1947: Cincinnati
1948: Miami-OH
1949: Cincinnati
1950: Miami-OH
1951: Cincinnati
1952: Cincinnati
1953: Ohio
1954: Miami-OH
1955: Miami-OH
1956: Bowling Green
1957: Miami-OH
1958: Miami-OH
1959: Bowling Green
1960: Ohio
1961: Bowling Green
1962: Bowling Green
1963: Ohio
1964: Bowling Green
1965: Bowling Green & Miami-OH
1966: Miami-OH & Western Michigan
1967: Ohio & Toledo
1968: Ohio
1969: Toledo
1970: Toledo
1971: Toledo
1972: Kent State
1973: Miami-OH
1974: Miami-OH
1975: Miami-OH
1976: Ball State
1977: Miami-OH
1978: Ball State
1979: Central Michigan
1980: Central Michigan
1981: Toledo
1982: Bowling Green
1983: Northern Illinois
1984: Toledo
1985: Bowling Green
1986: Miami-OH
1987: Eastern Michigan
1988: Western Michigan
1989: Ball State
1990: Central Michigan & Toledo
1991: Bowling Green
1992: Bowling Green
1993: Ball State
1994: Central Michigan
1995: Toledo
1996: Ball State
1997: Marshall
1998: Marshall
1999: Marshall
2000: Marshall
2001: Toledo
2002: Marshall
2003: Miami-OH
2004: Toledo
Excellent! You've progressed to cutting and pasting.
Total numbers of titles
Miami 14
Bowling Green 10
Toledo 10
Ohio 5
Marshall 5*
Ball State 5
CMU 4
Cincinnati 4*
WMU 2
Kent State 1
NIU 1
EMU 1
Akron 0
Buffalo 0
Temple 0
UCF 0*
Western Reserve 0*
Wayne State 0*
*no longer a member
Kent St actually won a MAC title in football?
Was that when Lambert played there?
Oddball Wrote:Excellent! You've progressed to cutting and pasting.
But he still lacks a point.
Karl Wrote:Was that when Lambert played there?
Yes. 1972.
The MAC has had only three teams consistently win titles. Miami, BGSU, and Toledo.
Most titles by decade
1940's Cincinnati 2
1950's Miami 5
1960's Ohio and BGSU 4
1970's Miami 4
1980's Toledo and BGSU 2
1990's Marshall 3
2000's Toledo and Marshall 2
Some dominate programs in the history of the MAC. Will this be the decade of the Rockets? or will a new power emerge. Looks like Miami, BGSU, Toledo stack up very well by decade too. Ohio and BGSU must have been quite a rivary in the 60's 8 in ten years between them. Before 1969 Miami 8 BGSU 6 Ohio 5 Toledo 1. Since 1969 Toledo 9,Miami 6 Ball State 5, Marshall 5, BGSU 4, CMU 4.
16 times champion has repeated ..........28% of time.
Toledo has won 25% of MAC tiltles during the last 35 years.
I guess these numbers mean that Toledo has between a 25%-28% chance of playing in the Motor City Bowl this year.
BSU had two conference titles in the 1990's, while also placing 2nd in '88 and winning the title in '89. We celebrated the '89 championship at Peden Stadium.
I think this qualifies for "consistency".
We won MAC titles in '93 and then again in '96. If it were not for a stifling administration, BSU would have upgraded football facilities in the late 80s / early 90s and retained an outstanding football coach (Paul Schudel); this would have continued to propel the program. Although we have a new, athletically-focused administration, we're now behind - however, we're moving in the right direction again.
A quick plug for BSU since they have disparaged quite a bit around here, especially by UCF and Herd fans (who briefly joined after BSU's decline in football). Although BSU football has kind of fallen on hard times, you've got to admire all the facilities improvements BSU has made....they already arguably have the best hoops arena (although OU fans may disagree), and recently have made a number of nice renovations to the football stadium, and have something like $8 mil pledged for more renovations, including luxury suites.
Fifteen years ago, BSU stadium was little more than one side of stands with 15 rows of bleachers on the away side, and now they have the strength and conditioning building built into one endzone, a new away side, and plans for horseshoeing the entire stadum with brick facades and luxury boxes.....pretty impressive for a program that's been down on its luck the last 6-7 years.
OUBOBCATJOHN Wrote:The MAC has had only three teams consistently win titles. Miami, BGSU, and Toledo.
