Mid American Conference Football Power Rankings

By Tim Riordan@UBBullRun Oct 17, 2021, 10:03am EDT

Northern Illinois v Michigan

	Team	Pre	Δ	Comment
1	Northern Illinois	1	0	Survive and advance. Bowling Green played the Huskies well but NIU reains the lone unbeaten in conference play on a 210 yard rushing day by Jay Ducker.
2	Western MIchigan	5	3	WMU's second half against Kent showed the potential of this team. It's really looking like a horse race (see what I did there) between WMU, NIU, and maybe Ball State
3	Ball State	4	1	Speaking of the Cards, Ben Bryant's 331 yard game lifted them over EMU and after a really sluggish start to the season they are right back in the thick of it
4	Toledo	2	-2	The Rockets are falling back to Earth, taking the opposite trajectory to that of Ball State. I almost dropped them below CMU but an OT loss on the won't drop you three.
5	Central Michigan	9	4	But an OT win on the road will raise you four. The Chips have a really rough set of games ahead of them, including the top three in my rankings, but they could bowl this year.
6	Kent State	3	-3	Kent just got bombed by WMU, and normally I'd not drop them this far for that. But I don't see a team in the West, outside of EMU, that they beat at this point.
7	Eastern Michigan	6	-1	Tough loss at home for EMU they are now two games off the pace being set by NIU and there may not be enough football left to catch them. Still they should find six wins.
8	Miami	7	-1	Miami beat Akron, but in that win managed to make the Akron passing game look decent.
9	Buffalo	8	-1	Buffalo's not going to get far if they keep taking whole quarters of the game off. UB could win eight games this year, or lose everyone on their schedule. Neither would surprise.
10	Bowling Green	11	1	Bowling Green continues to play very well for a 2-5 team. They gave NIU a decent game and despite the 0-3 record in conference are playing pretty well.
11	Akron	10	-1	I would not say "Akron is playing well", but they are not playing nearly as badly as Zips teams have been in recent years.
12	Ohio	12	0	Normally a game that close would have lifted a team out of the basement, ahead of Akron, but the way Ohio lost is kind of how their season is going.