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With football season ONLY FOUR DAYS AWAY, we've decided now would be a great time to shell out our first Mid-American Conference football power rankings of the season.
Every Sunday evening, we'll be releasing these to judge the state of the MAC teams and have our say in who's doing well and who's getting worse. So heading into the first week of the season, here's our first go-round at these power rankings. We voted our teams 1-13, best to worst, added up the picks and there we have our points. The lower the point total, the higher the ranking and visa-versa.
I'll remind you every week that our power rankings may or may not (probably definitely the latter) directly emulate the standings. If you want rankings based on straight up head-to-head match-ups, just check those instead.
| Rank | Team | Points (First place picks) |
| 1 | Toledo Rockets | 20 (10) |
| 2 | Northern Illinois Huskies | 32 (3) |
| 3 | Bowling Green Falcons | 41 (1) |
| 4 | Western Michigan Broncos | 50 |
| 5 | Ball State Cardinals | 89 |
| 6 | Massachusetts Minutemen | 96 |
| 7 | Ohio Bobcats | 108 |
| 8 | Buffalo Bulls | 115 |
| 9 | Akron Zips | 117 |
| 10 | Central Michigan Chippewas | 139 |
| 11 | Kent State Golden Flashes | 143 |
| 12 | Miami RedHawks | 150 |
| 13 | Eastern Michigan Eagles | 174 |
Toledo made up more than most of the first place votes from our ballots. That's probably not a surprise at all since they were picked to win the MAC West by the preseason polls. However, it was Northern Illinois who won the MAC Championship last year over Bowling Green and they're both second and third in our preseason power rankings respectfully.
A lot of people are going to be jumping on and off of the Western Michigan hype train as this year goes on, but there I go just assuming things again. But for now, none of our voters feel that they're the best team in the MAC right now.
I'm sure a lot of us would've thought to see UMass as high as five, but they're sitting at six behind Ball State. After that goes Ohio, Buffalo and Akron. All three of them have a lot to prove this season if they want to be taken seriously in the East.
Eventually you'll find Eastern Michigan at the bottom of our rankings. Aside from the obvious history that they've had, losing your best defensive player for the season won't help them out here.
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Voters: Alex Alvarado, Brandon Hickey, Brandon Fitzsimons, Keith Scheessele, James Jimenez, Kaleb Carter, Matt Gritzmacher, Norman Miller, Justin Coffin, Russ Johnson, Jeremy O'Brien, Chris Manning, Nick Fries, Matt Hammond.