Most titles by decade
1940's Cincinnati 2
1950's Miami 5
1960's Ohio and BGSU 4
1970's Miami 4
1980's Toledo and BGSU 2
1990's Marshall 3
2000's Toledo and Marshall 2
Some dominate programs in the history of the MAC. Will this be the decade of the Rockets? or will a new power emerge. Looks like Miami, BGSU, Toledo stack up very well by decade too. Ohio and BGSU must have been quite a rivary in the 60's 8 in ten years between them. Before 1969 Miami 8 BGSU 6 Ohio 5 Toledo 1. Since 1969 Toledo 9,Miami 6 Ball State 5, Marshall 5, BGSU 4, CMU 4.
16 times champion has repeated ..........28% of time.
Toledo has won 25% of MAC tiltles during the last 35 years.
I guess these numbers mean that Toledo has between a 25%-28% chance of playing in the Motor City Bowl this year.
That perspective is alittle misleading.The Rockets won 4 titles between '67 and '71.The 35-0 streak was '68-'71.
In 1970, the Rockets finished#12 in the AP Poll and in 1971 #14.
Small correction...
The 35-0 streak was 69-71. UT won its first MAC title in 67, going 9-1. Rockets fell off *a bit* in 68, finishing 5-4-1 overall, 3-2-1 MAC, before ripping off 3 undefeated seasons.
Don't mean to be nitpicky about it
msopher Wrote:Kent St actually won a MAC title in football?
Yes 1972 was a great year! For those of you that don't believe football can flourish at Kent State take a look at this post put together by Nashvillegoldenflash over on the KSU board. It happened once and it is about to happen again under Coach Martin!
<a href='http://speccoll.library.kent.edu/uarchives/buildings/stadium.html' target='_blank'>KSU Stadium Photo 1972</a>
Quote:Those who were at Kent during the 70s may remember Dix Stadium looking like it did in this photo, <a href='http://speccoll.library.kent.edu/uarchives...gs/stadium.html' target='_blank'>http://speccoll.library.kent.edu/uarchives...gs/stadium.html</a>
And some of you may have been at Dix when the Flashes won the MAC Championship in 1972.
But most of us who were not at Kent in 1972 can only imagine being there by reading articles about the championship season such as the one written by Brian Windhorst, a Beacon Journal staff writer.
Below is Windhorst's article he wrote on November 7, 2002 that describes Kent's championship year. Please read and enjoy.
KSU captured its only MAC title 30 years ago
By Brian Windhorst
Beacon Journal staff writer
On Nov. 19, 1972, a large photo of Jack Lambert chugging champagne and smoking a cigar while wearing a floppy hat, shoulder pads and his No. 99 Kent State uniform appeared on the front page of the Beacon Journal sports section.
Like the burly linebacker's play on the field, Kent State hasn't seen anything like it since.
This month marks the 30th anniversary of Kent State's first and last Mid-American Conference football championship. That was a storybook season, but since then, the Golden Flashes have finished sixth or worse in the MAC 22 times in 30 years and have seriously competed for a second MAC title in just a handful of seasons, finishing second four times.
All that misery makes what happened three decades ago special, with the help of some perspective. The group of players and coaches that came together in 1972 to lift a black cloud off a university still emotionally reeling from the events of May 4, 1970, turned out to be some of the greatest athletes and football minds ever to step foot on a college campus.
Going bowling
Truth be told, most of those associated with the '72 Flashes will tell you that the best team in school history actually came in 1973, when Kent State went 9-2. But that team finished second to Miami in the MAC. In '72, the Flashes finished 6-5-1 overall, but that was good enough to leave a mark on school history.
After a 1-3-1 start, the Flashes closed the regular season 5-1, 4-1 in the MAC, to take the conference title. Kent State finished the year with three improbable wins:
• It defeated Marshall 16-14 on the the road.
• It beat a dominant Miami team 21-10 in Oxford.
• And it won the season finale against defending MAC champion Toledo 27-9 in front of more than 20,000 fans at Dix Stadium.
``I remember we got a tape of some radio show that said Kent State would fold and lose those last three games,'' said Don James, the coach of the Flashes from 1971-75, who would go on to win a national championship at the University of Washington in 1991.
``I played that thing over and over to the team in that stretch.''
Lambert, who was named the MAC's Most Valuable Player and chosen an All-American, was credited with 29 tackles in the victory over Toledo. He finished the season with an unbelievable 233 stops, 117 solo, 116 assists. It remains a team record.
That was after James moved him from defensive end to middle linebacker, when the starter there quit in preseason practice. That turned out to be one of the wiser moves in James' coaching life.
``I still remember the party the night we clinched the title,'' said Greg Kokal, who was the freshman quarterback that led the Flashes to their strong finish.
``To make a long story short, it was something right out of Animal House,'' Kokal said.
