Each November, the Mid-American Conference makes the decision to play games in the middle of the week for a little bit of TV exposure.  Of the 19 games remaining involving MAC teams, including the conference championship game, only 3 of those games are on a Saturday.

Exposure is important in college football, but how much does it help these schools to show a limited ESPNU audience half-empty stadiums of shivering fans on a cold Tuesday night in November?   Is the “exposure” of an ESPN360.com webcast really worth taking away a football Saturday from Kent State’s campus and making Temple players lose a couple of days of classroom time to travel to and from a Wednesday night game?

The MAC Conference answers “yes” to those questions.  So let’s take advantage of the MAC’s midweek “exposure” to explore some “conference only” handicapping.

MAC, Sun Belt, and lower level WAC teams use “paycheck games” against BCS conference schools to help fund their programs.   Some schedule more aggressively than others (for the second straight year, Central Michigan is playing three road games at BCS conference locales), but most play two paycheck games per season.

The results of those games aren’t always meaningful.  Sometimes the teams are simply outclassed, and don’t really care.  Central Michigan was much more concerned with their conference title hopes when they lost at Clemson 70-14 last season. Do you really want to punish a team like the Chips by using those stats when they step back into conference play?  Last October Kent State’s Doug Martin rested his starters when the Golden Flashes visited Ohio State, using the visit to Columbus as an opportunity to freshen his most important contributors for the conference season. Martin’s reserved were, of course, waxed by the Buckeyes.

As a result, in the minor conferences, using statistics generated only in conference play can be a worthwhile tool.   Let’s look at the MAC games this week using only stats generated in conference play.  We’ll look at average points and yards per play, both offensively and defensively. Pointspreads are noted, and at the time of this update only the Tuesday night game has a total on it.

Tuesday:  Ball State (-19.5, 54) at Miami.  Ball State has significant advantages in all phases of the game.  Scoring within the conference is 39-15 for BSU vs. 18-31 for Miami.  Yards per play is 6.8-5.1 for BSU and 4.7-5.8 for Miami.

Wednesday: Temple (-2.5) at Kent State.  Temple is a much lower scoring team, with an average result of 17-16 vs. 30-33 for Kent State.  But the underdog Golden Flashes look pretty good from a yardage standpoint.  Temple’s yards per play averages are 4.3-4.5, to Kent State’s 5.9-5.4.  Interesting that home dog Kent State is +0.5 per play in conference play, while road favorite Temple is slightly negative at -0.2.  The injury to quarterback Adam DiMichele hurt the Temple offense for a while, but he’s back now.

Wednesday: Central Michigan @ Northern Illinois (-3). Both teams average a solid win in conference play, CMU 29-24 and NIU 25-18.  But statistics favor the favorite, with Central Michigan 5.6-6.1 and Northern Illinois 5.5-5.3.   That 6.1 defensive yards per play number for CMU may indicate a significant weakness.

Thursday: Buffalo at Akron (-2.5). Scoring stats favor Buffalo, with an average result being a 30-25 win vs. a more narrow 35-34 win for Akron.  Yards per play numbers favor the Zips however, as Buffalo gains and gives up an identical 5.8 yards per play, while Akron is a positive yardage team at 6.1-5.7.

Obviously you have to take a look at how these numbers were earned.  Did an injury to a player that has now returned influence the numbers?  Did a single game where a team either dominated or was blown out skew the averages?  Is a team wearing down and in poor form, or are they improving?

Such questions need to be addressed with all statistical handicapping, but in the “mid-major” conferences it makes good sense to look at conference-only stats at this time of year.