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Edit:

AAAACCCCCKKKKK!!!!!!

Sorry, I meant in the MAC. Being a western fan, I've typed MWC too many times.

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Long term, football programs with ties going to those with the best men's BB program?

The WAC may not have six "best" programs left but our top six would have to include:

Boise State
Fresno State
Hawaii
Nevada

Yoda out...

Toledo
Miami
Northern Illinois
Bowling Green

After that it falls off for football although different schools rise to the level of these four in different years. If you want to look at combined BB and FB, as much as it pains me I'd have to rate Miami number 1, with Toledo number 2. NIU and BGSU are middle of the pack basketball teams most years.

Kent State has probably had the best basketball rpogram over the last few years but over the history of the conference they've been horrible in BB and FB.

One thing that has impressed me -- and amazed me -- is how well some of your programs do, despite having some really pathetic attendance figures. I am referring to Bowling Green and Miami -- both of whom are among the top performing non-BCS schools in the country (based on their four year Sagarin averages) despite have averaged something like 18500 a game. I haven't checked out NIU and you guys.

Logic says that they can't sustain that kind of success with that kind of attendance yet the MAC has consistently had some good teams. How do you do it?

Yoda out...

This year:


Toledo
Bowling Green
Northern Illinois
Miami University
Akron
Eastern Michigan

It seems like so far its
Toledo







BG, Miami, Niu but all are sucking it up....
Ohio

Yoda Wrote:One thing that has impressed me -- and amazed me -- is how well some of your programs do, despite having some really pathetic attendance figures. I am referring to Bowling Green and Miami -- both of whom are among the top performing non-BCS schools in the country (based on their four year Sagarin averages) despite have averaged something like 18500 a game. I haven't checked out NIU and you guys.

Logic says that they can't sustain that kind of success with that kind of attendance yet the MAC has consistently had some good teams. How do you do it?

Yoda out...

For a long time the MAC was a splotch under the footprint of the Big Ten. In this area Ohio State, Michigan, Notre Dame etc got first pick of recruits and MAC schools got the leftovers. MAC coaches said, "Bump this" and started expanding thier recruiting areas. We're closing the gap in terms of talent but the "big time" programs have decades of advanced fan gathering. I think it will be some time before MAC schools catch up in terms of attendance figures. Another difficulty I see is that there are 3 Michigam schools and 6 Ohio schools in the MAC. That's 9 MAC schools all within a few hundred miles of each other and that's just too parochial. If one of the Michigan and half of the Ohio universities split to form a new conference with, say, WKU and MTSU, that could be the start of a new conference that would be better than the Sunbelt. I don't want to be pesemistic, but I don't see subtantial increases in attendance for at least a few more years.