The team I follow is Eastern Michigan, so this is mostly a thought exercise for me. This is one of those cases that further the cause of the conference, so it has me interested.
As we look at the current AP Rankings, Western Michigan has cracked the Top 20 but standing at 20. I’m only going to tackle the AP polls in this article as I’m pretty old school when it comes to the polls. The highest a MAC team has climbed is 10th when Miami did it in 1974 and Marshall in 1999. In recent memory, Ball State climbed to #12 in 2008 and Northern Illinois finished the season ranked 22nd in 2012 after it’s pre-BCS game ranking of #16.