Dispatch
FOOTBALL
Big Ten teams do share, hit road to take on MAC
Wednesday, August 30, 2006
Bob Baptist
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
Coach Terry Hoeppner’s Indiana Hoosiers will play at Ball State of the MAC on Sept. 9.
It will be billed as a happy homecoming when Minnesota coach Glen Mason and two assistants, Mitch Browning and Vic Adamle, return to Kent, Ohio, on Thursday night.
The Gophers open the season at Kent State, where Mason was head coach and Browning and Adamle, a Kent native, were on his staff in 1987 when the Golden Flashes enjoyed a rare winning season.
Mason wishes he was home in Minnesota instead. He didn’t mind saying so, either, during Big Ten media days in Chicago this month.
"It’s like if you ask me, ‘Why did you decide to redo the back yard?’ I say, ‘My wife made that decision,’ " he said.
"You might read into it that, because I was the coach at Kent State, that’s why we’re going there. But that’s not how it fell out."
Mason isn’t the only Big Ten coach taking his team on the road to play a Mid-American Conference team in its opener.
Northwestern will have an emotional night at Miami on Thursday in its first game since the June death of coach Randy Walker, a former Miami player and coach. Wisconsin plays Bowling Green in Cleveland Browns Stadium on Saturday night.
Next week, Indiana plays at Ball State. A year ago, the Hoosiers opened at Central Michigan.
"I look for it to happen more and more," said Browning, standing in for Mason yesterday on the Big Ten coaches’ weekly teleconference. "If you’re one of the so-called rich schools, the Ohio States, the Michigans, the Notre Dames, obviously they don’t have to schedule these away games like some of us other people in the Big Ten do."
It’s a sign of the economic times. Teams such as Minnesota, Indiana and Northwestern, whose home attendance averages were among the four lowest in the Big Ten last season, can’t afford to pay the road guarantees some MAC teams now demand because of the higher profile the conference has gained in recent seasons.
Big Ten teams also have been forced to cut deals to add 12 th games. All of the games mentioned previously are part of two-for-one deals in which the Big Ten team plays host to two games and the MAC team one, with the home team keeping all gate receipts.
"We’ll probably have to make some visits to stadiums that Big Ten teams haven’t made in the past," Indiana coach Terry Hoeppner said.
Bowling Green wanted Wisconsin to visit Doyt Perry Stadium, but the Badgers would only play in Cleveland, where they have recruited well. NFL receivers Chris Chambers and Lee Evans took that pipeline.
"We have a strong representation of Ohio in this program," first-year coach Bret Bielema said. "We’re excited to get to that neck of the woods."
Not so Mason. He wouldn’t have minded so much in another year. But it left Minnesota with only six home games this season. Northwestern is the only other Big Ten team that doesn’t have seven.
With the addition of the 12 th game, teams now must win seven games to qualify for a bowl game.
bbaptist@dispatch.com