Can the MAC become the Mountain West of the Midwest?

The landscape of college football is changing. For years the sport has been dominated by the six Bowl Championship Series (BCS) conferences, but a few stubborn schools out west have refused to accept their role as "smalltime players" in the college football world, and year after year they have found a way to continue to climb the ladder and challenge the big boys with consistent success and determination.

With the news of even more potential college football realignment this summer and possible huge power shifts in the college football world, it's time the Mid-American Conference (MAC) takes note and brings that stubborn attitude to the Midwest so as to not be left behind.

Technically Miami and all of the other schools in the MAC are Division I college football teams. But realistically, Miami and Toledo's chances of ever getting to play in a Division I national championship are about as good as Division II schools like Montana and Appalachian State. In other words, zero chance.

Certainly Division I means more money and revenue, but when it comes to striving for the glory of an undefeated season, what's the reward for a team in the MAC — the GMAC Bowl, the International Bowl, the Little Caesars Pizza Bowl? An undefeated season for a school like Ohio State means a more than likely trip to a national championship and an undefeated season for one of Miami's biggest rivals, Cincinnati, means a trip to a BCS bowl game.

There are 120 Division I schools in college football, and every year only about half (of those schools in BCS conferences), 66 to be exact, can have any realistic hope for reaching a BCS game or national championship. Add to that the four little schools out west that are writing their own rules (we'll get to them later), and that makes it 70 out of 120 schools that hope to have a shot at a title. When you take out the 20 or so BCS schools that are rarely competitive, however, the number is then reduced to 50 schools that hope to have a shot at a title or BCS game.

Experts will argue that a team with Miami's strength of schedule does not stack up to teams in BCS conferences, and you know what, they're right. As unfortunate as it is to admit, when it comes to football the MAC is a relatively weak conference. Rivals.com recently came out with a preseason top 120 team countdown. The countdown ranked every team in college football from 1 to 120. Using that information I compiled the average team ranking for each Division I conference, and here are the results:

Sun Belt…97

MAC…92

WAC…81

CUSA…77

MWC…65

ACC…47

Big Ten…46

Big 12…44

Big East…44

Pac-Ten…42

SEC…36

From that list it's easy to see where the MAC and Miami currently stand in college football. With four teams ranked outside of the top 100 (including Miami at 116) and the second lowest average for team rankings, it's clear the conference must do something to become more competitive.

I believe that answer can be found in the Mountain West Conference (MWC). Every college football fan knows that for a better part of the last decade, the MWC has been the most powerful non-BCS conference, and with plans to add Boise State, Nevada and Fresno State in the future, the loss of Utah to the Pac-Ten shouldn't hurt them at all. The MWC even has a realistic chance at becoming the seventh BCS conference.

The automatic bowl bids for the MAC include the aforementioned GMAC Bowl, International Bowl and Little Caesars Pizza Bowl. The automatic bowl bids for the MWC are the Maaco Las Vegas Bowl, SDCCU Poinsettia Bowl, Bell Helicopter Armed Forces Bowl and the Roady's Humanitarian Bowl. The list of automatic bowl bids for the MWC is just as unimpressive as the MAC's, and yet somehow almost every year a team out of the MWC, or future MWC member Boise State, becomes a BCS buster.

In 2005, Utah became the first MWC team in a BCS bowl, beating Pitt in the Fiesta Bowl, 35-7. In the 2007 Fiesta Bowl, Boise State had perhaps the biggest BCS upset of all time, beating Oklahoma 43-42 in a barrage of trick plays that ended in one of the most famous marriage proposals in sports history. In 2009, Utah beat an Alabama team that would go on to win the national championship the following year in the Sugar Bowl 31-17. In 2010, two non-BCS conference teams squared off for the first time ever in a BCS game, with Texas Christian University (TCU) topping Boise State 17-10 in the Fiesta Bowl.

Hold on a second before you say, "Whoa, whoa, the Mountain West is a bigger conference with bigger schools and bigger programs, the MAC couldn't possibly emulate their success." Give me a chance to prove you wrong.

After researching enrollment rates at universities in both conferences by using information found at stateuniversity.com, I found that the MAC actually has almost 100,000 more students enrolled in their universities than the MWC. Just for fun I also compared the MAC to arguably the most dominant division in college football, the Southeastern Conference (SEC), and found that just by comparing the size of the universities in the conferences, the MAC is a lot closer to the SEC than you may think. 

MAC

Akron…21,882

Ball State…20,030

Bowling Green…19,108

Buffalo…27,823

Central Michigan…26,710

Eastern Michigan…22,950

Kent State…22,697

Miami…16,329

Northern Ill…25,313

Ohio…20,610

Temple…33,865

Toledo…19,374