Has the MAC Coach Bubble Burst?

How and why the Cradle of Coaches lost its luster post-COVID.

Etched into my dumb, now-30-year-old brain is the image of the cartoonishly large Ben Roethlisberger tiptoeing between the pocket and bazooka bombing MAC defenses through the air in 2003.

I had to look it up to remember that they played Bowling Green (another random MAC favorite of mine) in that faithful 2003 MAC Championship Game. Led by the burly Roethlisberger, the Miami (Ohio) Redhawks beat BGSU in a matchup of Top 25 teams.

Back then, the MAC felt simpler. It wasn’t the Tuesday and Wednesday night magic of #MACtion, quite yet. What it did have, however, is some of the things the conference still hangs its hat on today: Championship variance, an extremely fun brand of ball and rising star head coaches.

But almost twenty years later, it feels like that last part might soon be a distant memory.

Coaches aren’t booming out of the MAC anymore. Not at the rate we’re used to anyway. In this piece, I’ll examine where the MAC stands in 2023, what has caused the drop in coaches making the jump and whether it can ever go back to the way it was.

The MAC Identity

The MAC was born some 77-odd years ago and to this day is still filled with schools reigning from some of America’s most hardworking, blue collar states. You know the ones, the Ohios, Michigans, Illinois and Indianas of the world.

As I eluded to earlier, the MAC is known for a lot of things. One of them being the championship variance amongst its member schools. In the last 10 years alone, there have been six different champions. No other conference can boast that level of competition…not even our beloved SEC.

Another thing the conference is rightfully known for is this idea that it’s the Cradle of Coaches. In reality, it’s Miami (Ohio) who boasts this title, thanks in large part to coaching legacies from the likes of Ara Parseghian, Woody Hayes, Paul Brown, Sean McVay and others.

And while Miami (Ohio) rightuflly gets this crown, I’d argue you could make this statement a blanket one about the conference as a whole. In fact, it’s hard to think of another conference that has churned out so many rising star coaches. Let us not forget, before they got big, Nick Saban, Urban Meyer, Brain Kelly, Butch Jones, Dino Babers, PJ Fleck, Matt Campbell, Lance Leipold and others hailed from MAC Country. It’s a truly incredible list, when you think about it.

That’s what makes this next part so difficult to fathom. The data suggest that the MAC coaching boom is declining, if not screeching to a triumphant halt.

In the last five years, only one MAC coach has “made the jump” to a P5 school. That was Lance Leipold leaving Buffalo for bluer pastures in Lawrence, Kansas. And no disrespect to Leipold, but that was a weird circumstance. KU was in a mess of trouble, fresh off the disastrous David Beaty “violations” and the Les Miles scandal.

The buck seems to have stopped with Leipold.

Sean Lewis, who, quite frankly was a miracle worker at Kent State, went so far as to leave his head coach position to go be the offensive coordinator for Deion Sanders at Colorado. That’s how stuck he was in the MAC.

Post-Leipold and Lewis, there doesn’t seem to be a clear breakout candidate to make the jump anytime soon either.

Let’s dive into what could be the cause for the MAC Coach bubble to burst and where they might go from here.

COVID killed the MAC

This doesn’t solely apply to the MAC, but the COVID-19 pandemic did an absolute number on the conference.

The MAC was one of the first conferences to cancel football in 2020, only for them to reverse their decision and resort to a 6-game, conference-only schedule. This killed a lot of the momentum I feel that the league had. And it’s a damn shame.

Pre-COVID, the league was still riding high off the fumes of Dino Babers’ and PJ Fleck’s triumphant booms to Syracuse and Minnesota respectively. But since then, it feels like the league hasn’t really been able to recover.

While I still very much enjoy the league (and I know a certain subset of the internet agrees), it feels more and more like since COVID and the NFL broadening their Thursday Night Football reach, the league has been forever pigeonholed into the Tuesday and Wednesday night timeslot.

I love #MACtion. Always have, always will. It has a soft spot in my heart. But considering there is so much football at our disposal nowadays, there are times where fans need a break. And unfortunately for the conference, that feels like Tuesday and Wednesday nights.

Transfer Portal Blues

No matter how you try to slice and dice it, the transfer portal primarily hinders MAC schools. It makes it much harder to retain top tier talent.

If you’re a good/great MAC team, nearby P5 schools are going to pick your bones clean of some of year best players. The promise of bigger football and more NIL money can be a helluva drug.

If you’re a bad MAC team, well, buddy, your good players are going to stick out like cartoonishly large sore thumbs and they’re going to get snatched up even faster.

On the other hand, I suppose you could say the transfer portal allows MAC schools to replenish their rosters faster (with JUCO and D-2 type players), but it’s just not the same. Relying on D-2 guys versus proven MAC players isn’t the same thing. Never is and never was.

This phenomena, in turn, makes it harder for these MAC coaches (think the PJ Fleck types) to retain top tier talent, have a killer three-year run and then leave for greener pastures. Instead, they have one year of success and then bottom out like NIU did under Thomas Hammock.

Right now, there are only two coaches I would consider on sustained paths of MAC-level top-tier success. That’s Jason Candle and Chris Creighton. These also happen to be the only guys I could forsee making a jump in a few years’ time. And even then, it feels unlikely. More on that in a minute.

Power 5 Bias

For one reason or another, it just doesn’t feel like schools in the Big 10, ACC or Big 12 are looking for MAC coaches throughout the hiring process.

The proof is in the pudding, I suppose. But furthermore, it just feels like the combination of no “new and exciting candidates” coupled with some recent mixed reviews of coaches who have made the jump, has got the league in this position.

As I said a bit earlier, the MAC is supposed to be a great launch pad for coaches. The recipe is tried and true and goes like this:

• Take your lumps early.

• Build a little success.

• Have two (maybe three if you’re lucky) years of conference-title level success.

• Bounce for a bigger P5 job.

Right now, Candle and Creighton are the only coaches who I could see getting a sniff in the next few years. Ane even then, Candle feels very stuck at Toledo and Creighton (more than Candle) feels veeeeery Eastern Michigan. So much so, these guys have been at their respective schools long enough that it wouldn’t shock me for them to be there a whole lot longer.

This puts the league as a whole in a weird spot.

I’ll leave you with this.

Is is better that more of the league’s coaches are sticking around, which in theory, leads to more continuity and longterm success? Or was it perfect the way it was…where coaches skyrocketed, left for a bigger job, rinse and repeat.

I’m of the opinion it’s more the latter.

The next time you turn on your TV on a Tuesday or Wednesady night in mid-October, only to find a beautiful Western Michigan-Buffalo matchup, consider this: Will you tell your buddies about the time you first discovered this coach, you know before he made it big? Or will this game just fade into your consciousness and be something you don’t think about again past next week?

For all of our sake’s, I hope it’s the former.