| Daily Blog • March 2nd, 2011 |
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2010 was also a banner year for several MAC players including Toledo WR/KR Eric Page who was named 1st-Tm All-America by several different services after avg 31.3 yds per return with 3 TD’s. Page also had 99 rec (11.2) and 8 TD’s.
Also Northern Illinois RB Chad Spann was voted as the conference’s top football player after rushing for 1,388 yds (5.4) and set the NIU school record with 22 rushing touchdowns in a single season and he finished his career with 50 career touchdowns.
Finally Buffalo DB Davonte Shannon became one of only 4 players in MAC history to be named 1st Team All-MAC four times!
This year figures to be just as exciting for the MAC as they announced their 2011 football schedules on Monday, which is nearly a month earlier than usual.
The schedule will feature at least 15 regular season games on the ESPN networks and the regular season will conclude with the 14th MAC Championship game on Friday, December 2 at Ford Field in Detroit on ESPN2. This will be the 8th year the game will be played at Ford Field.
The schedule will also feature a non-conference slate of opponents from 5 of the BCS conferences including 11 games against the Big Ten, 9 games vs the Big East, 4 games vs the Big 12, 3 games vs the SEC, and 2 games vs the ACC.
The season kicks off on Thursday, September 1st with four MAC teams in action highlighted by Bowling Green traveling to Idaho in a rematch of an exciting 2009 Humanitarian Bowl. Also on that day Villanova plays Temple in Owls coach Steve Addazio’s debut as the past two meetings have gone down to the final minute.
The 1st Saturday of the college football season will see the MAC playing 6 games against BCS conference teams highlighted by Western Michigan playing at in-state foe Michigan in Brady Hoke’s debut, Kent St travels down to Tuscaloosa to take on Alabama and Ball St hosts Indiana in the very first college game played at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis.
September 17th features several key non-conference matchups. First, Boise St travels east to take on Toledo. Also Temple hosts Penn St and defending Big 10 champ Wisconsin takes on Northern Illinois at Soldier Field in Chicago in the 2nd college game played there recently.
October 1st will see the first Saturday with a lot of conference action highlighted by Toledo traveling to Temple while October 15th is the first Saturday with nothing but conference games highlighted by rivalries such as Toledo at Bowling Green, Eastern Michigan at Central Michigan and a key game in the MAC West with Western Michigan at Northern Illinois.
The month of November will see the MAC play at least 15 mid-week league games televised by the ESPN networks highlighted by Northern Illinois at Toledo on Tuesday, November 1. The regular season action concludes on Friday, November 25 featuring 5 conference games including Toledo at Ball St, Buffalo at Bowling Green and Kent St at Temple.
To get complete schedules on all 13 MAC schools click here and make sure to select any game to get all the matchups played between the two teams in the last 13 years with complete statistics including first downs, rushing, passing, sacks, TO’s and much more.
Also don’t forget to check out our Spring Central section to get all the conference schedules, coaching changes, who’s back/who’s not and all the NFL Draft early entrants.
Finally within the next week we will start our coverage of the 2011 NFL Draft with bios on all the top players at each position complete with stats, strengths, weaknesses and projections on what round they will be drafted only at PhilSteele.com!