A November kickoff to the football season will be foreign territory for both the Central Michigan Chippewas (8-6 in 2019) and the Ohio Bobcats (7-6 in 2019) when they take the field on Wednesday night in front of the ESPN cameras, but nothing has been especially familiar in 2020— except for the return of football to the fall season.
The MAC elected to have all cross-division games to kick off the truncated 2020 football season, resulting in the first meeting between these two programs since 2017, when CMU escaped Athens with a 26-23 road victory.
CMU will begin their West division title defense in the recently-renovated Kelly/Shorts Stadium, seeking to show in the second year of Jim McElwain that 2019’s growth wasn’t a simple fluke.