Talk:Mid-American Conference

Realignment
Now that Marshall and UCF are heading to greener pastures in Conference USA, what will the new alignment of the two divisions will look like next year?

Bowling Green is shifting to the East Division. I would have preferred they move Eastern Michigan and Toledo to the East, and bump Miami of Ohio to the West. Also, with Temple joining now, I imagine they're going to want to find another member to get to 14 schools again, at least before 2007. Note: the league uses inconsistent terminology. The schools that are one-sport members are described as "affiliate" members, presumably because they are not all-sports members, but in the press release Temple is described as an "affiliate" member for the next two years while they're playing a partial schedule, and then they'll become a "full" football-only member. This is inconsistent and it is why I chose to describe them as having "associate" membership in the league for the next two years. --AppleFan84

You "chose"? It should go with the factual "affiliate" title for football, as that is what the May 2005 contract describes Temple's status as. I've cleaned up the divisional list, removing Marshall, and placing Bowling Green back East. IN any event, it really doesn't matter at Wiki what your "preferred" line-up would have been. Bowling Green was in the East when the MAC originally went to divisions. Although it's an East/West divisional alignment in nomenclature, there is also a North/South divide. The East schools are generally also more southerly... so Bowling Green is much more logically in the East than Toledo or Eastern Michigan... The divisions in MAC are the most cost-efficient from a travel POV... which is a fairly NPOV, the whole point of Wiki'ing things.... --Sturmde 18:29, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, I chose. I'm not privy to the contract that they signed, so for all I know the use of the word "affiliate" in the press release is due to an oversight by a volunteer intern in the PR department that nobody caught. I also don't think it is necessary to chastize me for offering my own opinion as to how the league ought to have aligned on a page explicitly designed for discussion that is not overburdened with talk about its parent article. As to the merits of your discussion of the East vs. West schools, I think that was truer when UCF and Marshall were both members, but now that they are gone it doesn't seem to me to be the case. Buffalo is the northernmost league school and they are in the East Division, at any rate. And, to me, it seems more cost-efficient for Toledo and Eastern Michigan to cut across Ontario to Buffalo than it does for them to travel out to Northern Illinois. It is not of that much concern since the league will almost certainly try to add another member by 2007, which could disrupt the alignment once again, although even if it is a school to the West I personally feel the league is better served with Miami in the West and shuffling around whatever marginal West school you want into the East to compensate for their departure. If the league adds a 14th school and it is in the East Division, they will have to bump one of the marginal East schools into the West anyways.

Logo Gallery
There's a big debate over using a school's logo as a gallery on conference articles Wikipedia_talk:Logos. If it turns out that the gallery can stay, then I think my change should be reverted. In it's current state without the gallery, I think the merge I made makes more sense. --X96lee15 13:30, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Rivalries?
Akron and Kent State have a huge rivalry. They play for the Wagon Wheel. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.88.182.133 (talk) 02:06, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

Seems this article needs a section about MAC rivalries. I have no idea which schools have rivalries with each other. And of course I mean rivialries beyond just being in the same conference/division. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 143.115.155.55 (talk) 18:31, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Enrollment
An anonymous IP changed the enrollment number for Kent State citing that "Every school on this page has their main campus enrollment." Do we know that for sure? Only 2 schools currently have citations and even the University of Akron's source makes no distinction whether its enrollment number includes its Wayne College regional campus and Medina County University Center or not (it lists them as campuses in the report but has no separate statistics), though it wouldn't make THAT much of a difference even if it does include them. And has there ever been any consensus to strictly use the enrollment of each school's main campus? For schools like Ohio University and Kent State, for instance, it would make for a significant difference as they have large regional systems with over 10,000 students each outside their respective main campuses. Not the biggest deal and I really don't care which way it goes, but I do want to make sure we're on the same page. --JonRidinger (talk) 18:09, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

