Hello all of you Tuesday blog readers. Tonight I have two topics: the second title and a salute to MACNation. First, the salute. Being November the MAC is playing games on Tuesday and Wednesday nights. This is one of the best traditions in college football and, in my humble opinion, the best for the mid-majors (to steal a basketball term). There are no Big 10 games or SEC games today and tomorrow. There are no Pro games. If you love football, and I know you do, November MACNAtion games give you a chance to watch every day of the week. Sunday and Monday are for the pros. Tuesday and Wednesday for select MAC teams. Thursday and Friday for a handful of teams, but not limited to a given conference (and a pro game or maybe two). And then the main course on Saturday. No wonder Thanksgiving is this month – we have tons of football to be thankful for and it all starts with the much maligned MAC. While top to bottom they are not the strongest conference even among the Group of 5 – they often are fighting Conference USA for weakest – they are proud and want their teams to be seen. They’ve also given us the likes of Northern Illinois and their runs to challenge the big boys a few years ago. Western Michigan had that great year a couple of years ago. Miami of Ohio did something no other team has ever done in 2016. They started the season 0-6 with losses to Iowa, Eastern Illinois (FCS), Western Kentucky, Cincinnati, Ohio, and Akron before turning on the burners with wins over Kent State, Bowling Green, Eastern Michigan, Central Michigan, Buffalo, and Ball state to end 6-6 and earn a St Petersburg Bowl berth against SEC foe Mississippi State. The Bulldogs won 17-16 to end a late Cinderella run and put the Red Hawks at 6-7, but it was fantastic to watch. I repeat – they are the only team in history to win 6 straight bowl-elimination games to go bowling. By the way, in the same season, Baylor started 6-0 against Northwestern State (FCS), SMU, Rice, Oklahoma State, Iowa State, and Kansas reaching #8 in the AP poll before losing to Texas, TCU, Oklahoma, Kansas State, Texas Tech, and West Virginia to creep into the Cactus Bowl against Boise State winning 31-12 to completely mirror Miami of Ohio. By the way, no other team has ever started 6-0 to end 6-6 (7-6 counting the bowl win). So, I wanted to call out the MAC and state you should be watching the games tonight. For the record, Toledo (86) will be Kent State (105) 69.4% of the time. Both teams are in 4th in their respective divisions, but Toledo becomes bowl eligible with the win and the Golden Flashes will fall to 3-6. Vegas had Toledo -4. As of right now, Toledo is winning 28-17 with 3:36 to go in the half. In the second game tonight, Ball State (77) will squeak by Western Michigan (127) 50.5% of the time. Ball State leads the West Division at 4-4 and the Broncos are looking for bowl greatness at 5-4. This one is a toss up. Vegas has W Michigan -6.5. As of right now, W Michigan is up 7-0 10:06 in the first. Tomorrow night is a big one and a G’s Expectation game to watch. Both teams are 4-4, 3-1 in the division, and tied for first in the East. Ohio (68) will beat Miami of Ohio (53) 59.5% of the time. Vegas has Ohio winning at home -7.

Working on this got me thinking about different ways to show conferences relative strength. Let’s look at the table below:

This is just the FBS schools which before this year is all the GCR calculated before this year. The last column shows the average ranking for all teams in the conference. When the MAC has Akron at 255 and the SEC has the worst Power 5 team, Arkansas, at 140, the averages do get skewed. But they are interesting. For comparison to the FCS conferences, the Ivy League at 162 and the Missouri Valley Conference at 164 as averages lead the way. The Patriot League is the worst in Division I with an average ranking of a gaudy 217. Holy Cross is the best in that conference at a lofty 159. So there is a clear hierarchy FCS is worse than FBS. But let’s look closer at the table. The Group of 5 schools are worse than the Power 5 schools on average (note: Notre Dame (17) is mixed in the Independents with BYU being second best at #62). But let’s look a little deeper. From a number of teams in the top 10, it goes 4-3-2-1-0 in the Power 5. 7 of the top 10 are SEC or Big 10. That very well may change this weekend with Penn State (3)/Minnesota (8) and LSU (4)/Alabama (2). When we expand to the top 25 we see a little more diversity adding Cincinnati (13) from the American as our best Group of 5. They are 7-1 with their only loss being a 42-0 drubbing at Ohio State (1). Even when we move out to the top 50 we see all of them are in the FBS. (Dartmouth leads the FCS at 61). Every FBS conference has at least one team in the top 50 except the MAC (Miami of Ohio is at 53). I call these teams the HAVES. Where the SEC led the top 10 count, they only added Georgia (11) and Texas A&M (32) for the top 50. The next best team is Kentucky (60). There are 65 Power 5 teams and 7 SEC teams are not in the top 65. They are Missouri (67), South Carolina (69), Mississippi State (70), Ole Miss (72), Tennessee (88), Vanderbilt (107), and Arkansas (140). By comparison, the other 4 Power 5 conferences have a combined 10. There are really good SEC teams, no doubt, but the HAVE NOTS are plentiful. But that extra bit of analysis wasn’t in the table, just an observation. The 131+ column denotes those that are the even worse HAVE NOTS: FBS schools (there are 130 of them) that are on the outside of that line looking in. 20 FBS schools fit that category with Arkansas being the only Power 5 school included. Note: this may be the only time “Arkansas” and “Power” are in the same sentence – ever. Now for the most poverty-stricken heart-breaking tear-inducing teams are in the next column. FBS schools that are ranked in the bottom 56 (200-256). These teams wish they could be even worse HAVE NOTS. These are the SUPER HAVE NOTS. Leading the pack is Akron (255). They are ranked lower than all but one FCS school (thank heavens for Texas Southern, am I right?). They have the worst performance score in Division I. At 0-9 on the season they have been outscored 321-92. That’s an average of 36-10. The last 4 games they’ve been outscored 131-9. Yes, 9. 2.25 points per game. The lost to Massachusetts (212) by 8. But there is another. UTEP (215) of Conference USA is 1-7 with the lone win a 36-34 win over FCS Houston Baptist (228) and yes they were trailing in the 4th until a FG with 8:15 to go put them ahead. The Huskies of Houston failed on a 2-pt conversion earlier in the quarter that would have made it a 3-pt game. The Miners have a decent offense at over 19 points per game but they struggle stopping the other team to a tune of 36.5 ppg. Now back to Massachusetts (215) who did manage to beat Akron, but otherwise…no go. At 1-8 they score a reasonably decent 22.2 ppg, but their defense is…maybe they play with 10 guys or something – they give up 52, yes 52, points per contest. They gave up 48 to 2-7 Rutgers (76) who only average 10.5 the rest of the time. Their last 3 games have been 69-21 vs La Tech (46), 56-35 vs Connecticut (183), and 63-21 vs Liberty (109). Let’s hear it for the SUPER HAVE NOTS. Without you, we wouldn’t be happy for the good teams.

That’s it for tonight. Kent State has closed the gap to 28-20 vs Toledo with 7:00 to go in the 3rd. W Michigan is up on Ball State 21-10 6:54 in the first half. I sincerely hope you are watching at least one of them. Go MACNation!!! Later and thanks, G