2025 College Football Review: MAC

Photo by Kent State Athletics

The MAC, as expected, gave us some of the worst teams in FBS this season.

But two of the ones we expected would be there actually surprised everyone.

Biggest Surprise: Akron Zips & Kent State Golden Flashes

I couldn’t pick between the two.

These two teams were expected to be just absolutely awful, and they had huge preseason distractions with Akron being academically ineligible for a bowl game, and Kent State losing their head coach just before the season.

And yet, both of these schools finished up at 5-7 on the season.

Sure, that’s not a winning season, but it is still a far cry from where we expected they would be this year.

Biggest Disappointment: UMass Minutemen

Do you know how bad your season has to be for me to have absolutely zero expectations for you and still be the most disappointing team in the conference?

This season was a miserable, abject disaster for the Minutemen.

It was so bad, it made me wonder if they even need to have a football program.

Which is sad to say, but is this worth it?

What I Got Right

Did I think Western Michigan were going to be title contenders in the MAC this year? No.

But I did say coach Lance Taylor would keep the progress going into this season and keep building up Western Michigan.

Winning the conference title counts as progress!

What I Got Wrong

“There is no hope for this football team.”

That’s what I said about Kent State in the preseason.

Dead wrong.

Coach Of The Year: Mark Carney

Mark Carney took over as the Kent State head coach just before the season began due to the firing of Kenni Burns.

That, as well as the history of Kent State football, made me think this would be a complete throw away season.

But Mark Carney had this team playing hard all year and got them to a a 5-7 year.

Just an amazing season for the Golden Flashes.

Player Of The Year: Nadame Tucker

Western Michigan won the MAC title due to the play of their defense, ranking 46th in the country by SP+, and edge rusher Nadame Tucker was the key factor in that with 14.5 sacks.

Team Of The Year: Kent State Golden Flashes

I can’t stress enough how impressive this year was from Kent State.

It was the most shocking team of the season, and they only won 5 games! That’s how bad they were projected to be!

I know they didn’t make a bowl game, but they won this blog’s MAC team of the year.

Which would they rather have?

Probably the bowl game, that’s fair.