"There's a lot of people talking about Group of 5, Power 4, the money and the resources and NIL. It's about the players and it's about lining up and banging heads and [may] the best man win. You saw that [Saturday]." -- Northern Illinois athletic director Sean Frazier, after the Huskies' 2024 upset of Notre Dame.
The MAC is proof that a big tent can produce occasionally incredible things. As college football keeps trending toward closing up shop and distributing more money to fewer schools, and as the idea of a so-called "super league" -- one that would either limit or completely eliminate opportunities for MAC-level schools -- continues to waft around, this league and its teams keep trying to find ways to make noise.