Quote:6-6 doesn’t guarantee a bowl for a G5. But the West is down enough the MAC could see one or 2 6-6 teams in.
This year it looks like it. In the main global section on this site, on a bowl breakdown thread, I spent too much time analyzing the teams and their records, and getting a visual on chances of how many teams from different conferences, etc. IMO, it wouldn't be much more than 75 teams getting in. I picked the MAC getting 5.5 teams; Miami, Ohio, Toledo, BGSU + 1.5 teams of WMU, NIU, CMU, and EMU. So I wasn't stringent on conferences.
So there's going to be 82 slots. We will trump JaxSt in CUSA since they're ineligible... JMU is finishing off their 2nd/last year of eligibility but they're lobbying again to jump early since they're undefeated (also because SBC championship game is post-season as well). But even if JMU gets in, JaxSt won't supercede -- they'll be the true fillers which it looks like we'll need. And even if Army wins their last 3 to be 6-6; they'd have less than 5 wins over FBS as they have two FCSs, so they would be a filler as well.
Point being, things are in the solid direction for any MAC team at 6-6 to be able to make it. Ya never know, tho. After Saturday, we should have a really solid picture thus estimation.
Quote:With a win over CMU I think it’s safe to say this season has met expectations for year 1 of the Taylor era given the type of team he took over and the situation he was thrown into.
Yeah, I agree. The MI MAC Trophy with beating our rival AND beating EMU who's had our # for a while -- while at least reaching to what I saw as "par" given our schedule, going 4-8.
Quote:We also let a couple MAC games slip by that were winnable but it seems like we’ve learned from those issues.
That's what a rebuilding / rebooting season's about. One should expect to lose some winnable games with small point spreads. I would say the only one that'd truly fit that mold and frustrating would be the @Ohio game, losing a 3pt low-scoring tussle. But they do have a good D. The Toledo game taking a big lead 1st half -- ehh. It's Toledo tho. They're a 1-half-only team, and a 1L team and were expected MAC Champs by many. It's really only the Ohio game, mainly in retrospect given that Ohio's not as good as some predicted + it wasn't early in the season where we still had a lot to get more in line.
Quote:Put the Zips or the Golden Flashes on the schedule instead of Miami or Ohio & bowl eligibility would look pretty likely right now.
Yeah. Even though the BSU team we beat was clearly not as good as the adjusted BSU team right now the last few weeks -- we very solidly beat them which seemed not-so-feasible early in the season for us, so it'd be very safe to say we woulda beat Akron & Kent at the time of Miami & Ohio games. Which would mean some on the West would not play Akron & Kent and trade those for Miami and Ohio -- which would make our standing even better, with us only having 1 loss to Toledo right now, going into these last two games. We'd have our record flipped around from 4-6 to 6-4.
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WMU v CMU - 11/7/2023
