In a long overdue move, the Mid American Conference is finally looking to profit from its boom in popularity the last couple years. The conference is planning to put an official stamp on one of the most fashionable college football trends to develop in the Twitter age – #MACtion.
MAC commish Jon Steinbrecher confirmed the trademark application to CBSSports.com and said t-shirts could be on their way. T-shirts! (Side note: I just crossed off 3/4 of my Christmas shopping lists.) It's not known whether or not the league included the hashtag in the trademark application, but here's hoping they'll get both #MACtion and MACtion varieties for the hip social media crowd and the old fashioned midwestern crowd.
The lovable mid-major conference in America's heartland has gained a whole new following thanks to exciting, high scoring games and midweek Tuesday and Wednesday night games nationally televised on ESPN against little competition. It's amazing how something so simple like midweek games and an identifiable brand could help a league so much. Think about the mid-major conferences in college football and how much the profile of the MAC has grown in recent years compared to the Sun Belt, Conference USA, and Mountain West. With realignment, you may not even be able to name 25% of teams in those leagues anymore. In fact, in this age of circling the conference wagons, the MAC's distinctive brand may be only second to the SEC.
But more importantly than anything, the MAC is home to good football teams. Bruce Feldman has an excellent story on the MAC's on-field rise which could come to a climax with the league's first ever BCS Bowl bid this year. If #17 Kent State defeats #21 NIU in the MAC championship game this week and #16 UCLA loses the Pac 12 title game at Stanford (both a decent chance of happening), the Golden Flashes could gain an automatic bid for finishing in the BCS Top 16. For the future prospects of #MACtion, t-shirt sales, and fans of everything that makes America great, let's hope it happens.
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