Kokal had started the season fourth on the depth chart and turned out to be a four-year starter.
The season-ending victory landed the Flashes a berth in the Tangerine Bowl, which later became the Citrus Bowl, in Orlando in late December. Other than a berth in something called the Refrigerator Bowl in Evansville, Ind., in 1954, it was the only postseason trip in school history.
``At that moment, it was so important for the university post-May 4,'' said current Missouri coach and Akron native Gary Pinkel, who led the team in receiving in '72 and '73 from his tight end position. ``It shined a positive light on Kent State at a most difficult time.''
Kent State ending up losing in the Tangerine Bowl to the University of Tampa, which dropped its football program less than 10 years later. At the time, Tampa was coached by Earle Bruce, who went on to replace Woody Hayes at Ohio State, and was led by future NFL standouts John Matuszak and Freddie Solomon.
Kent State fell behind 21-0 early and a late rally came up short, as the game ended 21-18. But it didn't ruin the taste in anyone's mouth.
``Even though we lost, I don't think I ever had a more fun and gratifying experience in my career,'' James said from his home in Seattle. ``I was a young head coach and I was taking a group of kids to a bowl game in Florida. It was like a father taking his kids to Disneyland and sitting back and watching them enjoy themselves. As a coach, you wanted your players to have fun and experience the things you'd experienced.''
Hall of Fame roster
One legacy of that team 30 years ago is what the players and coaching staff moved on to in the years to come.
Of course, there was Lambert, who was drafted in the second round by the Steelers in 1974. As a part of the Steel Curtain defense, he won four Super Bowl rings in Pittsburgh and was later inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton.
But there were a dozen other future professionals on the roster as well and four other All-Americans. Running back Larry Poole of Garfield High, who led the team with 588 yards rushing in '72 and rushed for 1,000 yards in '73 and '74, played with the Browns and Oilers.
Wide receiver Gerald Tinker, who won a gold medal for the United States on the 4x100 relay track team in the summer of '72 at the Olympics in Munich, played for the Falcons and Packers. Defensive tackle Larry Faulk, who later changed his name to Abdul Salaam, played with Jets. Defensive back Cedric Brown played for the Bucs and Raiders.
Defensive end Chuck Celek was also taken in the NFL Draft and a number of players, including center Henry Waszczuk and kicker Herb Page got chances with Canadian Football League teams.
``I had been at Florida State, Colorado and Michigan State before coming to Kent and I tried to recruit the same sort of athletes we had at that those schools,'' James said. ``And that wasn't easy. Not only did the school not have a history of winning, but we were also dealing with what happened in 1970. It was hard to ask parents to send their sons to a school where students had been shot.''
Also on the team was Kenmore High graduate Pinkel, now in his second season at Missouri after a 10-year stint at Toledo.
``Coach James was such a remarkable influence, he was the man who made me want to become a coach,'' said Pinkel, who also worked for James at Washington. ``He gathered quite a group of successful people and taught us a lot.''
Another player who went on to become a national coaching success was current LSU coach Nick Saban. He was a defensive end on the team but missed the championship run with a broken leg suffered in the eighth game.
Standing on the sidelines and watching James coach turned out to be more important to his future.
``I don't think I'd be in coaching if not for Don James,'' said Saban, who has also been head coach at Toledo and Michigan State.
``I had no aspirations and never saw myself doing that until he convinced me to become a student assistant. I think it's worked out pretty well for me.''
At Kent State, James showed the recruiting and coaching skills that enabled him to become such a success at Washington. He went 151-59-2 from 1975-93 and took the Huskies to six Rose Bowls.
``He used to say that he didn't want any `Wednesday' players, he wanted `Saturday-at-1-o'clock' players,'' said Page, who is now Kent State's golf coach. ``From the start, everybody had a great deal of respect for him.''
There was still more coaching talent on the roster. One of James' graduate assistants that year was Dom Capers, who later became an NFL head coach with the Carolina Panthers and now the Houston Texans. Also on the staff was assistant coach Bob Stull, who went on to be the head coach at UTEP and Missouri and is currently the athletics director at UTEP.
Also working for James were assistants Dennis Fitzgerald and Dick Scesniak, both of whom later became head coaches at Kent State.
``I knew that we could do something special at Kent because we were surrounded by millions of people and thousands of football players,'' James said. ``I just tried to find players and coaches who had their sights set very high.''
Still leaving a mark
Five years ago, on the 25th anniversary of the '72 season, the university invited all the players and coaches back to campus. More than 50 returned, some wearing the old MAC title rings they'd earned in 1972. There was a golf outing, a banquet with speeches from all the players who returned, a parade and a ceremony at the football game.
