:format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/38322850/macbloggerroundtable.0.jpg)
1. So the MAC picked up two wins over the Big Ten but lost an FCS game, as well as a game to South Alabama and Army. On balance, good week or bad week for the MAC?
I'd have to go with bad. Ball State holding their own in Iowa was a pleasant surprise. NIU and CMU's wins were more expected than anything, leaving us with a Miami loss to Eastern Kentucky, Toledo getting blown apart, and Bowling Green losing Matt Johnson for the year. Add in the Kent State and Buffalo losses, and you have a rather down week. The truth hurts.
2. Once again, it seems like the West is much stronger than the East. If this continues, do you think the MAC should re-align the divisions to even things out?
No. I like the geographical alignment. Also, keeping rivalries would be tough. The three directionals have to stay together, and you'd like NIU to keep their rivalries with Toledo and Ball State. Toledo would want to keep a rivalry with Bowling Green, so then you'd have 4 power schools right now all together, and then you'd fill it with what? UMass and Miami?
Hell, even if you broke Toledo away from NIU, then you start to get long travel times to divisional teams. Propose you keep CMU, WMU, EMU, Toledo, and BG together because, hey, they pretty much form a pennant flag on the highways. Who is your 6th team? Do you pluck Buffalo for the Ontario Sandwich? You can't separate Miami and Ohio or Akron and Kent State, so those 4 are together. Then you have to put Ball State and NIU with those 6 and Buffalo is left over (forget UMass, because they're gone anyways).
So this new proposal would be:
Great Lakes: Bowling Green, Buffalo, CMU, EMU, Toledo, WMU
Trivals (TRY-vals, like tri-rivals), or Corn Belt: Akron, Ball State, Kent State, Miami, NIU, Ohio
Actually, this isn't bad. Screw it, MAKE IT HAP'N CAP'N!
3. Brady Hoke, Tim Beckman and Darrel Hazell are all former MAC coaches who are struggling in the Big 10. What are the odds all 3 are gone by the end of the year and do you think any of them will coach in the MAC again?
Hoke? Still depends on the season, but anything less than 9 wins and his job is likely open. Beckman is gone. I'm surprised he's still at Illinois after where he's taken that team. Hazell will get another year, but his seat is getting really toasty quick. If Purdue isn't at .500 next season, he's gone as well.
As far as coming back? I think Beckman and Hazell might get jobs as a coordinator and head coach respectively. Hoke will never come back, probably because his ego thinks he's too high for it now. But who knows, if Terry Bowden and Frank Solich can come to the MAC, anything's possible.