Make the Big Time choice.

In basketball, the possibility for Cinderella always exists. Football will eventually max out. Hopefully not but maybe it already did. In basketball, even if the selection committee doesn't give the bids, the MAC schools are known and it has been that way for a few decades. Just within the last few did anybody other than Marshall's brief stint get football attention on the national scale.

I chose football, Capt. Massengil in spite of your flagship not being a high profile program like in your dreams!

The best way to position this question is to ask this: when people outside of the MAC think of the MAC, which sport comes to their mind?

Perception is reality. Obviously, football.

I voted football, because that seems to be the biggest possible drawing sport. I think that basketball is catching up. I like that with the recent successes in the tournament, and a playoff system, more schools can get excited longer for basketball.

Both MAC BB & Football suffer from a lack of national recognition, but BB lack of respect can be more easily repaired by building BB attendance via better scheduling before the BB attendance slides to the low level that MAC football is at.

Roudebush Rocket Wrote:Perception is reality. Obviously, football.

I don't always agree with this cat, but he nails it here.

Or put another way...

Reality is perception. Football, obviously :rolleyes:

Or we could just ask a bunch of diehard football fans what their favorite sport is!

axeme Wrote:Or we could just ask a bunch of diehard football fans what their favorite sport is!

Who you talkin' to, Willis?

Oddball Wrote:

axeme Wrote:Or we could just ask a bunch of diehard football fans what their favorite sport is!

Who you talkin' to, Willis?

No, no, no...My last name is Willis.

Anyhow - MAC football is bigger than basketball because of the number of I-A teams compared to the gazillion Division I basketball schools. When one compares the best finishes of the conference teams (i.e. Kent State making the elite 8 and Miami U. finishing top 10) the differences in achievement aren't that great, but the sheer competition for coverage and exposure makes basketball a lower profile sport than football. (Hell, ask Miami about competing with Cincinnati for football coverage as opposed to competing with Dayton, Wright State, Xavier, and UC for basketball coverage)

The MAC has basketball? Not in DeKalb.

The sucess of the MAC QB has put football on the map. On NFL draft day the question is now who gets the MAC QB's. If you want a starting NFL QB you don't scout the SEC or Big 12 you call the MAC. Every fantasy owner knows the former MAC QB's. By the way my Yahoo draft is this Thursday nite. Antonio Gates is now the biggest name TE in the game for fantasy players. Big Ben will go high this year. I love basketball, but the NFL sucess has proven that MAC football has big time players every year.

In basketball, the Mac has better chances at scoring huge upsets. Bobcats are 1-0 under O'Shea vs some school from Chapel Hill North Carolina. Ball State is 1-0 vs both Kansas and UCLA in the Buckley era. Ohio also beat #14 UConn in 1993, #11 Syracuse in 1998, #14 Virginia in 1994 & 2003 and Ohio State in 1994. In the early 70's Ohio beat two ranked big ten teams in the same week at the Convo. Ohio once play teams ranked #1, #2, #3, #4 and #9 in one season OOC. How's that for rpi. Those teams were Ohio State, Cincinnati, Loyola-Chicago(twice), and Louisville. Loyola was a basketball power in the early 60's. Ohio played home and home's with the Ramblers almost every year. Now they are a Horizon bottom feeder, but they were basketball royalty back then.

The players are remembered in football and the upsets are remembered in basketball.