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The Mount Rushmore of Mid-American Conference (MAC) coaches stands alone in college football history. 

Miami (Ohio) University has been the starting block for legendary coaches like Ara Parseghian, Bo Schembechler, Woody Hayes, Paul Brown, John Harbaugh, and others. The school earned the moniker “The Cradle of Coaches” for its incredible pipeline of coaching talent. And while Miami University boasts arguably the most impressive coaching lineage, the league as a whole has an impressive track record for churning out rising-star head coaches. 

Before making it to the Power 4 stage, the likes of Nick Saban, Urban Meyer, Brian Kelly, Butch Jones, PJ Fleck, Dino Babers, Matt Campbell, Lance Leipold, and others dazzled in MAC country. 

Years ago, being a MAC coach meant you could win with a physical, gritty identity. It meant embodying “culture” and doing more than most on a shoestring budget. It was the ultimate proof of concept. If you could win with underrecruited players on frigid, cold nights in DeKalb, you could win anywhere. 

That’s what makes the next part such a bummer.

In the last five years, only one sitting MAC head football coach has made the jump from the MAC to the Power 4 ranks. In 2021, Lance Leipold left Buffalo for Kansas after the Jayhawks endured strange circumstances, fresh off David Beaty’s NCAA violations and the Les Miles scandal. Leipold took over in April, a timing so bizarre that it required a perfect storm for a P4 school to break the MAC’s glass ceiling. 

Outside of Leipold, the well has dried up, leaving MAC head coaches in limbo on whether to stay on as head coaches in their current league or to take a demotion but move on to the P4 ranks. The latest example of this trend came a few weeks ago when Northern Illinois head coach Thomas Hammock left the Huskies in mid-February to take a position coach role with the Seattle Seahawks. 

The Cradle of Coaches hasn’t stopped producing good coaching talent, but bigger programs have stopped relying on those coaches to take over more prestigious jobs. We’ve entered The Bottleneck Era. ADs have all but given up on hiring from the MAC, instead relying on established retreads or hot-shot coordinators from the Power 4.

Now, the choice for these coaches is grim: stay in the MAC to fight an uphill NIL and talent battle, or take a non-linear path to get your foot in the P4 door.

The MAC coach fast track didn’t just slow down, it came to a screaching halt And it’s left the good ole days feeling like a distant memory.

I know I’m not alone in saying that MACtion has a special place in my college football heart. 

There’s something nostalgic about thinking back to the days of Jordan Lynch shredding at Northern Illinois or Antonio Gates lighting it up at Kent State. Where I come from, Tuesday and Wednesday night MACtion is a thing of beauty and not something I take for granted.

And while MACtion is incredible for college football sickos, I’m torn on whether it’s good for the league as a whole. Sure, MAC schools get “primetime” TV slots they wouldn’t otherwise get on a full Saturday slate, but what does it mean for the perception of the conference? 

Unless you’re a MAC football diehard, the league has essentially been relegated to “midweek TV inventory”, which makes the product feel a bit like a novelty and less like appointment viewing. I have no doubts about whether the general public enjoys hammering the under on an Akron-Ball State showdown. But the gulf between MACtion and the Power 2 has never felt farther apart. And I think at this point, it’s difficult to convince a sitting Power 4 AD that your next 10-win coach is playing in mid-week ESPN timeslots.

As far back as the mid-2010s, the path to a P4 job was clear. Win nine or 10 games at a place like Western Michigan or Toledo enough times, and a bigger school would snatch you up. It was a harmonious balancing act of the college football ecosystem. The MAC served as a proving ground—and in return for sustained success, MAC coaches got rewarded with chances to test themselves at a bigger program down the road. 

But the new reality has changed drastically. Now, Power 4 ADs are bypassing sustained MAC winners in favor of P4 retreads or shiny, new toy coordinators. 

It took a strange set of circumstances for Lance Leipold to get a shot at the Kansas job. And while Leipold parlayed his MAC success into a more prestigious job, others haven’t been so lucky. 

The textbook case of “Getting Stuck in the MAC” came for a coach like Toledo’s Jason Candle. In 11 years as the Rockets’ head coach, Candle won 11 games twice, nine games twice, and eight games in back-to-back seasons to close out his MAC coaching career. He even won the league title on two separate occasions, in 2017 and 2022. 

But with every mounting win came the same question: Why hasn’t Jason Candle gotten plucked yet? Candle eventually caved, and this offseason, took a job at UConn instead of sticking around in the MAC. 

Perhaps P4 programs think winning at the MAC level isn’t flashy enough. Maybe they think deep-pocketed boosters won’t pay up for a MAC coach. Or maybe, in the case of Candle, P4 ADs felt like his Toledo teams held a talent advantage over the rest of the league, which made it hard to pinpoint his true coaching abilities. Whatever it is, it’s created a huge bottleneck for winning MAC coaches hoping for upward mobility.

One of the more pure aspects of MAC football was that it used to be a place where coaches developed diamonds in the rough over four years. Now? MAC coaches do the hard work of recruiting and developing a star, only for that player to leave after a season or two chasing a bigger NIL bag at a Power 4 school. The game is the game in that regard, but it does make roster continuity and consistent winning in the league that much harder. 

That type of roster turnover poses an interesting question: How can a coach build a consistent winner if his best players are essentially on one-year deals? And does the league as a whole suffer from the lack of consistent star power year-to-year? 

Certainly, the MAC isn’t the only conference to see this fate. G5 schools across the country are fighting similar battles. But it doesn’t make the circumstances any easier. 

MACtion is weird, wonderful, and delightful in all the best ways. For my money, it’s one of the purest forms of college football we have left. There’s something heartwarming about watching gritty players, hard-working coaches, and some of the most loyal fans in all the land freeze their butts off for the love of the game. 

The next time you turn on Western Michigan vs. Ohio on a Tuesday or Wednesday night in mid-October, remember that. Cherish the chaos. Relish that, in a sport obsessed with super leagues and College Football Playoff bids, we still have the sanctuary that is MACtion. 

And remember, although the league doesn’t platform coaches in the same way it used to, the MAC is still a crucial part of college football’s core, and it shouldn’t be taken for granted.

The 2026 college football offseason has brought a fascinating wave of coordinator changes at some of the sport's most prominent programs. In this college football podcast episode, we take a look at some of the most intriguing new coordinator hires and evaluate what each new coach has to fix. From defensive overhauls at USC and Texas to offensive shifts at Ohio State and Penn State, we dig into what each new coordinator is walking into and what kind of renovation is required.

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