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Northern Illinois will win a third straight MAC Championship in 2013, beating the Bowling Green Falcons, according to predictionmachine.com. The prediction website, which claims to have "the most advanced sports forecasting software available today," simulated every single game in the 2013 college football season 50,000 times.
| Standing | Team | Avg. Wins | Avg. Losses |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Northern Illinois Huskies | 9.8 | 2.2 |
| 2 | Bowling Green Falcons | 9.2 | 2.8 |
| 3 | Ball State Cardinals | 8.9 | 3.1 |
| 4 | Ohio Bobcats | 8.8 | 3.2 |
| 5 | Toledo Rockets | 7.0 | 5.0 |
| 6 | Western Michigan Broncos | 7.0 | 5.0 |
| 7 | Buffalo Bulls | 6.2 | 5.8 |
| 8 | Kent State Flashes | 5.1 | 6.9 |
| 9 | Miami (OH) Redhawks | 4.5 | 7.5 |
| 10 | Central Michigan Chippewas | 4.0 | 8.0 |
| 11 | Akron Zips | 2.8 | 9.2 |
| 12 | Eastern Michigan Eagles | 2.5 | 9.5 |
| 13 | Massachusetts Minutemen | 1.3 | 10.7 |
Out West, it's no surprise, but the machine has the Huskies winning the West by an average of nearly a whole game. That's a significant number when you consider the shear amount of simulations that were ran to figure up these standings. The computer has the Bowling Green Falcons winning the East, by an average of .4 games over MAC Media Poll favorite Ohio. In the MAC Championship, based on the predictions, the Huskies beat the Falcons in Detroit 24-23, in the closest conference championship prediction.
Besides Ohio and Bowling Green flopping, these numbers compare well with our fan predictions from earlier this month.
The simulations also projected which MAC teams would make it to which bowls and who would win (naturally by a projected score):
| Bowl | Matchup Result |
|---|---|
| Famous Idaho Potato | San Jose State Spartans 32 - Ball State Cardinals 25 |
| GoDaddy | Northern Illinois Huskies 30 - Louisiana-Monroe Warhawks 28 |
| Heart of Dallas | Tulsa Hurricane 35 - Toledo Rockets 28 |
| Little Caesars Pizza | Indiana Hoosiers 26 - Bowling Green Falcons 24 |
| Poinsettia | San Diego State Aztecs 30 - Ohio Bobcats 21 |
Northern Illinois is the lone MAC school (out of five) to win a bowl, beating the UL-Monroe Warhawks and their fancy two-QB system, 30-28.
Take this all with a grain of salt, as last year the Predictalator (the name for their software) projected Ohio as a heavy favorite to win the MAC, with NIU projected to finish in fifth place. We all know how that actually turned out.