank, Sid Gilman, Woody Hayes, Ara Parseghian and Bo Schembechler. Yet a unified push came in the 1990s that, behind commissioner Karl Benson (now with the Western Athletic Conference) and then Chryst the past four years, caused the conference to grow into the big MAC it is today.

Facilities

"Toledo, brand new [renovated] football stadium and football building. Bowling Green, new football building," rattled off Michael Reghi, a MAC radio and TV broadcaster for the past 17 years. "Central Michigan, Western Michigan, Eastern Michigan, Marshall, Miami, Kent State, Ball State, Northern Illinois. There has been a commitment there from the universities that 'We're Division I-A, and if you want to play with the big boys, you've got to make that commitment.' They're impressive. All since the mid-90s."

It's better, but still not up to BCS snuff. You can number on one hand the schools with an indoor practice facility. And at Northern Illinois, which put a 23-game losing streak behind it to become a title contender, has practice in Huskie Stadium so it can reserve the rocky practice-field grass for game-day parking.

The Marshall factor

After dominating at the Division I-AA level, Marshall joined the MAC in 1997. It won five conference championships in six years, trotting out such future NFL stars as Randy Moss, Chad Pennington and Byron Leftwich and forcing the rest of the league to try to keep up. Look at those teams now. "I think all the MAC raised the bar along with us," said Marshall coach Bob Pruett, whose team's 17-game home winning streak was ended by Toledo two weeks ago.

Recruiting and coaching

"We're a developmental league, that's the nature of it," Miami's Terry Hoeppner said. The MAC draws recruits from Pittsburgh -- six of last fall's Post-Gazette "Fabulous 22" went to league schools, three of them to Toledo -- as well as Chicago (Northern Illinois' stronghold), Detroit, Cincinnati and Columbus. In many cases, these are players who, in the words of Toledo's Amstutz, "are overlooked, or may not be as good or as big or as obvious, an inch too short, a step too slow."

Because they don't have the resources -- an average MAC recruiting budget of $91,000 contrasts sharply with the Top-25 school average of $350,000 -- they have to evaluate well. Then coach them to develop. "This goes back a long way, to the Mid-American coaches doing a good job, getting the most out of their players," Amstutz said.

Scheduling

It started with Benson and continued with Chryst. Instead of going for the killer payday -- "the $200,000, $300,000 that would do them good for the year," said longtime MAC chronicler Dave Hackenburg of the Toledo Blade -- teams went after the middle- to lower-echelon teams from the big conferences and wangled home games. Often, as with Pitt, it required a tradeoff: two games in Heinz Field for one at a MAC stadium. That's why Virginia played in Kalamazoo (Western Michigan), Minnesota in Athens (Ohio U.), Wake Forest in DeKalb (Northern Illinois) and -- tomorrow -- Maryland in Ypsilanti (Eastern Michigan).

Sometimes, it was a three-for-one deal. Maryland's contract with Northern Illinois started in 1996, in Novak's opening game at Northern Illinois, which didn't get that home game until seven years later.

"I guarantee you, Maryland will not go two-and-one with anybody in our league right now," Novak said. "They tried to get out of coming here this year. And I don't blame them. Nobody's going to want to go to Toledo anymore. Or Marshall. Or Miami. Or Bowling Green."

Hoeppner said an SEC team called Miami last week to back out of a home-and-home series.

Bowls, plural

Benson got the league into the Las Vegas Bowl in 1992 (ironically, he got them booted in favor of his WAC in 1997). The MAC champion started playing in the Motor City Bowl in 1997 and Chryst added a second-place team berth in the GMAC to go with the champion's Motor City bid. It also helped that Marshall became a must-see TV game at bowl time, considering its 2001 GMAC victory -- by 64-61 in double overtime against East Carolina.

Chryst just signed the league to a new five-year deal with ESPN. He also helped to convince MAC teams to work almost any day of the week for TV purposes. To appease television, MAC teams are scheduled to play on a Sunday and a Tuesday, two Wednesdays, two Thursdays and three Fridays. The two MAC bowl games are on Thursdays. "You get on television," Hoeppner said, "and the world opens for you."

But the conference could be headed for trouble next season. Eleven MAC schools are among a few dozen nationally that must raise their bars to meet more stringent NCAA scheduling and attendance criteria to remain in Division I-A. Kent State needs to nearly double its 7,500 home attendance to reach new rules requiring a 15,000 yearly average (MAC schools averaged 17,583 in 2002). Other schools fall short in the category of five home games against Division I-A competition. Don't Kent State and a couple of the directional Michigans always seem perched on some precipice? Doesn't the MAC always seem to find a way?

Perhaps it was no coincidence Saturday that the new Miss America won the talent portion of the competition by crooning the inspirational tune "If I Could." She could, and did.

The MAC could, and did.

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