Looking at Western's schedule, they have the chance to start the year strong and maybe work their way into the Top 25 by mid season. Northwestern and Illinois are winnable games. If they are able to have the season it appears they can on paper, PJ Fleck may row his boat to a new gig and a fat pay day.

If this MAC Championship game prediction prediction comes true I really hope we provide a stiffer test than we have in our past few tilts with the Broncos.

While Western can have a special year this season, there is not a clear dominant team coming into the season in my opinion. Western in the closest thing to it and since the West is such a grind I don't think they will run the table. It's pretty wide open this year and I hope we take advantage.

The two games against Miami and BG to start MAC play will really help set the tone one way or another for our chances in the East, IMHO. Wouldn't hurt my feelings if we didn't have an October bed wetting this season either.

Now that we're back to playing all the other East teams, sweeping the division becomes very important. It would give us tiebreakers against everybody else. Sweeping the division would almost guarantee us at least a 6-2 MAC record (the odds are against us vs. CMU and Toledo -- we're 1-10 against them under Solich). 6-2 should be good enough to get to the MACCG. The two real keys to sweeping the division will be BG -- we've lost four straight to them -- and Kent, which is never an easy win on the road for us.

Looks like Cleve in 1988, or so last year's media guide says.

I was thinking Knorr (of all people) had a win against them. My memory was that my then-girlfriend's parents (who were Toledo alums) came down for the game and we won. But that apparently was not the case because we played Toledo on the road that year (2004). I'mma blame Paramount Rum for that hazy memory.

How bout going back to the last coach to win at Toledo. ;-)

Bill Hess, 1967. At that point, we were 5-4 at Toledo. We're now 5-20; 16 straight losses up there.

CMU and Toledo have been the toughest places for us. We didn't have a win in Mt. Pleasant until '01 (one good thing that came from Knorrmageddon); since then, we're 2-2 up there, 2-12-1 overall. We actually won three straight at BG ('07, '09, '11), but with two straight losses we're now 14-17-1 there. We've lost three straight at WMU after winning both games there in the Grobe Era and are 13-19 in Kazoo overall.

I found a mistake in last year's media guide. They have us losing at EMU during the '14 season, but that was at CMU. We've won three straight at Ypsi and are 9-7 overall up there.

It's hard to find fault with this article. However if there is 1 stat that was overlooked it would be our injury situation over these past 3 or so years. Case in point; the 3 game mid-season losses LY. With our LB's out we were extremely vulnerable. Had we been healthy for those 3 game I doubt we would have lost all 3.





GO BOBCATS

Or those teams were just better than Ohio?

I would say both contributed. More that latter than the former. When we lose and lose bad, it's a Jimmies and Joes, not Xs and Os situation.