“It’s about this chip because we are constantly told we are only as good as how much we spend,” Frazier said. Amid the challenges, schools take pride in a shared ideology. The financial challenges increased during the pandemic, when multiple schools in the conference cut their number of varsity teams.īecause of the conference’s lower revenue, athletic departments are forced to try to work more efficiently with the money they do have. And like some others in the Group of 5, many of its athletic departments are subsidized by student fees, making up 20 percent of its revenue, per Knight-Newhouse. Facing challenges of weather and midweek MACtion kickoff times, the conference held six of the 11 lowest average FBS attendance marks last season. The MAC brought in $288.03 million in revenue in 2022, according to the Knight-Newhouse College Athletics database, the lowest among 10 FBS conferences. Some would rather just throw money at it instead of actually coaching, recruiting and executing.” “Here’s the secret sauce: The secret sauce is that you have to qualify, you have to evaluate. “They look at the financials like that as an indicator to success,” Frazier said. Along the way, it’s notched at least one win over a Big Ten opponent in 16 consecutive full seasons (not including 2020) and built a brand around its November midweek #MACtion games. It continued through NIU’s Orange Bowl run in 2012 and Western Michigan’s Cotton Bowl bid in 2016. It began with a golden era of quarterback play and high-profile upsets around the early 2000s. It’s no secret that conference realignment is driven by football, and the MAC has had a decent amount of success punching above its weight over the past few decades. Some do things we aren’t going to do to win. “We have a shared agenda on dealing with adversity and coming out on top without compromising standards. “There’s no money trees in the MAC - we understand that and accept that,” Northern Illinois athletic director Sean Frazier said. Though the conference faces challenges amid a time of change in college athletics, it doesn’t view itself as in survival mode. “You either add to survive or make yourself stronger.”Įven in the heart of Big Ten country, the MAC is a fixture in the Midwest, built around its regional fans and a shared mantra that many inside the conference believe has strengthened their trust in one another. “You add membership for one of two reasons,” he said. When it comes to realignment, he thinks about something a commissioner colleague once told him. Steinbrecher doesn’t think conferences need to change just because others are doing so. MTSU ultimately stayed, and the MAC decided to stand pat at 12 teams. That included consideration of adding Western Kentucky and Middle Tennessee from Conference USA in 2021. Member schools do meet often to discuss the future of the conference and evaluate the realignment landscape. Football-only affiliate members Temple, UCF and UMass have come and gone in brief stints, but the core full-time membership has remained intact. The only full member to leave in the 21st century was Marshall, which joined Conference USA in 2005. Nine have been members for at least 50 consecutive years, a rarity among the Group of 5 conferences. It has 12 full members, all of which have been in the conference since 1998, when Buffalo joined. The MAC, meanwhile, exists in a bit of an FBS bubble. And though it’s been relatively stable since splitting from the WAC, the Mountain West has been subjected to constant realignment rumors, including San Diego State’s much-publicized dalliance with the Pac-12 - and a brief period in which SDSU and Boise State were heading to the Big East. The AAC has been in a state of flux since emerging from the remnants of the Big East, being raided by the Big 12 and subsequently raiding Conference USA. The Sun Belt has been raided by Conference USA, only to boost its reputation by adding prominent FCS teams and turning back around to poach Marshall and Southern Miss from CUSA amid a regionalized push. Only one of its current full members ( UTEP) has been in the league longer than 10 years. Though moves in the Big Ten, SEC and Power 5 get the majority of the headlines, they have a trickle-down effect that has greatly made an impact on most of the rest of the FBS.Ĭonference USA, which is less than three decades old, has lost all of its founding members. Since taking over the MAC in 2009, however, he’s dealt with something different: a conference in which the membership has been relatively stable, even amid a tumultuous period of realignment across college sports. “Now, it’s now gone on to prosper and thrive.” “I came in when that conference was turned upside down and spent that period of time rightsizing it,” he said.
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