EKU would be a great fit

Part two next week:

🚨 NEW SHOW 🚨

Alex is taking on the titanic task of seeing which teams are the greatest single season teams at each #MACtion school!

Part one of two is live, as is this weeks MAC Baseball Rundown!

Check it out!

Apple: ow.ly/eQ0N50HMeHl Spotify: ow.ly/Zgy550HMeIi

Ngl… the UMass news last week prompted this post. The move still has me shaking my head… one of the most historic mid-major programs downgrading to a conference not much better than the MEAC, NEC, Summit League and SWAC all for the sake of their football team getting to play some Tuesday night games on ESPN and having the possibility to someday go 6 and 6 and play a bowl game in some high school stadium in Mobile, Alabama is perhaps one of the worst realignment decisions of recent memory. It got me thinking… I’ve been following college hoops for 15 years, and can’t remember a time any MAC team has…

1.) Advanced past the first round of the tournament

2.) Gotten a seed higher than a 13 or 14

3.) Been at least somewhat relevant in the national conversation

4.) Been ranked, let alone gotten any votes in the AP poll

Most other low-major conferences have their moment in the spotlight once every few years. The C-USA was once one of the better mid-major conferences with Louisville, Memphis, etc., but even in the past 10 years they’ve been able to remain relevant with the tournament runs of Middle Tennessee in 2016-17 and Florida Atlantic last year. The Missouri Valley always finds a way to stay in the conversation, the Sun Belt is having a bit of a resurgence… even leagues like the SoCon and the MAAC have their moments in the spotlight via first and second round upsets. When was the last time the MAC could say that? I remember Buffalo being pretty good for a few years, but they didn’t do much of anything come tournament time. There’s a reason Keith Dambrot left Akron, a decent team by MAC standards, to go to Duquesne, an A-10 program consistently in the bottom half of the league…

If anyone is bored, might be worth a tune in. Lot of shit talking in the first 5 minutes. Miami just got a T after a player popped a 3 and said something to the BG bench. BG players are flexing. Classic MACtion

Now that UMASS is back. (Which is awesome!) It gives our football teams an easy win and makes the league a little better at basketball. There is a lot of talk about adding WKU. I am not against it, but I think we could be more strategic. What schools do you envision joining and why? I think we should go for Temple to enter the Philly market and Memphis because they have decent programs and would get some TN southern market share. What schools do you think would add value to the MAC?

And where did it lead them? Back to the MAC!!!!

https://twitter.com/PeteThamel/status/1762198328673006013?t=21TX2LnGbm0kgASys_gVWA&s=19

So I went to Ball State in the 90’s and love to catch a game when I get a chance. Since the MAC has the deal with ESPN+ we have a lot of games available to watch. Last night I watched them come back and beat Northern Illinois but that’s not the issue. The issue is how bad it looked as a fan to watch a mostly empty NI arena. Seeing a full and energetic arena makes basketball more exciting to watch and this was not good TV, basketball itself was fine.

Being a huge IU fan even on a bad year when you watch a game on TV they pack the arenas at home and on the road in all big ten action. I now live in Wilmington NC and go to UNCW games and they pack the arena even on week nights and they are in the CAA that is a comparable conference size to the MAC. I remember going to BSU games in the 90’s and we would pack the arena.

Any thoughts on why it was so empty?

https://twitter.com/FFLeagueWinners/status/1758884985681928455?t=jopUvOXNeVQJz0-fQr_QJg&s=19

Seeing as we know the pods for the coming season the next question is who will play who (and also what these pods will be called). My prediction is that the Easternmost pod and the Michigan pod won't play each other won't play each other and the Southernmost pod and the NW Ohio / Illinois pod won't either. The reasons I see is that it would allow for another round of matchups amongst old divisional foes and that that first pair comprised most of the bottom teams in the conference. We'll see what the MAC announces, but what do y'all think? Who's playing who next year?

Maction versus

Western Michigan vs Toledo

Never been to either one. Only drove through Kalamazoo one time in like 2013 and i remembered it being a pretty nice city. I have seen pictures and both stadiums and campuses look nice.

Settle this. Who has it better

Better Stadium

Better tailgate

Better game day atmosphere

Better campus

Better downtown

Better party scene

And go!

If this isn’t allowed please let me know. I am trying to grow the brand of #MACtion with a retool of my podcast/blog etc. Formerly known as the College Sports Connection Podcast, I have swapped it to focus in more on the league we all know and love and named it The MAC Sports Connection Podcast. If you are interested in following along, you can find it at the above outlets. Trying to help spread the word of this league beyond just football and basketball but ALL MAC SPORTS!

https://youtu.be/xl9nD_f-2KE

Go rockets. This is the worst announcer crew I have ever heard. These people are making this game nearly impossible to enjoy. I don’t know if this is supposed to be this way or not?

With Emoni Bates now turned pro, are there any current MAC players who might have NBA careers in their futures?

So, I run a MAC based podcast, (theCSCpodcast) and my co-host and I decided to go separate ways after some creative differences.

That being said, I can now fully tailor the coverage experience to you, the fans.

This week, I am bringing on a guest co-host, a super fan from one of the schools and will be rotating folks out while I find a new partner, but

WHAT do you want? What content would you like? Hustle Belt does a great job with articles and such, and I think there can be more that I can do/give the fans.

What do you feel is lacking?

Open discussion, so please feel free to drop ideas here! I’m open to anything and everything.

I am collecting responses on the sentiments of each team's fanbase. Link is in the comments. It should take approximately 5 minutes, and it's all multiple choice/number.

The more number and diversity of responses I receive, the more interesting the data will be. Feel free to send this around, and if you have any feedback, I'm happy to hear it! When I get sufficient responses, I will share the data here on reddit with a summary post and a spreadsheet so everyone can see their teams' specific responses. Thank you!