Arizona State's rejection for bowl eligibility might open a door for Western Michigan.
View full sizeAkron linebacker Matt Little dives in vain after Western Michigan's Jordan White during their game in October at InfoCision Stadium. DETROIT — It's all off the record, but here is the water cooler scuttlebutt at the Mid-American Conference Championship game at 'Ford Field.
It starts with the news that Arizona State was denied its NCAA appeal to be bowl eligible. The Sun Devils are 6-6, but two of their victories came over Football Championship Subdivision teams. It takes a minimum of six victories to be bowl eligible, and only one of those six can be against a lower-level FCS team.
When ASU was dropped by San Jose State before the season, it left the Sun Devils short a major-conference team. The irony is, supposedly one of the teams they tried to schedule was Western Michigan, which turned ASU down. As it stands now, 6-6 WMU is bowl eligible but ASU is not. No WMU official was at the MAC title game to confirm or deny this.
Scuttlebutt II: Word is, the league's interest in UMass for football is a big leverage stick aimed at the Temple Owls. Temple must decide by the first of the year if it wants to extend its allegiance to the MAC for football, or end it after the 2012 season.
If the decision is to stay, then UMass will be welcomed to partner with the Owls, and (hopefully) the MAC will see fit to (a) get both to sign a long-term deal and (b) have a seven-figure buyout clause for both if they leave early. The fallout would be another team added to a small MAC post-season bowl pool (three guaranteed) and Bowling Green once again becomes the pawn, moving from the MAC East Division back to the MAC West, where it began when the league first went to divisional play in 1997.
If Temple opts to end its association with the MAC, UMass would be put on the back burner until the league found another team, preferably one interested in all-sports status, which would then put some pressure on the Minutemen to join the league in all sports as well.
Scuttlebutt III: The bowl situation for MAC teams continues to be in a state offlux, with the possibility of an All-MAC bowl game in Detroit (Little Caesar's Bowl)still on the table. Games today in the Sun Belt Conference (Middle Tennessee 5-6 vs. Florida International, 6-5 ) and the Pac 10 (Washington, 5-6 vs. Washington State, 2-9) are critical to getting more eligible bowl teams, a Sun Belt team to Detroit and/or keeping two MAC teams from playing each other.
"This is not our fault," one MAC person said of the possibility of two MAC teams in a bowl. "We did our job getting six teams bowl eligible. Other conferences may be coming up short."
The secondary bowl problem could come from Mobile, Ala., with the GoDaddy.com Bowl. Should a ranked MAC team fall to them (the Little Caesar's Bowl has first MAC choice this season) it is doubtful they would pass to allow them to play another ranked team in another bowl game. That certainly is not going to happen in Mobile where another Sun Belt team is slated to play there, also.
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