Guess this is the new trendy thing to do. Well, if the B1G can have 18 in one big lump, why not 12 for the MAC? This will decrease fan interest, IMHO.

Reduce fan interest from what, exactly?

What would the PAC-12 Championship Game be if Washington and Oregon were still in the North Division? Would fans be as interested?

The only downside on this is that the door opens to the silliness a 3-way tie in the Mountain West caused.

Divisions were good because they made geographic sense. Divisions were bad because the most natural line went between the I-75 rivals and protecting the rivalry was a hurdle the scheduling dude couldn't figure out for 20 years or whatever it's been.

With that being said, it's moving deck chairs.

My thinking via an example: In some years the MAC East has been woefully worse than the West. In those years there is still some fan interest in the East teams because relative to each other they are close and it might not be until the final few weeks that a clear winner emerges. If all these teams are buried in the middle of the pack or lower in the 12 team standings, these teams have nothing to shoot for, except, of course the ubiquitous "bowl eligibility."

The last time this is true was 2014 -- dismissing the 6 game 2020 season.

Pretty sure 80% of the mid-week MAC games are just gamblers. Don't think the stakes they care about have anything to do with title game contention.

Playing with the math here...An 8 game schedule with a guarantee to play all 11 opponents at least twice every 3 years. To accomplish that you need 22 of the 24 games in a 3 year period. This leaves 2 excess games.

They could just do 4 pods of 3 that play each other every year - NIU/WMU/CMU, Ball St/Miami/Ohio, BG/Toledo/Akron, Buffalo/Akron/Kent. Or they could just have the obvious protected rivalries and get creative with the other 1 game per 3 years.

Per Chris Vannini of The Athletic, the scheduling pods are as follows:

Buffalo, Akron, Kent State
Ohio, Miami, Ball State
Toledo, Bowling Green, NIU
EMU, CMU, WMU

This scheduling model opens the door a bit for possible expansion, IMO.

I'm interested in how the tiebreakers play out. The top two contenders are chosen based off conference winning percentage, but in 2022 there was a 4-way tie for 2nd.

Yeah, feels like Ball State was the odd school out there.

Ohio and Ball State is sort of the oddball in the pods. BG and NIU is kind of weird too. But they had to go somewhere. If you were going to make pods of three with permanent rivals this was almost certainly the best set. Ball State and Miami were always one of each other's biggest in-conference rivals before divisions. We are being dragged into a potential football rivalry with Ball State now.

Under the new model, here's how things would have ended up, conference record wise and what the championship was as we know it.

2023
1st: Toledo
2nd: Miami
Actual MAC title: Toledo vs. Miami

2022
1st: Ohio
2nd: Buffalo, Bowling Green, Toledo and EMU all finished 5-3
Actual MAC title: Ohio vs. Toledo

2021
1st: Kent State, NIU and CMU all finished 6-2
Actual MAC title: Kent State vs. NIU

2020
1st: Buffalo
2nd: Ball State
Actual MAC title: Buffalo vs. Ball State

2019
1st: Miami and CMU
Actual MAC title: Miami vs. CMU

2018
1st: Buffalo
2nd: Miami, Ohio and NIU all finished 6-2
Actual MAC title: Buffalo vs. NIU

2017
1st: Toledo
2nd: Akron, CMU and NIU all finished 6-2
Actual MAC title: Toledo vs. Akron

2016
1st: WMU
2nd: Ohio, Miami and Toledo all finished 6-2
Actual MAC title: WMU vs. Ohio

2015
1st: Bowling Green
2nd: NIU, WMU, Toledo and CMU all finished 6-2 (NIU went to the title game)
Actual MAC title: Bowling Green vs. NIU

2014
1st: NIU and Toledo
Actual MAC title: NIU vs. Bowling Green

2013
1st: NIU
2nd: Bowling Green and Ball State both finished 7-1
Actual MAC title: NIU vs. Bowling Green

2012
1st: Kent State and NIU
Actual MAC title: Kent State vs. NIU

2011
1st: NIU and Toledo
Actual MAC title: NIU vs. Ohio

2010
1st: NIU
2nd: Toledo and Miami both finished 7-1
Actual MAC title: NIU vs. Miami

2009
1st: CMU
2nd: Ohio and Temple both finished 7-1 (Ohio went to the title game)
Actual MAC title: CMU vs. Ohio

2008
1st: Ball State
2nd: CMU and WMU both finished 6-2
Actual MAC title: Ball State vs. Buffalo

2007
1st: CMU
2nd: Bowling Green? They played more MAC games this season than East Champion Miami because of the Temple addition/transition. I didn't think those games counted towards conference record though.
Actual MAC title: CMU vs. Miami

2006
1st: Ohio and CMU
Actual MAC title: Ohio vs. CMU

2005
1st: NIU and Toledo
Actual MAC title: Akron vs. NIU

2004
1st: Miami, Toledo and NIU all finished 7-1
Actual MAC title: Miami vs. Toledo

2003
1st: Miami
2nd: Bowling Green
Actual MAC title: Miami vs. Bowling Green

2002
1st: Marshall, Toledo and NIU all finished 7-1
Actual MAC title: Marshall vs. Toledo

2001
1st: Marshall
2nd: Miami
Actual MAC title: Marshall vs. Toledo

2000:
1st: WMU
2nd: Toledo
Actual MAC title: WMU vs. Marshall

1999
1st: Marshall
2nd: Miami and WMU both finished 6-2
Actual MAC title: Marshall vs. WMU

1998
1st: Miami and Marshall
Actual MAC title: Miami vs. Toledo

1997
1st: Marshall and Toledo
Actual MAC title: Marshall vs. Toledo

There are some outliers for sure, but it would have been interesting to see some division rematches, particularly late 90s/00s Marshall/Miami or later on NIU/Toledo.

We've got pods to name, I'm fine with those as long as Smythe and Norris are the others.

MAC-South - Ohio, Ball St, Miami - makes pretty good sense from a compactness perspective. Could argue that Ohio/Kent/Akron would also make sense, but that leaves Buffalo very isolated from its nearest pod.

The MAC-East pod of Akron, Kent, and Buffalo makes sense, as does the MAC-Directional Michigan pod.

Looking at a map, the odd-pod out to me is NIU/Toledo/BGSU.

The only real alternative model i see that at least looks more compact looks worse for the Michigans:
Akron/Kent/Buffalo; BG/Toledo/EMU; Ohio/Ball St/Miami; CMU/WMU/NIU