Has BGSU been unfairly or inadvertently denied a MAC title

[NWLB]

OK, excuse me here, since the conference rules on such things did not change in those four years. I recall the commissioner talking about how the BGSU-CMU game that year would "decide the MAC championship." However no league rules changed, the moniker of "title game" was hung out there to hype the game and TV coverage, and CMU only went to the bowl game because of the head-to-head win.

If UT gets to cling to a co-championship by doing exactly the same thing in 1990, and teams are claiming co-championships of the divisions now, then why didn't we get credit in 1994.

Have we allowed ourselves to get distracted by the hype of that game, the infamous fake punt, and the following years of lousy results that followed?

If we are going to get into technicalities, either UT didn't earn a co-championship losing to the co-champion, or we in fact earned a title we aren't getting credit for.

Either way, screw UT, or get some consolation out of that @#$%@# fake punt, somebody should poke into it.

[Schadenfreude]

Central Michigan won the MAC free and clear that year.

The reason: They played an extra conference game. They headed into that season ender 7-1. We went in 6-1.

I don't know all the ins and outs of it, but if you look through conference standings from the 1980s, you will see that quite a few MAC teams played nine-game conference schedules. I would guess this is because it was so difficult for us to line up games with I-A nonconference opponents and still play five at home.

I would guess the MAC now has a rule that only the eight games it schedules will count in the standings. But I don't really know.

[transfer2BGSU]

If UT gets to cling to a co-championship by doing exactly the same thing in 1990, and teams are claiming co-championships of the divisions now, then why didn't we get credit in 1994.

I believe you have to make a claim immediately after being wronged.

It's ten years later.

This dog won't hunt.

[NWLB]

Curiously that might be totally true.

I emailed Matt Markey, he dug into it with the MAC front office.

The MAC front office said much of what I noted, but didn't actually answer the question. UT got a co-title because of equal records. Great. They had no information as to why BGSU was only given 8 MAC games (it had been the practice of the MAC to rotate who did and did not get 8 or 9 games, and in this case we wound up with the former, but they didn't seem to recall that.) They said only that head-to-head determined the bowl representative, but that winning percentage determined the "champion." They wouldn't answer the question of fairness to BGSU as it relates to the matter. The CMU official contacted only remembers that the schedules wound up the way they did.


The basic point left unsettled is that you aren't being fair using winning percentage when you (the MAC) makes the schedules unequal. You can't be. They got themselves into the mess by declaring co-champions based on equal record. This despite one of those title holders having lost to the other. But to deny the status to a team, based on winning percentage only works if there were numbers of conference games. IE, a season where a team is 7-1-1 vs. 8-1, such as CMU vs. UT's record in 1990. In a year where the MAC specifically didn't schedule BG with an equal number of games, for whatever reason, to then say they used winning percentage as the determining factor, is insane.

The MAC screwed up, and we should or should have made a stink about it. There may be grounds for asking the MAC to allow BG what it may be due.

[bgbill]

If UT gets to cling to a co-championship by doing exactly the same thing in 1990, and teams are claiming co-championships of the divisions now, then why didn't we get credit in 1994.

I believe you have to make a claim immediately after being wronged.

It's ten years later.

This dog won't hunt.

this dog died

[NWLB]

Awwww, don't kill my dog mister!

[Flipper]

Maybe we can borrow a few thousand lawyers from the Bush and Kerry campaigns to work on this cause...

[Redwingtom]

If UT gets to cling to a co-championship by doing exactly the same thing in 1990, and teams are claiming co-championships of the divisions now, then why didn't we get credit in 1994.

I believe you have to make a claim immediately after being wronged.

It's ten years later.

This dog won't hunt.

this dog died

It was run over by that fat punter on the way to the endzone.

[NWLB]

NooooooooO!

[Schadenfreude]

The MAC screwed up, and we should or should have made a stink about it. There may be grounds for asking the MAC to allow BG what it may be due.

I was there.

They beat us, fair and square.

I'm happy to let it go.