Some questions to ponder before we dole out bowl projections for the Mid American Conference
IS TEMPLE THE REAL DEAL?
Yes, they are. Did you know that since joining the league, the Owls have the fourth best conference record. They’ve 
never had a losing season in MAC play. After a 7-1 mark a year ago, they welcome 16 starters back including nine from an offense that scored 29.2 points per game, improving by almost a touchdown per game each year since the start of the Al Golden era in 2006. Get Bernard Pierce on your college football fantasy team now. He’s going to score at least 20 touchdowns and flirt with 2,000 total yards. All five starters return on the offensive line, including the league’s most dominant rught side with RT Darious Morris and RG John Palumbo, both of whom earned first team all-league honors a year ago. On defense, nobody else in the league can match the front seven havoc the Owls can bring with Tackle Muhamed Wilkerson, End Adrian Robinson and MLB Elijiah Joseph. Those three, combined with Jacquawn Jarrett at safety give the Owls four returning first team all-MAC defenders sprinkled through their lineup. They also have the league’s best return game. The league is chalk full of teams who have the potential to be good and sound. But Temple has the potential to be great. They’re the only team in the league that we can book as no worse than 6-2. Folks, meet your MAC favorites. About their only weakness is their inability to kick a field goal from beyond 40 yards. Otherwise, they have it all.
WILL THE END OF AN ERA JINX STRIKE MOUNT PLEASANT?
I just dont know how often the Chips will be loose this fall at Central Michigan. Year One without Dan LeFeveour should be one with zero expectations, frankly. Recent history in the MAC portends to bad things when replacing a longtime, franchise quarterback. The End of an Era jinx. Miami and Toledo have barely been competitive in league play since the departures of Roethlisberger and Gradkowski. Bowling Green suffered a fall in the immediate two years after Josh Harris’s tenure despite having a seemingly capable replacement ready to go. Akron became a good MAC team during Charlie Frye’s upperclassmen years, including a MAC title in 2005 during his final season. They havent won more than three leagues games in a season since. We saw Buffalo and Ball State crater to losing records a year ago during their first campaign in years without Drew Wiley and Nate Davis. Here’s the deal with the MAC. It has a large, balanced middle class. All the teams are about the same. Week in, week out you’re playing basically even teams. Having a guy like LeFevour, the Tim Tebow of the MAC since 2006, gives you a chip no other team can think of matching. It separates you in this field more so than it would it just about every other conference in the land. CMU will return to that middle ground this year and its hard not seeing several losses as teams finally get their licks into them. For that matter, it’s hard to project WMU and BGSU into great things either with the Broncos needing to replace Tim Hiller and the Falcons holding audtions for Tyler Sheehan, the schools #2 career passer, replacement. These teams are hardly left in shambles, but it’s going to be tough for them to muster the winning consistency needed to put up enough league wins to guarantee a bowl spot.
WHO WILL BREAK A BOWL DROUGHT?
Every year it seems the MAC delivers a formerly woebegone program into the postseason. In 2004, Northern Illinois qualified for their first bowl in 21 years. In 2005, it was Akron, making its first ever postseason appearance. 
