College Football Previews 2025: The MAC

Split Zone Duo: College Football Podcast

Richard Johnson and Alex Kirshner

News, Sports, Sports News, Football

4.9 • 916 Ratings

🗓️ 22 July 2025

⏱️ 71 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Conference previews continue with the MAC. Alex and Richard break down every team in the league, including new entrant UMass:

* Toledo still has the best hand

* Miami is poised to contend (again) after getting portal-raided (again)

* Buffalo is in a great place after the first year of Pete Lembo

* Ohio defends its first MAC championship in decades and enters the season with one of the most fun QBs in college football, Parker Navarro

* NIU loses pretty much everything ahead of its last year in the conference

* Eastern Michigan has a great returning receiver, and what else?

* Bowling Green brings on Eddie George in one of most interesting coach moves of the year

* UMass returns to the MAC after a decade away … and we find ourselves more optimistic about the Minutemen than we’ve ever been

* Western Michigan might have this year’s Harold Fannin Jr.

* Central Michigan is doing something different with new coach Matt Drinkall, and that’s all you can ask

* Same for Ball State under new hire Mike Uremovich

* Akron appears to be a bleak situation

* Kent State undoubtedly is

Plus, preseason superlatives for the Mid-American.

Catch up on all of our conference previews

So far, we’ve done these:

* Pac-12 and FBS independents

* Sun Belt

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* Use SZD20 for 20% off your first order at Homefield.

* Enter your favorite CFB road trip at our Nokian Tyres landing page, and you’ll be entered in a drawing to win free tires.

Producer: Anthony Vito

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.splitzoneduo.com/subscribe

Transcript

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0:00.0	We're coming and we ain't backing down.
0:01.9	We don't need a bunch of cats in here.
0:03.4	Looking in the mirror.
0:04.6	Everybody just do your job.
0:04.2	You understand that? Hey, were you shut up? I'm bitterly disappointed with the officiating today. Guys being dudes. And they run through our like a shit through a ten horn, man. Ah, fuck it. Thank you, Lee. Thank you, Split Zone Duo listeners. I'm Alex Kirshner, joined here by my co-host Richard Johnson.
0:05.8	Richard, MacTime. It's... Thank you, Lee. Thank you split zone duo listeners. I'm Alex Kirshner, joined here by my co-host, Richard
0:22.3	Johnson. Richard Mack time. It's, well, it's Tuesday as we record it. Hopefully this episode
0:28.0	comes out Wednesday. So yeah, prime action, baby. Yeah, we're doing it at the appropriate time of the
0:34.4	week. The season preview season rolls long. We are going to keep doing these one or two a week or so on average until we are through
0:42.3	all of FBS and have done some FCS work at the end of August.
0:45.9	If it's your first split zone duo preview, you'll learn the drill quickly.
0:49.4	We're going roses, buds, and thorns for every team in the conference.
0:53.7	Rose thing we think we're going to like,
0:55.7	bud thing we're kind of curious to see. Thorne, thing we don't really like, have some concerns
1:00.4	about. Richard, as we get into Maction here, you're going to kick us off with the program that
1:05.6	just about every year is most widely considered to be the favorite in this conference.
1:11.7	Your friend in mine, Toledo, do not believe they have had a losing season in,
1:18.6	I think like 10 years, probably more than 10 years, if I have that correct.
1:23.7	It might be even 15. So the expectations are the expectations for them.
1:29.7	And the expectation is win the league.
1:31.7	And if you win the league because of our current format,
1:34.8	you at least have some, some chance significant of being the G5 ventured into the college ball
	...

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