"Conference of Quarterbacks"
There are now two third-party sources that refer to the MAC as the "Conference of Quarterbacks". The statement in the article is really not debatable since it simply states that the MAC "has been referred to as the Conference of Quarterbacks...", which is most definitely true. It has been referred to as such, regardless of the opinions of any editors whether that's a proper nickname. Whether or not the MAC has produced more NFL quarterbacks than any other conference is irrelevant. The article is not trying to prove that the nickname is legitimate, nor does it need to. The statement does not claim that the MAC has produced the most NFL quarterbacks or even the most successful quarterbacks; it simply makes a statement that outside sources have referred to the MAC as such. --JonRidinger (talk) 04:57, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Proposal to make timelines more consistent
I noticed that conferences in List of NCAA conferences have articles, usually including a membership timeline. While some of the decisions made for each conference make some sense, there is a wide variety of styles for the various timelines, particularly involving color choices, but also other matters of style that could be more consistent.

for example, a school with a yellow bar means:
 * An associate member in one sport (if part of the BE)
 * A former member of the conference (in the SEC)
 * A future member of the conference (in the SEC and Big West)
 * A football only member (in the Sun Belt)
 * A team that has moved to another conference (in the WAC, NEC)
 * A full member of the Big Sky

Some graphs have captions, some do not, and none are centered. To see the variety of styles, review Current conference timelines

I think it would be worth discussing how best to provide some measure of consistency, recognizing that there may be legitimate reasons for some differences from a standard presentation (for example, some conferences show the name of the new conference for former members. In some cases, this makes sense, in other, it may not.)

I've produced a draft of how the timelines would look with some consistency added. Please see Draft proposal of conference timelines.

I propose a discussion to see if there is consensus on improving the consistency.

Because it would not be practical to have this discussion on each and every conference talk page, I suggest centralizing this discussion at the Talk page of Project College football SPhilbrick  (Talk)  14:27, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

Chart
The new chart for football is great, but it is very misleading to have "all time conference titles" there. Because the article is about the "Mid-American Conference" simply saying "conference titles" most definitely implies this conference. There needs to be some kind of explanation, like a mark and footnote right underneath the chart for any school that has a total number that includes conference titles not in the MAC. Another option is having an "other conference titles" column and a "MAC titles" column or having MAC titles in parenthesis or something. --JonRidinger (talk) 02:57, 23 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Good suggestions. I'm trying to improve the articles for all of the non-AQ conferences. My plan is to add another chart right below that one in the "MAC Champions" section to list all of the teams winning MAC football titles and the years that they won them. I'm thinking a simple footnote would be enough to clarify that those are all-time football titles in all conferences. Since the chart only lists the current teams in the conference and no former teams, I think it's best to keep the all-time titles as is in the chart to best represent the teams currently in the conference. -Treydavis3 (talk) 03:30, 23 April 2012 (UTC)


 * That's the thing, it doesn't represent the teams currently in the conference to list titles won in other conferences. The way it looks now, UMass has won 20 (their article lists 22) titles in the MAC because there is no qualifier for what "all-time conference titles" actually means, nor is there any indication that UMass has not even played a single game in the MAC yet.  I realize that info is elsewhere in the article, but charts like this should be able to stand on their own without having to cross reference other sections.  "All-time conference titles" still sounds like it's referring to the MAC (the article Big 12 Conference football, for instance, has a column for "Big 12 titles").  From a fan's perspective, though, I really don't care that UMass has won 22 titles in other (especially considering they were I-AA) conferences when I come to this article, since the subject of the article is the Mid-American Conference.  So UMass has a bunch of titles from the defunct Yankee Conference and Atlantic 10 football.  How does that help the reader understand the subject of the article (the MAC) better?  Be careful of WP:FANCRUFT or excessive detail.  Also be careful of too many charts.  This article is already full of charts, which is why separate list articles were created, like List of Mid-American Conference champions. --JonRidinger (talk) 05:20, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

Standardize facility sections
See the discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject College baseball.

Discussion about overview maps for US collegiate athletic conferences
A discussion on the Project College Football talk page has been created to discuss the proper format of the overview maps that are used for the US collegiate athletic conference pages.

If you're interested, please join the discussion here: Athletic conference overview maps and their lack of consistency

College Basketball team navigation templates
Please join discussion at the College Basketball Wikiproject for forming a consensus on the creation of a basic navigation template for college basketball teams. CrazyPaco (talk) 09:04, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

Changes reverted
I am reverting the changes made to the footnote regarding SIUE joining the MAC. Coming to light is not the same thing as causing.' Fbdave (talk) 03:57, 4 June 2017 (UTC)