Select kickoff times announced
With only 98 days left until kickoff, the MAC announced kickoff times for most games have been announced for this year’s schedule on Thursday afternoon. A few notes from the announcement:
- I didn’t initially realize that the Ohio at Louisiana was actually a Thursday night matchup — Week 3, Sept. 16 at 8 p.m. This was already the G5 vs. G5 porn I — nay, we — needed, but now I’m happy to know that this is the only FBS show in town so it’s going to have the proper ESPN treatment.
- Tuesday, Nov. 2 is the MAC’s start of weeknight games. We’ll have EMU at Toledo, Ball State at Akron, and Miami at Ohio with the usual rotation of channels that’ll be sorted out later: ESPN2, ESPNU, and CBSSN.
- The only November-Saturday games in 2021: Kent State at Akron (Week 12 — Nov. 20 at noon), Miami at Kent State (Week 13 — Nov. 27), and Akron at Toledo (Week 13 — Nov. 27).
- The Quick Lane Bowl won’t be until the 27th of December this year. This bowl game is always on the 26th, but Sundays are for the NFL which means college bowl games must bow down and not suffer low TV ratings. Nobody’s going to be playing at Ford Field on the 26th — Lions are at the Falcons this weekend — but it’s 2021 and TV contracts still effectively run the world.
I don’t care to go too much deeper than that on this topic because, well, there’s only so much excitement I can muster up over kickoff times, but the thing is getting closer. But when we get there, I beg of you this one thing: please don’t call it “back to normal.”
Notes from the transfer portal
Akron
- CB Jordyn Riley came to Akron as one of Terry Bowden’s recruits and now he’ll go play for him again. The former starting corner is committed to transfer to UL-Monroe where Bowden was recently hired as its new head coach.
- DLs Eric Bentley and John Mitchell have their names in the portal.
- Backup corner A.J. Felton, who came in from UVA-Wise (D2) last year, is in the portal.
Buffalo
- One guy I’m looking to see where he lands is DT Eddie Wilson. After seeing OL Jacob Gall quickly find himself at Baylor through the portal, it’s not a stretch to think that Wilson could find himself at a P5 school: especially since he’s done a good job at a position that doesn’t have enough playmakers nationally.
Miami
- Unless there’s some info that I just don’t know about, nobody’s transferring into Miami. It almost had RB Isaiah Bowser, but he’s headed to UCF instead to play for Gus Malzahn. Miami, a private school, requires better grades/academic standing than many public schools (especially at the G5 level) so brining *in* transfers requires more standards than most. Not everybody gets to treat this thing like it’s free agency.
Misc. plans
Recording a new podcast episode either later tonight or early tomorrow morning. Non-conference previews are coming up, so it’ll be fun to use pretty much all of next month dialing in on teams outside of the league because I feel like I get VERY tunnel-visioned when it comes to paying attention to the college game.
Also for the podcast, I do plan on starting my notes for a new series exclusive only to my supporters on Patreon. I can’t tell you anything else other than this: The current plan is to have it be a 10-part series.
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