And that's another MAC football regular season in the Scrolls of Imperial Honor.
Northern Illinois quarterback Chandler Harnish is your winner of the Vern Smith, as well as the Offensive POY. Hard to argue each of these. His play has equaled last year and was needed even more so with the loss of Chad Spann.
Here's a bit of a surprise: Drew Nowak of Western Michigan won Defensive Player of the Year. He was tied for first in the conference with 8.5 sacks ... but I have to think Khalil Mack deserved this honor.
Eastern Michigan's Ron English won Coach of the Year. A no-doubt choice, and if there was voting tabulation this ought to have been unanimous, although Frank Solich, Dave Doeren, Steve Addazio and Pete Lembo all had excellent years.
The Special Teams POY is OHIO's accurate kicker Matt Weller. I guess Eric Page can't win 'em all (although he picked up three first-team nods). Although ... for some reason he wins Special Teams POY and is only second-team All-MAC as a placekicker.
Bowling Green running back Anthon Samuel took the Freshman of the Year award. There have been several deserving freshmen this year, most of them running backs. It could've been him or Akron's Jawon Chisholm.
Below the jump is the cheatsheet.
So NIU earned the most "points" of all, and they had the most wins. Sensible, isn't it?
Let's try another metric I just made up: All-MAC points per team win. A higher number should tend to mean a higher proportionate amount of awards based on team performance. Could be individual success. Maybe a lower score indicates team bias, lack of player recognition or better overall team play.
NIU: 2.33 (21 to 9)
Temple: 2.50 (20 to 8)
Toledo: 2.50 (20 to 8)
OHIO: 2.11 (19 to 9)
Ball State 2.83 (17 to 6)
BGSU: 3.00 (15 to 5)
WMU: 2.00 (14 to 7)
Miami: 2.75 (11 to 4)
Kent State: 2.20 (11 to 5)
Buffalo: 3.00 (9 to 3)
CMU: 2.66 (8 to 3)
EMU: 1.00 (6 to 6)
Akron: 3.00 (3 to 1)