MAC Blogger Roundtable for this Week

1.) After 6 games, we're halfway through the season or damn close if you've had a bye. Are you pleasantly surprised with your team's performance so far? Angrily apathetic about what you've seen? Right where they were expected to be? Give your team a mid-term grade.

OK, I'm searching for the perfect two word description for our season....how about, Unsurprised but Hopeful. (Two-wordsish).  We are struggling and having a difficult season.  I picked us to go 4-8, and while even that might be a stretch at this point, we have only lost one game I thought we would win.  We just have a ton of young players and a difficult schedule.  I am disappointed at the OU game and hope we can turn that around, because you hope to get good effort even if the experience is lacking, but the season is shaping up as I expected.

2.) This weekend there's a bevy of MAC action. Taking your own game out of the equation, what game are you looking forward to? What game gives you the potential for the most information about what teams are for real and which teams are anything but?

The clearest "prove it" moment this week is for Miami.  At 2-0 and 3-3, they are certainly exceeding expectations and leading the East.  Even though Central isn't the Central we have had the past few years, playing @Mt. Pleasant will help us see what they have.

3.) As it's Columbus Day week, what MAC coach has clearly not lived up to the adventurer spirit and should be shipped somewhere far and distant... for Queen and honor of course.

Well, Queen Isabella would be sitting on her throne looking at three guys right now...Doug Martin, Stan Parrish and Bill Cubit.  I'm guessing she sends one of them East and one of them West at the end of the year, and tells them not to come back until they find the fountain of youth.

4.) More on a national purview, with Alabama's loss the door is wide open for perhaps a non-automatic qualifying conference school from Boise, Idaho to shove their way into the national championship. Is this the year that the "little guy" finally earns the respect of the BCS conferences?

Well, to answer the question the way it is written, NO.  There is no way that Boise or any other non-AQ school will earn the respect of the BCS Conferences.  They might force their way into the game and win the game, but they will not win any respect.  People will continue to say that they could not compete at a high level week in and week out and would have lost at least 2 games if they were in the SEC, blah, blah blah.  Respect is out of your control...it is in the minds of other people.  All you can do is win the game and respect yourself.

5.) Rank 'em, worst to first.

1.   NIU
2.  Temple
3.  Toledo
4.  OU
5.  Miami
6.  Buffalo
7.  CMU
8.  Kent
9.  WMU
10.  BG
11. Ball State
12. Akron
13.  EMU