From probable to paused: How the MAC's imminent expansion evaporated

Nov. 13—BOWLING GREEN, Ky. — A buzz was in the air last Saturday on the campus of Western Kentucky University.

Middle Tennessee State was in town for one of the best-named rivalries in college sports: 100 miles of hate. And earlier in the week word circulated that, if approved by Mid-American Conference presidents, the century-old rivals would join the MAC, pushing the Midwestern-based conference into the South and strengthening the league's résumé in the three biggest sports — football and men's and women's basketball.

"I'm definitely for it," said Mark Deml, who earned his master's degree at MTSU in 2007. "I think there's more opportunity. Don't get me wrong, Conference USA has been good. But there's more opportunity from a financial standpoint, for athletics, and for the fans. It's a different flavor. We've been in Conference USA for a while now. It'd be good to venture out."

Deml's opinions were in line with the vast majority of Middle Tennessee State fans to whom The Blade spoke, the social media reaction, and by scrolling through Blue Raider message boards. But university leadership at the Murfreesboro, Tenn., school was already slowplaying the MAC.

By Wednesday, 24 hours after a board of trustees meeting, Middle Tennessee announced that it would stay put in Conference USA.

MTSU president Sidney McPhee, sources with knowledge of the situation told The Blade, was hesitant to leave Conference USA because of the looming exit fees from nine schools that have fled the league, with each C-USA member projected to receive as much as $3 million.

Industry sources consider his rationale a short-term conclusion in a long-term sphere, as conference realignment is a 50-year endeavor.

Recruiting was another consideration, as MTSU only has a handful of players on its football roster from MAC states. The vast majority of its recruiting is in Tennessee and the Deep South. Of course, it works both ways. Joining the MAC would have made MTSU an alluring landing spot for players from Ohio and Michigan.

The decision left Western Kentucky on an island, all alone in the conference realignment wilderness. WKU did not hide its intentions. It wanted in the MAC with or without Middle Tennessee.

However, hours after MTSU's declaration, MAC commissioner Jon Steinbrecher released a statement that put expansion talk to rest.

The Louisville to Nashville corridor was attractive to the MAC, several sources told The Blade. But when Middle Tennessee was taken out of the equation, the regional appeal took a hit, and the MAC wasn't interested in a 13-team conference.

"I really enjoyed the dialogue I had with everybody associated with the MAC," Western Kentucky athletic director Todd Stewart told The Blade. "I had conversations with athletic directors. Our president had conversations with presidents. I had multiple conversations with commissioner Steinbrecher and his staff, and I really enjoyed it. I have a lot of respect for everybody. The league clearly has good, strong leadership, and it was something we would have loved to be a part of. We were hoping it was going to work out, and certainly, we were disappointed when it didn't."

MTSU's reluctance and the MAC's final decision left Western Kentucky fans feeling spurned, with most of the vitriol directed at their archrival for what they believed to be a short-sided financial decision that negatively affected the future of WKU athletics.

"The fans are stakeholders," Stewart said. "They are our shareholders, so to speak. When word initially got out that the MAC might be a possibility, the response was overwhelmingly positive. I anticipated that it would be good, but it was even better than I thought. Everyone I ran into expressed how much they hoped it would get done, across the board. The more people looked at it, the more it made sense."

When MAC ADs met virtually Nov. 1 to discuss expansion, there was consensus that Western Kentucky and Middle Tennessee brought value to the conference and that ADs were in favor of their addition. MAC presidents had a positive discussion that evening, though there was dissension in the room, according to sources who are familiar with the process.

"You expand for two reasons," one MAC source told The Blade, "to survive, and we're not in survival mode, and you expand to make yourself better and stronger."

Western Kentucky and Middle Tennessee fit the bill. Not only do the schools fit the MAC's geographic footprint and academic profile, they have quality athletic programs.

Since WKU joined Conference USA in 2014, the Hilltoppers have a league-best 32 championships, eight more than MTSU, which ranked second. The current 3.19 student-athlete GPA is the highest in Western Kentucky history.

The men's basketball program has the 15th-most wins in Division I history and 23 NCAA tournament appearances (seven in the last 20 years), including the 1971 Final Four. Women's basketball has appeared in 20 NCAA tournaments and three Final Fours since 1985. The football team has won two C-USA championships and played in six bowl games in the past seven seasons.

