The Bobcats won 35 of their first 37 games in the Convo.  

Will this be the worse three year home lose record since Billy Hahn?  

Two straight home loses to the powerful SUMMIT Conference.

Its been over a decade since the Convo has seen a crowd of 12K or more and longer since the team has come close to winning a regular season divisional title.  

Maybe we should drop down a division in basketball?  Put all the money and focus on football where the Cat's often play on National Television.  

Shut up

Obviously I was being sarcastic.  It just gets tiresome seeing the drop division talk continually pop up on the football board.  Especially when it’s the only sport that regularly plays on a national stage.  

 

Huh?

I can't think of a single game in Ohio football history that I would describe as a national stage. A national stage means people in California and Florida are talking about you at the watercooler the next day.

The  NCAA tournament is a national stage. Being on the front of USA Today is a national stage.

The Friday before Ohio played Northwestern; (Frank's first game as a Bobcat)  USA Today featured Frank Solich (wearing Ohio Green) on the FRONT page and had a full page story about Frank, Nebraska, the Bobcats and Burner Turner from NIU in the sports section.  That said; USA Today is polluted at fine hotels around the nation; Otherwise their coloring book readership is abysmal at best.

I love Bobcat basketball.  But they rarely play a regular season game on National Television.  Since Frank, Ohio football has played on an ESPN National Telecast 28 times.  That is 28 times in the past FIVE years.  Even with poor ratings; more sports fans will recall watching Ohio football than watching LIMITED portions of one of 16 basketball games in a single afternoon.  Especially when its only the second time such an occurrence has resulted in a Bobcat victory in the past 27 years. 

Every football game counts during the regular season of MAC play.  In MAC basketball nothing matters except one weekend in March. Last year proved the regular season games had zero value.  Finish in the bottom of the league and hopefully make it to Cleveland.  I am hopeful 2011 becomes the 3rd time in the past 25 years we get a chance to play in the big dance.  While I remain hopeful for March; this Saturday night, the Cats will play football PRIMETIME 
on the Nations NUMBER ONE Sports television network.  It will be the ONLY college football game on television at 9:00 PM EST.  Nearly every Sports Bar in America will have at least one television tuned to the World Wide Leader broadcasting Ohio Football for two to three hours straight.  I again; refer to that as playing on a National Stage.

The 28 times comes from the NO Bowl press release at OhioBobcats.com  I do not believe they were accounting for Big Ten Network games which receive national ratings and are also telecast nationally.  Being published on the front page = being published on the front page.  As for the sports section; I have never seen USA Today run a full page feature on any of Ohio Basketball coaching hires.  I think its only been done for Bobcat football.  

The DW front page is awesome and hanging in my bobcat room.  The front page that featured coach Solich was a much smaller picture of Frank on the front page and then the feature in the sports section.  

My guess is the 28 number accounts for Game Plan telecasts as well.  Even without game plan; there is no comparison regarding the number of national telecasts for football vs. basketball.  Granted the partial regional telecast of the Georgetown game was awesome; especially since it was not a day game like Florida in Nashville when half the country was still at work.  

Wow. That reads like one of those press releases I get from really bad PR people every day on the fax and email. I trash them really quickly.

You do realize that our appearances on midweek ESPN games are punchlines for every college football fan outside of the MAC, right? 

Scott Van Pelt recently said on his radio show: "I'll watch anything. Heck, I'll watch Wednesday night MAC football games."

The broadcasts are simply tools for ESPN to talk about higher profile games, get the advertising out for that weekend's games to hardcore football fans and to keep poker tournaments on ESPN Classic. 

Every notice the ESPN halftime shows during our football games? Notice how they ask Robert Smith one question about the half, which he quickly addresses and they move on to the bigger game and the overarching college football story?

That's when you know your game doesn't matter.

Listen, I have no problem with it. I love being small time. I hate big time football. I'd prefer we ditch ESPN and get a large-scale contract with STO done. 

But let's be realistic here. When I tell people IN OHIO that I watched Ohio and Temple play during a weeknight, they openly mock me. 

When I tell them I watched Ohio play a basketball game on a Wednesday night, that's acceptable. It's okay to be a mid-major in college basketball. In college football, you're either a king or an indentured servant. There is no in-between.

I wouldnt count something you have to be connected to a computer for, but still 23 is a lot more than I would've guessed.  But with it being 6 years, I guess I can see it with a couple mid-week games each year, a couple MAC championships, and 3 bowls.

Ball State had no chance at a BCS bowl berth that year, barring something on the order of 5 upsets on the final weekend of the season. 

Given that Kent State earned a 9 seed just a couple years ago in the NCAA tournament, and would have certainly received an at-large bid on the strength of its REGULAR SEASON performance had it not also won the MAC Tournament, I'm not sure how you can say that the MAC regular season has zero significance.  Yes a team can overcome a bad regular season, get hot at the end, and go dancing, but that does not happen very frequently.