Over The Pylon

Admittedly, the MAC blogosphere has been an evolving little gem over the last several years. I guess as the MACtion on the field hit fever pitch, the MACtion on the web stepped up their game as well. What has also evolved is the MAC Roundtable. It’s not like King Arthur’s with turkey legs and wenches running around in corsets, because let’s be honest: turkey legs are a gigantic pain in the ass to eat and the service region for the MAC doesn’t lend itself well to females capable of squeezing into anything other than a giant rubbermaid trash can (Exception: the state of Indiana and BSU specifically). Have you seen some of the slumpbusters from Michigan and Ohio? Gooo. I’d rather spend an evening with a lit piece of sandpaper. But I digress.

The host of this week’s roundtable is Carter, from Eagle Totem, your one-stop shop for all things EMU related. That’s Eastern Michigan the school, not emus the animals, but with the season EMU is likely to have, writing about animals may be more satisfying. Off we go!

1. This weekend the MAC suffered four losses by 38 points or more, with Massachusetts losing 48-7, Bowling Green losing 68-17, EMU losing 73-14, and Northern Illinois losing 52-14. Is the payday worth the price in reputation?

I guess I would argue that the thumpings this weekend didn’t diminish the reputation because there wasn’t some stellar shiny reputation before those curbstompings. Usually, there are a couple good to decent MAC schools per year, but when they go up against real teams past week 1, they aren’t given much of a shot unless they are the special kind of MAC team like NIU the last couple years or BSU the last couple years. I guess my thoughts on MAC honor given the losses would be sort of like Chris Jericho doing a shoot on Stephanie McMahon when he first came to the WWE. After her husband came to her aid while Y2J was destroying her verbally, Jericho said to Triple H, “It must be hard to defend the honor of a woman who has none.” Then he called her a bottom feeding trash bag ho and we all laughed. Oh, good times.

2. How has your perception of the conference race changed since the pre-season? Which team(s) have most disappointed and which have most impressed you so far?

I’d say it’s safe to say that I’ve been impressed with NIU more than any other, thanks largely to the fact that they were the first team to three wins and frankly, I expected some level of drop off. That’s going to happen, eventually, right? This damn team can’t be that good for that long forever. It’s like the guy on your floor in college that was great at sports, exceptionally muscular, got all the chicks, had a great singing voice, and came from a wealthy family. I spent an inordinate amount of time hoping that guy got syphilis and died. You can die from that, right?

In terms of disappointment, I’d say Ball State has been significantly disappointing for me personally. We knew things were going to take a step back but suffice to say none of us expected the drop-off to be so significant. I’m not used to this level of disappointment and unfulfilled feelings. I now know how all of my girlfriends have felt at some point or another.

3. If your team could replay one down from this fall and get a different result, what down and why?

I would think that every Ball State fan’s answer would be the same on this one: the final Indiana State play that was perhaps the oddest play I’ve seen in…. forever. It was a cacophony of suck where QBs were getting tackled inbounds with no timeouts and under 15 seconds to play, offensive linemen were dawdling back to the line, someone handed the ball to a teammate rather than an official, and then the official just dropped it as the clock ticked down to zero. If it wasn’t so heartbreaking it would be funny, but it is just sad. Sad that BSU had such a comedy of errors and sad the MAC employs such incompetent boobs to wear referee uniforms on Saturdays.

Got ideas of your own to the above questions? Comment section. And… go.

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