Before I start let me be clear, there are no recent reports that say the MAC is definitely expanding or that they are talking to us. But the reality is that they lost Temple and could use another football playing school. They could also expand to guard against a possible raid by the Big East or C-USA.

Back in June, App State’s AD Charlie Cobb did mention the MAC saying:

…the Mid-American Conference is one that has had conversations about possible expansion…

So at least it’s a vague possibility. In my opinion, as unlikely as it is, it’s more likely than a WAC, Sun Belt, or C-USA invite at this point, unless more realignment occurs from the top down.

So the question this article asks is, would Appalachian State be a good fit for the MAC? It needs to be a good fit from both ends, so let’s run some numbers:

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I just quickly pulled these numbers off of Wikipedia, so they may be a year or two old. The rest are from the NCAA or the RPI sites. Right off the bat you see that, although every school in the MAC is a public institution like App, we would be the smallest school in the MAC by a couple thousand.

But we’re talking athletics here right? So what do the football attendance numbers look like?

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Although we have the smallest enrollment, we have the largest average football attendance by a huge margin. On top of that, we had a bad year (by our standards) and played against FCS competition. You would have to assume our attendance would be somewhat higher against FBS competition. Naysayers might argue that our losses would increase though which would actually lower it. Who knows, either way, football support is a big point in our favor.

Football isn’t the only show in town though, what about basketball?

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You see that fan support in basketball would be 4th from the bottom, and performance would be 3rd from the bottom but comparable to most schools. Now obviously this is just 1 year’s data and a sample over several years would be more accurate. But we’re just talking ball park estimates here.

The bottom line is, we wouldn’t be the worst, but we’d be slightly below average in basketball. It’s not a point in our favor, but in this football driven world, it’s only a minor point against us.

What about what most would consider the 3rd biggest sport – Baseball?

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This number may be the most skewed. We DID have the best season in our history so it’s not really a number that is reliable. But the fact is, we had far and away the best baseball RPI this year. I think it’s fair to say we would probably move the needle a little bit in this department for the MAC.

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So to wrap it all up, why should the MAC offer us?

1. Football, football, football – We ALREADY have better support than they do. In 2-3 years we’d be running the show.

2. North Carolina Recruiting – Maybe our location doesn’t help an awful lot from a TV contract standpoint (so say the “Experts”) but we would expand the MAC’s recruiting footprint further south into a key state.

3. Baseball – We’d be at or near the top most years.

4. Name recognition – Appalachian State has better name recognition than some of the other potential candidates like JMU, WKU, or MTSU. Perhaps only Delaware would have us beat in that department and only because it’s the name of a State.

5. Did I mention football?

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But is it a good deal for us?

Well frankly our options are pretty limited. If we’re serious about going FBS, we can’t sit around and wait for anybody. We have to take the first reasonable offer we get.

The travel distances are not unreasonable when you take into account that the MAC is broken up into East/West Divisions. UMass (football only) and Buffalo would be the longest trips. That’s actually not that bad at all compared to other conferences. In reality we might actually be closer, distance wise, to the MAC schools than the Sun Belt schools.

The MAC might not be the absolute best fit, but it works, and if we get an offer I hope we take it.

*Let me know what you think in the comments!*