That day, the modern Flashes tore up the record books in scoring 43 points against the University of Central Florida... and lost the game 59-43.
It might have been appropriate, though. Because no group of young men and coaches at Kent State has ever been able to upstage the special run of 1972.
``Those were the days; we were young, stupid and just having fun,'' said Kokal, who still holds some school records and nows lives his thrills through his son, Mike, who plays quarterback for Warren Harding.
``Now we're old and it makes us proud. To be honest, I'm just glad anyone remembers.''
As Miamians here know, the final 74 regular season game between Miami and Kent was a classic, and perhaps the most exciting game I've ever attended in person.
Miami and Kent were playing on the last weekend of the season, with Miami undefeated (having already beaten So. Carolina and Purdue) and Kent coming in 7-3......Miami had clinched the regular season title but was nationally ranked and had a 21 unbeaten streak going. Kent drove the field in the last couple minutes of the game with Larry Poole going in for the go ahead touchdown.
Miami had 58 seconds, and used a flea flicker to Randy Walker (now Head Coach at NW) to get the ball into FG position, and we kicked a 39 FG as time expired to win 19-17.
Miami went on to defeat Georgia 21-10 in the Tangerine Bowl and finished #10 in the final rankings.
That article on the KSU team of '72 makes it look like they could almost challenge for the Cradle of Coaches title
Reno79,Jun 1 2005, 04:12 PM Wrote:[QUOTE=msopher,May 29 2005, 08:36 PM]Kent St actually won a MAC title in football?
It happened once and it is about to happen again under Coach Martin!
Not with BGSU moving back to the East.
GREAT pic of Dix Stadium, though.
ECK,
Wasn't that 1974 Kent/Miami game when both teams were ranked?
When BG hosted NIU in 2003, it was only the 2nd time in MAC history both teams were ranked.
I'm not positive, Falcon Freak, but I think the game in which both teams were rated (the first ever such time for the MAC in a conference game) was actually in 1973. You'll note the reference in the KSU article to the '73 team being better.......Kent finished with only 2 losses while Miami went undefeated while beating Florida in the Tangerine Bowl....final rank was #15.
exCincy Kid1 Wrote:I'm not positive, Falcon Freak, but I think the game in which both teams were rated (the first ever such time for the MAC in a conference game) was actually in 1973. You'll note the reference in the KSU article to the '73 team being better.......Kent finished with only 2 losses while Miami went undefeated while beating Florida in the Tangerine Bowl....final rank was #15.
Thanks for the clarification. That '74 game sounded like a classic. I was only 6 years old so....
Falconfreak90,Jun 1 2005, 02:47 PM Wrote:Reno79,Jun 1 2005, 04:12 PM Wrote:[QUOTE=msopher,May 29 2005, 08:36 PM]Kent St actually won a MAC title in football?
It happened once and it is about to happen again under Coach Martin!
Not with BGSU moving back to the East.
GREAT pic of Dix Stadium, though.
ECK,
Wasn't that 1974 Kent/Miami game when both teams were ranked?
When BG hosted NIU in 2003, it was only the 2nd time in MAC history both teams were ranked.
Actually I was refering to the flourishing thing, but a title sure would be nice. I am really looking forward to playing BG every year again. My Dad and brothers are BG alums so bragging rights to the game will have special meaning. Also while I know that Toledo/BG is a big rivalry, KSU and BGSU have a lot in common as well. I believe both were established as Unversities by the same act of the Ohio legislature in the early 1900s. So I suppose you could say we are siblings and should logically be rivals as well.
But probably the biggest reason I want to play the Falcons more often is that there are a lot of BG alums in NE Ohio that would come to the game. More than anything we need fans to show up at Dix and create a gameday atmosphere. We will be playing you guys on 11-05 this year. November is historically a horrible month for home attendance for us. The Flashes are usually out of it by then and the weather is starting to suck. From the sounds of things your fans are expecting that your guys should be hunting for a bowl slot. Let s see how well you travel. You guys are always looking for respect for your fan base, A big gate would demonstrate to a bowl (and this board) that you can turn them out. Tickets shouldn't be a problem and Omar should be a draw. Maybe, just maybe, this game will decide something in the East.
Contrary to what some believe football is not dead at Kent State and if we would just have a little encouragement, like maybe a 7-4 season with some early wins, we could begin to rebuild the fan base.
BG/Kent is a trophy game, and I'd say BG-Kent is the second biggest hoops rivalry for both schools. Both attract simular students, both with a lot from the Cleveland metro area. It could turn into a real braging rights kind of game if it wasn't so one sided. :(