If anyone at the MAC Office had a semblance of a brain - they would be on the phone YESTERDAY with Memphis offering them full membership.

No time for details, but this needs to happen now that the Big East has passed them over.

Might be easier for Ohio to call C-USA.

Plus The Herd and ECU, and i'm on board BL.  Then have the hard conversation with UMass and Temple for all sports.  Would love to add Southern Miss, because I think they are the best of the bunch for FB, but logistically it really strains conference travel.

Suggested name for an expanded MAC conference from the UMass board: the BIG MAC.  Sure to bring sponsorship dollars from Ronald MacDonald, or a trademark infringement lawsuit.

Another interesting thought, could a group of MAC schools join the CUSA-MWC merger? The MAC requires football to be played in the conference if you want to compete there. What about the formation of a new basketball conference taking in NIU, Ball State, Toledo, Ohio, Marshall, Temple, East Carolina, UMass with all schools putting their football in the merger? East Carolina and Marshall are in the merger for football, CUSA for basketball and would move their basketball over to a new conference based more in the eastern time zone. As it stands now the merger has 22 schools. SMU, Houston, UCF, Boise, Air Force, Memphis all head to the Big East and that leaves the merger with 16. Adding NIU, BSU, UT, Ohio, Temple and UMass into the merger takes numbers back up to 22. The remaining MAC schools WMU, EMU, CMU, BG, Miami, Kent, Akron, Buffalo could play on as a second tier WAC-SBC level MAC conference. Its difficult to say if any momentum will arise by the merger to go in the direction of MAC schools. They won't play their hand until the Big East makes additions and the Big East is hesitating itself.

I don't believe that the MAC has any attendance requirements for members.  If someone knows different, please correct me.  The NCAA requirements have not been and now cannot be enforced because of complex legal issues that involve anti-trust matters.

Or keep our current team roster and approach Disney for a Mickey Mouse naming rights deal.

Stepping back away from the individual performance of certain MAC schools, MAC football would be a better sell if the divisions were organized around rivalry pairings. Think the PAC-12 here its Wash/Wash St, Oregon/Oregon St, Cal/Stanford, UCLA/USC ect... The MAC divisions should be set up with the same principal not just stuffing all the Ohio schools in the same division. NIU/Ball, CMU/WMU, Kent/UA+Buffalo in one division, Ohio/Miami, Temple/UMass, UT/BG+EMU in the other. The two divisions this way look like mini-conferences with 4-5 states represented each. The MAC Championship game in Ford Field then would be that spot in the middle where the two mini-conferences meet instead of decidedly in MAC West territory as it is. 

I think it is pretty clear from the Administration's message that we aren't going anywhere:

"We are stuck in the MAC. We have no money to go elsewhere. Our donors (or lack thereof) are basically a bunch of hobos trying to jump onto the next railcar with their napsacks."

I'm paraphrasing.

It's going to be funny when a couple MAC schools not named Ohio make their move to leave the MAC and we are stuck in this dumpster fire with the same people trying to explain how great the MAC is for our interests.

Not going to happen but worth a try...

East Division
ECU
UMass
Temple
Rutgers
Marshall
Villanova, James Madison, ODU, Towson, App State, Delaware (Or plug in whatever...maybe Buffalo or Akron?
Dayton (All sports except football)

West Division
Cincinnati
Louisville
Memphis
Miami
Ohio
Marshall
Xavier (All sports except football)

I love the assumption made by some (Uncle Wes) on this board that somehow we're in a position to move up, yet some other schools 'could play on as a second tier WAC-SBC level MAC conference'.

How many MAC Championships (football) have we won in the last 30 years?  Still zero?  I thought so.  Yet somehow, we're automatically in-line to 'move up' to a higher level of competition that would cost more $$?  Help me understand.  I would think CMU would be in a better position to do this than we would be, seeing as they've actually won games of late.  Ask Marshall how they enjoy their larger conference.

I realize we draw well in basketball, but ask Kansas how much that matters in trying to find a suitor in a football first world.  And, aside from a few tourney runs, what have we done in basketball over the course of a season to win the league lately?  When was the last time we had the best regular season MAC record?  1994?

We don't have any money.  Love is right.  We're stuck in the MAC.

They probably aren't, but consider think about it for a minute...

1. How much better are Houston, SMU, UCF, Navy and Air Force
2. Is the difference in level of play significant enough to justify an exponential increase travel costs or can that difference be quickly made up relatively quickly

I simply put those CAA schools there as a filler and not as first choice.  If that is the only flaw you can find, I think it is a pretty good start and can easily be modified.  Don't like it is outrageous because of one school.  Louisville jumps to Big 12 and we drop that CAA or filler school.  Does that sit better with you?

Just my opinion which is every bit as worthless as everybody else's on this board: The Dumpster Fire affectionately known as the MAC is made up of teams that are for all intents and purposes carbon copies of each other or nearly indistinguishable from one another.

NO MAC school is head and shoulders above another in terms of athletic prowess in either Football or Men's Basketball. All MAC schools have small fan bases consisting of it's own students, alumni and townies and very little of those fit into what one would describe as "rabid". NO MAC school has ever had the fringe or unattached fan meaning that they don't have fans that have absolutely NO tie to the University in question. I watched the OSU/Wisconsin game the other night in a non-descript Eastern Ohio small town bar with the yocals. The bar was filled with "RABID" OSU supporters and not one of them either went to OSU or had a child attend OSU. The others there that night had Notre Dame or Michigan gear on. I was the ONLY person there with OHIO attire. Although LOTS of the "RABID" OSUers had kids that either attended Kent or Akron, not one of them sullied themselves with either Flashes or Roo garb, even though it was Halloween weekend!

My point in this diatribe. If I'm CUSA and I have to look to the MAC to fill vacancies, I'm using the T Boone Pickens thought process. Which of these MAC locales is easiest to get into and out of. With that criteria my first choices if I'm CUSA are in no particular order Akron, Buffalo and Toledo. I've NOT listed Temple as I'm still of the belief that MH55's impecable sources have Temple's inclusion into the BigEast/West as "imminent" and as MH55 has proven time and again, he know's that of which he speaks.(At least in his own mind).