College Football Top 25 Released, Tuesday MACtion Open Thread
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Indiana #1 or we riot.
Who has the most impressive win of the season? It’s Indiana at Oregon, and it isn’t particularly close.
Will that matter? Likely not, and all the College Football Playoff committee is going to do is make Curt Cignetti angrier and angrier.
College Football Playoff Rankings Show
When: 7pm CT
Where: I dunno, a studio in Bristol where they shot the moon landing, probably
TV, dumbass: Oh, right. ESPN.
None of that, however, matters, unless you’re a fan of one of the three good Big Ten teams this year. What matters for the rest of us?
MIDWEEK MACTION
When I teach my students about the rise of “car cities” in the 1920s, detailing how manufacturing jobs and rising income led to the emergence of leisure culture, I also mention the obsessions advertisers and public figures had with the “Middletowns” of the world. Borrowing from Robert and Helen Lynd’s anonymized study of Muncie, Indiana (yes, really), marketers adapted questions like “Will it play in Peoria?” to the new Main Streets of the industrial heartland.
And, in turn, the heartland shaped its identity on those commodities they produced. Look to Kimberly, Wisconsin, home of the Papermakers football juggernaut. Bet you can’t guess what they made there. Or, less familiarly to most but a stark reminder to the few that know that I’m a reprobate of a human being?
I get to talk Midweek MACtion.
That’s right—in front of 40 bored college students, I ask how many of them have ever watched MAC football on a Tuesday night. A couple football players put their hands up, as do a couple other folks—usually men, though we’ve had a couple women—who have partaken in the glories of Akron-Ball State on a blustery, rainy Tuesday. Like a Purdue-Northwestern game, but in the middle of the week with, usually, somehow even lower stakes.
“Who’s watched a Toledo football game?”, I ask. A couple hands go up.
“Where do they play?” Crickets.
“The Glass Bowl!” I beam. “And why do you think they called it that?”
“uhhhhhhh” — remember, these are jocks at a D-III public institution. Baby steps.
“What do you think they made in Toledo?”
The light bulbs go off. And then, one after the next: the Rubber Bowl. That Akron and Youngstown play for the Steel Tire, because Akron makes…[“class?”]…and Youngstown makes…[“are you still there?”]
These are the dumb things that you do to keep students even modestly engaged in a history class, sometimes. I remain eternally jealous of BRT for getting to teach a whole class on college sports and U.S. history. In the meantime, back to reading about a 4,000-person WPA-built football stadium in the next town over.
The Schedule
Tuesday, November 4
UMass Minutemen (0-8, 0-4 MAC) at Akron Zips (3-6, 2-3)
6pm | CBSSN | Akron -12.5 | O/U 51.5
Not only has UMass gone 0-8 so far, they’ve lost to (1) FCS Bryant, 27-26, and (2) only lost two of those games by one score. Otherwise it’s 42-10 to Temple, 47-7 to Iowa, 42-6 to Mizzou, 21-3 to WMU, 42-6 to Kent State(!!!!!!!!!!), and most recently 38-13 to CMU. They are baaaaad bad bad bad.
Akron has lost 10-0 to Wyoming and 68-0 to Nebraska, and they’re postseason-ineligible due to an insufficient Academic Progress Rate—the first FBS to achieve that since Idaho in 2014.
So, uh, best of luck to everyone involved here.
BATTLE OF THE BRICKS!
Miami Hydroxide Redhawks (5-3, 4-0) at Ohio Bobcats (5-3, 3-1)
6pm | ESPN2 | Ohio -2.5 | O/U 50.5
Might be the game of the year in the MAC—a rivalry game with pole position for the MAC title game on the line! I can barely stand it, so I’ll sit instead.
The Fightin’ Bases are what they always are under Chuck Martin: a good defense (for the MAC), and an offense led by, for some reason, Toledo transfer Dequan Finn. If you like asking “What if Northwestern, but the MAC?”, Miami’s the team for you.
Under first-year HC Brian Smith, Ohio’s been…fine? They beat West Virginia in Athens, which was hilarious, but also lost at Ball State, which, uh. You can’t convince me that Bobcats QB Parker Navarro hasn’t been around for 7 seasons, and yet I know Kurtis Rourke wasn’t here that long ago. Navarro is error-prone, so let’s see what that means for the Battle of the Bricks. Best midweek MACtion of the week by a mile.
Wednesday, November 5
Kent State Golden Flashes (3-5, 2-2) at Balls Tate Robotbirds (3-5, 2-2)
6pm | ESPNU | Balls -1.5 | O/U 47.5
Dual-threat Robotbirds QB Kiael Kelly has run almost as many times—141—as he has thrown it—196. It will not shock you to year he is (1) better at the former, and (2) fumble-prone.
Kent State is so ecstatic about interim HC Mark Carney going 3-5 (2-2) that they removed the interim tag. There, that’s what you need to know.
Northern Illinois Huskies (2-6, 1-3) at Toledo Rockets (4-4, 2-2)
6pm | ESPN2 | Toledo -14.5 | O/U 42.5
At one point it felt like both Thomas Hammock and Jason Candle were doing well enough that they’d take the jump to the next level. And now here they are, staring up at or locked with Kent and Balls in the standings.
We’ll update the College Football Playoff rankings when they’re available. In the meantime, here’s your open thread for the midweek MACtion. We did it, everyone.
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