Middle Tennessee joined Conference USA one year before WKU. In eight years, the Blue Raiders have appeared in five bowl games. Men's basketball has played in three of the past nine NCAA tournaments, upsetting No. 2 seed Michigan State in 2016 and fifth-seeded Minnesota in 2017. The women's basketball program has 19 NCAA tournament appearances.

According to federal records, Middle Tennessee spent $34.8 million on athletics last year, which would have ranked second in the MAC, behind Miami ($37.8 million). Western Kentucky's $26.6 million would have been eighth. Toledo spent $32.3 million, and Bowling Green spent $24.7 million.

Western Kentucky and Middle Tennessee's inclusion in the MAC could have been a death knell for Conference USA, which lost nine of 14 members in recent weeks to the AAC and Sun Belt. WKU and MTSU would have been the 19th and 20th schools to bolt from their conference during the current round of realignment, which began with Texas and Oklahoma leaving the Big 12 for the SEC.

"I've always been a fan of the MAC just from a brand perspective," 2012 WKU graduate Cole Claybourn said. "They're really good at basketball and football, [sports] that Western is competitive at. I think [we'd] fit in nicely. A lot of the games are within driving distance. I think it's a step up in conferences. The bottom schools in the Sun Belt and Conference USA have brought the level of competition down. My hope is that some years we could get an at-large bid in basketball."

The MAC's stability was the top reason why Western Kentucky and Middle Tennessee considered the conference. The 12-team league has experienced minimal movement over the past half-century. The universities are geographic, cultural, and academic fits. The longest road trip in the MAC is 602 miles — DeKalb, Ill., to Amherst, N.Y.

With the addition of New Mexico State, Sam Houston State, Jacksonville State, and Liberty, Conference USA's trips of over 600 miles surpass 20. The longest is a 1,981-mile expedition from Las Cruces, N.M., to Miami.

"I think the MAC is a great conference," said Rob Rutherford, a 1993 Western Kentucky graduate. "We're a little more in the South, so I don't know how we'd fit in with northern schools, but it would be interesting. We play Texas-San Antonio and Texas-El Paso, which are so far away. MTSU is only 100 miles away, so it would be nice to keep that. A more local feel would be better for us."

Conference USA's television contract is considered to be the worst of any FBS conference, with schools receiving $400,000 per year for games to be broadcast on CBS Sports Network, ESPN Plus, Facebook, and Stadium. Prior to the conference splintering in 2013-14 — as Central Florida, Houston, SMU, Tulane, Memphis, East Carolina, and Tulsa left for the AAC — C-USA had a $14 million TV deal, which paid out $1 million to each school.

In 2014, the MAC and ESPN agreed to a 13-year, $10 million contract. Each school gets about $1 million per year.

Every MAC home game is on the ESPN family of networks or CBS Sports Network. Midweek games have critics, but they come with exposure and a nickname: "MACtion." Fans have been driven away from watching C-USA games and recruiting has been negatively impacted due to confusion with the league's many platforms.

Western Kentucky and Middle Tennessee fans harped about the location of C-USA's basketball tournament in Frisco, Texas, and on-campus sites for the football championship game. WKU brass was excited about the possibility of playing at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse in Cleveland and Ford Field in Detroit.

All is now quiet on the MAC realignment front, but the conference continuously examines its options.

Western Kentucky and Middle Tennessee could be in a similar position in a couple of years, or if MTSU is determined to stay put, WKU could be paired with another school.

The conference is focused on the FBS level, though several members of the Missouri Valley Conference make sense: Youngstown State, Indiana State, Illinois State, and Northern Iowa, among them. The golden goose would be North Dakota State, an FCS powerhouse with a strong national brand and NFL cachet.

Western Kentucky will be waiting.

"If it made sense today, which it did, I would think it would make sense in the future," Stewart said. "I don't think conference realignment is finished. There will be more of it to come. For the same reasons that it was a really good fit now, I think it would be a really good fit in the future. But you can't be in two conferences at one time. We're in Conference USA, and it's been very good to us, and that's what our focus is on right now."