The college hockey tournament is over, and so as promised here are the standings.............

1st - 08 Chippewas (22 pts)
2nd - chillicothe20 (17 pts)
3rd - flossie79 (16)
4th - cdbarker (14)
5th - jjncaa (12)
6th - suss (9)
7th - fitz09 (7)
8th - havisig (6)

No one ended up perfect, with the overall winner just missing the Michigan-Cornell winner. See you all next year

Ohio University athletics have always had a special meaning to me. Whether it was Peden Stadium on a un-seasonably warm September afternoon, the Convo' in winter, or even the frozen waters of Bird Arena, OHIO sports seems to be a map of my adolescent days and all the way to college and beyond.

Even now, living in a new city and only able to see the likes of DJ Cooper and friends on television, I'm reminded more than ever of how much my life and that university on a hill is embedded in me.

Must be in my blood.

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Come tell us your picks

Anyone interested in MAC Championship brackets?

I have a few of the MAC bloggers submitting them and I though I would open it up for readers.

How to Enter: Just comment below with your picks on every game, and the subsequent games. Ill make the Brackets myself

What's the prize: Well your pride must be worthless if you're even bothering to ask.

How about this, you win a fan post promoted to the front page about anything you want. Brag on your school, slam a rival, tell us who your favorite simpson character is... Whatever!

Just use common sense regarding language and content

Scoring:
Campus Game:: 1 Point Each
Round One and Quarter Finals: 2 Points Each
Semi Finals: 3 Points Each
Championship: 4 Points

Editor's note: Nice stuff on the thoughts of realignment and the MAC's next theoretical steps. —Sussman

It's contagious and spreading like wildfire. No not the flu, although I am getting sick to my stomach about hearing about it, I'm talking about expansion fever!

Although realignment has been happening for decades (I miss the Southwest Conference), the most recent bout of realignment / expansion has snowballed and rippled from coast to coast. First Colorado and Utah, then Nebraska, soon Texas A&M would follow suit and Syracuse and Pitt would be spooked and flee to the ACC. Without writing a complete summary, lets jump forward to where the ripples have just reached the Mighty MAC with what soon seems to be the loss of our good friends the Temple Owls.

So what should the MAC do? I'll tell you. Nothing! Relax, grab some popcorn, kick up your feet and wait for it to come to you. Thats right, it may fall right on your lap.

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There is an old joke about people paying the town doctor with whatever they could. Chickens, pies, fish, .......

If Temple and the Big East try the same crap the MAC needs to tell the Big East if they want Temple they will need to wait two years.

MAC teams already get home and home games against Big East Football Teams, or manage handy chunks of change for one and outs. So why in the world would football games be an acceptable form of payment?

Cash money is needed by the conference, not games. Games are something each MAC team is doing just fine landing on their own. Maybe give them time to pay it but for the love of Pete don't settle for beans...

Eastern Michigan loses again. I'm sure that's what you'd expect me to say. Instead, they have at least a share of the MAC West basketball title.

That's right. I never thought those words would ever come out of my mouth, nay, go through my head. EVER.

Eastern Michigan is the MAC West basketball champs. Wow. I mean, the thing is, they're TWELVE AND SIXTEEN!

Their conference record is the only thing that has kept them in it (obviously). I mean, they had a bad non-conference record (5-9). They knew what they had to do in conference play, and they showed up.

via hssn-media.advance.net

After today's 11-point win against Ball St, EMU must just be elated. First time that I can remember that they won anything in a major sport.

I am in a game where we predict Mid American Conference wins/record only, regardless of Division. We only go eight deep. What are your top 8 records of Mid American men's basketball teams this year? As a side note, what team or teams will not be as good as predicted and what team or teams will be better than predicted? Again, conference games only are included in our game. Thank you very much.

Ken Pomeroy release his ratings for the 2011-12 season the other day. So, I thought it'd be interesting to take a quick look, in graphic form, at how the MAC is shaping up in a tempo-free light.

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Well the Big East just gutted any potential alliance between the Mountain West and Conference USA by snatching away five of the premier schools occupying the pool. Speaking of the pool who is left?

The Mountain west is now the awkward kids who you know is going to relieve himself, and Conference USA is now within the Margin of error and the WAC, who was gutted last season, is oddly king of the pack (until they add more IAA schools).

The idea of some alliance helping get an AQ spot was foolish on its face but it did get me to thinking. Is there a way for the Mid-Majors to boost their status, even just a little, without changing the world.

Instead of some huge alliance with far flung aspirations that a few cute girls will get all the uggo's into the AQ party why not focus on helping the few teams who might actually benefit in a given year.

What if the MAC and the Sun Belt decided to each reserve the last week of the season for cross over games aimed at boosting resumes on top and giving some winnable games at the bottom? Take the coaches preseason polls for each conference and schedule. (no the #1 and #2 is not a typo, if you have each conference with teams ranked in the top 25 why eat each other)

SBC #2 at MAC #1

MAC #2 at SBC #1

MAC #3 at SBC #3

SBC #4 at MAC #4

...

The obvious problem is that there is a disparate number of teams between the conferences. I suspect the Sun Belt will be climbing to 12 but even then that leaves two MAC teams with nothing to do that week. Maybe you make arrangements with an independent, or let the two worst MAC teams try to pick up a second FCS game.

This is just something spinning around in my head.. Thoughts?

Call me a hopeless romantic, that's fine with me. But I thought it would be fun as a Bronco fan to see how Western could still potentially make it to the MAC title game. And by "fun," I mean I'm extremely bitter about the last two weeks and need something to latch my football hopes onto.  As we all know, the Broncos responded to that bone-crushing NIU loss by not really responding at all and losing to in-state foe EMU. So come with me on the highly unlikely walk to Ford Field for WMU...

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