Western Michigan broke a 20-year bowl draught in 2006. Ball State did the same in 2007. The last two seasons have seen Buffalo and then Temple, longtime college football laughingstocks, play into a 13th game. Who will that be this year? I say Kent State. The Flashes havent had a winning season since logging a 6-5 mark in 2001. They havent gone bowling since a 1972 date in the Tangerine Bowl. They went a non-descript 5-7 a year ago. But, a few things emerged in their favor during the season that might set them up for a postseason berth this year. On offense, the discovered their QB of the future in Sophomore Spencer Keith. He threw 14 TD passes as a true freshmen. Most important, the Flashes were 5-2 in his starts, 0-5 when somebody else started. They were a pretty good MAC team with Keith at the helm. You could probably say the Flashes would have done no worse than reach bowl eligibility last year had he started every game. They liekly would have finished 6-6, except Keith missed the finale, a dismal 9-6 loss to Buffalo. With their top rushers, pass catchers and four starters back on the OL, this offense could take a leap in Keith’s second year on campus. Defensively, there’s a lot to be excited about. They have 7 starters and their top six tacklers back from a year ago, including three starters in the secondary, their top sack artist from a year ago and, perhaps, the biggest individual force on defense in the league in LB Cobrani Mixon, who racked up 108 tackles, 3 sacks, 7.5 TFLs and 7 PBUs a year ago. He is the leading candidate for Defensive POY in the conference. This D made major improvements a year ago, decreasing their points allowed by nine points and cashing in 15 more sacks than the previous year. Another round of improvement and this could become a dominant unit in the league. The Flashes also have the best punter in the league. With winnable home games out of conference against Murray State and Army, the flashes just need to squeak out a 5-3 MAC record (they went 4-4 a year ago) and they’ll have seven wins and probably a bowl bid by the time November ends.
WHO WILL WIN THE WEST?
Temple is the clear cut to take the East Division and the entire conference as a whole, IMHE. But what about the west? It’s been the dominion of Central Michigan the last four years, save for one season from Ball State and the great Nate Davis. Now that LeFevour has departed from CMU, expect a free-for-all in the chase for the West crown. You could probably make a decent case for five of the six teams: sorry EMU, we still think you and Ronald Jonathon English are CAWsome, however. The inimitable Phil Steele has managed to tag Western Michigan as the favorites here. I cant do that, however. They werent that great a year ago, but now they’re replacing a multi-year starter at QB. Sounds like more inconsistency to me. Nobody screams out as the obvious choice, so I am going with the most reliable team in this bunch, one that’s had a winning leeague mark in 9 of the last 10 years: the Northern Illinois Huskies. The only time NIU had a losing season in league play was the disastrous 2007 campaign. They were -17 in TO margin that year, but in the four years prior and two years since, the program is +32. Can you say outlier? The bottomline is this team has been 5-3 or better in MAC play every year, but for that one, since 2000. And, 5-3 might be more than enough to pull this division out. This isnt just a default pick, however. In each of coach Jerry Kill’s first two years, the Huskies have improved their points scored by more than 4 points a game. With seven starters back including a QB with 18 career starts in Chandler Harnish, tailback Chad Spann, who scored 20 touchdowns en route to first-team, all-league honors and a pair of solid MAC tackles up fromt, no reason to think the offense wont be even more effective in Year 3. On defense, a year ago they had just 3 starters returning, but still allowed a respectable 21.6 points per game. They’ll have eight starters back this go around and should come closer to the stingier outfit in Kill’s first season that allowed just 18 per game. They’ll need a win in the finale at Eastern Michigan to clinch the division. Not a bad final hurdle to clear.
ALRIGHT, WHAT ARE THE JCB OFFICIAL BOWL PROJECTIONS?
Temple. Book it. That’s a lock. They will be in a bowl game. Seriously, everything else is up for grabs as far os the other two guaranteed bowl spots for the league goes. Even the pick of NIU to play in the MAC Title Game doesnt necessarily mean they are a pick for a bowl. They play road games at Iowa State, Minnesota and Illinois in September. Surely the Huskies are capable of winning a game in that stretch, but they’re more likely to loss all three. If they go 5-3, win the division, but lose to Temple–or anybody in the MAC finals–that nets them a 6-7 record. They wont go bowling if that happens. Make no mistake, this is a legit possibility.
But we’re going to stick with them. They might do better than 5-3 and assure a bowl bid. Or beat one of those less than stellar BCS teams on their slate. So, we’re going with Temple, Northern Illinois and Kent State to secure the three guaranteed spots. If more bowl spots free up as other leagues dont qualify enough, then the MAC will get a couple more teams into the postseason. This has happened several years running, so there’s no reason to not expect it this year. The pecking order after the above three will be, Ohio U, Toledo and Bowling Green.
