Five things to think about for MAC media day

MAC Media Day is Wednesday, kicking off the 2026 season — one that portends interesting things in the league. 

Northern Illinois is out the door, and Sacramento State walks in (as a football-only member), and three new head coaches are at the helm across the league: Mike Jacobs at Toledo, John Hauser at Ohio, Alonzo Carter at Sacramento State. 

Reigning champions Western Michigan have a squad that looks hard to unseat as they gun for a repeat, but the likes of Ohio, Miami (OH), Toledo and Central Michigan, among others, would love to unseat them. 

So here’s five things to keep on the lookout for entering Wednesday.

What does commissioner Jon Steinbrecher say? 

Steinbrecher has been unafraid to speak his mind of late, particularly his message from spring meetings about conferences and institutions acting in naked self-interest and the lack of care for the bigger, broader operation of college athletics. 

There’s plenty still at play in regards to college sports, with wrangling in congress and new NCAA eligibility rules recently being approved. While he’s sure to make a bulk of his remarks about the upcoming football season and boosting the MAC, it’s also likely that Steinbrecher wades in on some of the pressing matters in college sports. 

Welcome to the midwest, Sacramento State

If the Sacramento State to the MAC move didn’t, or doesn’t feel real, it’ll come into focus on Wednesday when head coach Alonzo Carter and a pair of student athletes join the rest of the conference in Detroit. And frankly, it’s hard to peg how this whole gambit will play out. 

The schedule lines up rather favorably, but it’s also hard to bet on a team making the FCS-to-FBS jump successfully without a long record of success at the FCS level prior. Sacramento State has been good in the Big Sky, but it’s not North Dakota State. How the Hornets carry themselves through the league will be worth watching. 

Chris Creighton and Chuck Martin: Co-deans of MAC coaching

Chris Creighton is now more than a dozen years into his tenure coaching Eastern Michigan, starting on Year 13 this fall. He and Miami (OH) coach Chuck Martin, also entering Year 13, are the deans of the MAC coaching ranks. Both have been broadly successful at their stops, with Martin winning a pair of MAC titles and Creighton leading EMU to its best era in program history, including an extended run of bowl games. 

And Creighton this year is trying to get EMU into the MAC title game for the first time in program history. It’s hard to say how much longer each coach will be at the helm — Creighton turned 57 in February, Martin turned 58 in January — but both have been around this long for a reason, and have teams that could contend for a conference title this year. It’s just rare for coaching tenures to run this long these days, and neither of these coaches seem poised to slow down soon. 

Do all three Michigan directionals get picked in the top half of the league? 

It’s a safe bet that Western Michigan will be picked at or near the top of the league, returning plenty of starting and coaching experience from a 10-win conference championship team a year ago. But Central Michigan and Eastern Michigan each have a path to get there, too, and could be picked in the top half of the league for this year. 

EMU returns plenty on offense and in the secondary and the return of the MAC’s 2025 leading passer, Noah Kim, at quarterback portends good things for the offense. A reworked defense taking hold would really put Eastern Michigan in a good spot. Central Michigan should have one of the best offensive lines in the league and no shortage of weapons and ways to attack on offense. The defense has questions, but defensive coordinator Sean Cronin seems bullish on how this crop of defensive talent can pan out. 

How the MAC fits in the machinations of college football, at large

Much of the chatter in college football this summer fundamentally centered around two things: Congressional movements on legislation for college sports (death of the House bill, introduction of the Senate’s Protect College Sports Act) and the eligibility ruling and fallout around Brendan Sorsby at Texas Tech. And both of those things really come back to a basic set of questions: Who gets to play college football? And who makes the rules about who gets to play college football?

Right now, the MAC is aligned with most every conference that isnt the SEC or Big Ten in being generally supportive of the PCSA, which would address a number of things but is seemingly increasingly unlikely to pass amidst pushback from the SEC, Big Ten and, moreover, elected officials from those states. This all relates back to the first point and Steinbrecher’s address, but Mitten Football has also spoken with coaches and athletic directors in the MAC throughout the summer who are, generally, wanting more order and stability. And though its not an autonomy conference, the MAC will play a role — and certainly try to keep playing football on the field — in whatever new paradigm gets put in place.