“Did you eat a lot of paint chips when you were a kid?” 

That iconic line from the 1995 smash-hit comedy Tommy Boy was about stupidity. But if you didn’t know any better, it might just apply to MAC football conference affiliation in 2026. 

You see, MAC football used to be the Tommy Boy Conference, with two guys from Ohio driving to places like Cleveland, Sandusky, and Milwaukee, and getting back home by Sunday. It was a league built on the concept of Rust Belt schools close enough to properly hate their next-door neighbor. It was beautiful. 

Now? The conference, much like the bigger leagues across the Power 4, stretches from coast to coast. On Saturday, UMass opens conference play in Sacramento. I’m not sure Tommy Callahan’s Plymouth could’ve made the 2,900-mile trip.

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The MAC used to be one of the most geographically coherent conferences in all of college football. 

Bowling Green and Toledo are separated by 25 miles. Now the conference opens its season with a game that requires a lengthy flight across multiple time zones. 

How did we get here? 

As of July 1, 2025, UMass officially became the 13th member of the Mid-American Conference. It was a move that made sense for many reasons. Back in 2012, UMass made the jump up to the FBS ranks in football. The Minutemen originally joined the MAC, if only briefly, before later playing football as an independent. 

For nine seasons, UMass endured a difficult and expensive existence in FBS, cobbling together schedules, receiving no conference revenue, and, year to year, having no guaranteed games. The Minutemen cycled through three different coaches, never made a bowl game, and in the final year of independence, went 0-5 against MAC teams.

Last season, UMass embarked on its second debut season in MAC country. The football program predictably fell flat, finishing 0-12 in head coach Joe Harasymiak’s first season at the helm.

This season has a different story. UMass notably knocked off Rutgers as 29.5-point underdogs in Week 1, and has quietly morphed into one of the feel-good stories of a young season. This program looks revitalized in Year 2 under Harasymiak.

Before diving into what happened with Sacramento State, you must first remember what happened with Northern Illinois. 

In January 2025, NIU shocked the college football world by announcing that the school would join the Mountain West starting in 2026. 

For many, the move felt like it came out of left field.

Why would one of the MAC’s flagship programs leave and go west? Why would NIU trade in traditional rivalries and stability for the relative unknowns of a new league? 

The move was another domino to fall in college sports’ ongoing conference realignment process that saw the Mountain West lose Boise State, Colorado State, Fresno State, San Diego State, and Utah State to the reborn Pac-12. The Mountain West later added North Dakota State and now features Air Force, Hawai’i, UNLV, Nevada, North Dakota State, Northern Illinois, New Mexico, San Jose State, UTEP, and Wyoming.

The next part is where things get very strange.

Back in February, the MAC added Sacramento State as the league’s 13th football member. But the way the Hornets got here, and what it took to make this agreement happen, is all sorts of confusing. 

In June 2025, Sacramento State announced it would leave the Big Sky Conference, effective June 30, 2026, and move its non-football sports to the Big West. The original plan was for the football program to play the 2026 football season as an independent, with many speculating the Hornets were angling for a chance to join the new-look Pac-12 Conference. The NCAA denied the school’s waiver to play as an independent. 

That left Sacramento State in an incredibly awkward position, having already left the Big Sky, their non-football sports in the Big West, and no football conference to play in. Something needed to come together, and quickly.

On February 14, the MAC presidents voted to add Sacramento State, but not without a catch. According to Matt Brown of Extra Points, Sacramento State had to pay a $5 million fee to the NCAA to reclassify to FBS, and reportedly had to pay a whopping $18 million to the MAC for the privilege of joining the league on a five-year term. 

After the announcement, according to Richard Johnson of CBS Sports, the school’s president posted on social media to highlight the theoretical impact of Sacramento State joining the MAC for the next five years. Let’s just say those estimates feel generous at best. 

The whole sequence from Sacramento State leaving the Big Sky (and becoming the first university on the West Coast to go from the FCS to the FBS in over 50 years) to joining the MAC took less than eight months. A wild situation indeed.

This Saturday, UMass will make the lengthy trek westward to take on Sacramento State in a game that makes very little sense. 

But football is football. None of us are footing the bill. And if you’re a real MAC football sicko, I suspect you’ll enjoy the game regardless of the strange circumstances. 

In the end, Tommy Callahan made it home. I think the MAC is still trying to figure out where that is. 

College Football Week 4 is absolutely loaded, and we’re breaking down as much of it as humanly possible.

We start with Texas traveling to Tennessee for its first true road test, then turn to Oregon-USC and a major prove-it game for both programs. Plus, why Ole Miss-Florida has all the makings of the mother of all letdown games, whether Michigan can create enough offense against Iowa, and what to make of Oklahoma State-West Virginia.

Then we bring back the Quadfather to rip through the rest of a massive slate, including Oklahoma-Georgia, Utah-Iowa State, Wisconsin-Penn State, Texas A&M-LSU, Missouri-Mississippi State, South Carolina-Alabama, Clemson-Cal and much more.

Plus: our Week 4 picks, locks of the week, the Window of Opportunity and the games flying under the radar.

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