First-year head coach Darrell Hazell is seeing things from the other side of the fence.

Hazell was a member of Jim Tressel's coaching staff at Ohio State, where he coached the wide receivers as well as handling associate head coaching duties, and he has been in the role of getting Goliath ready for David.

Ohio State usually hosts another in-state team early in the season, bringing the Bowling Greens, Kent States, Akrons and Ohio Universities of the world to Ohio Stadium for a guaranteed payday...as well as a guaranteed loss.

Hazell knows what it takes to get a team ready for an inferior opponent.

"One of the things we used to tell the guys at Ohio State is that you better be ready and you better have your best game," Hazell said. "Teams aren't that far apart and if you aren't on your game you could find yourself in a dogfight in the fourth quarter."

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University of Akron head coach Rob Ianello, entering his second season at the helm of the Zips, likes how his rebuilding process is unfolding. After landing a deep, talented 23-player recruiting class that featured a number of top prospects, Ianello and his staff are working to see positive results and build on some of the small on-field accomplishments they saw during Akron's 1-11 2010 campaign.

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Maybe it was pride and ambition, maybe it was the facilities (or lack thereof) or possibly it was frustration...for some reason Geno Ford, who spent three seasons as head coach at Kent State University, has turned his back on the Golden Flashes with four years remaining on his contract and accepted the head coaching position at Bradley University in Peoria, Ill.

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The expanding size, scope and hype of the Tournament have benefited the less-prestigious conferences in general, and the MAC has gotten in where it fits in as well. Seven Mid-American Conference members- Kent, Ohio, Miami, Ball State and all three directional Michigan schools- have combined for sixteen wins since 1989; four of those teams have survived past the final weekend and Kent State got to within a game of the Final Four in 2002.

Here are their most memorable stories.

Before there were Sixty-Four

Founded in 1946, the Mid-American Conference first received an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament in seven years later, when O.G. Miami represented the conference. In those archaic days the MAC champion was always slotted in the old Mideast Region and was almost always road-kill against the representatives from the Big Ten, SEC and independent powers like Marquette, Notre Dame and DePaul. Despite the presence of great individual talents such as Bowling Green’s Nate Thurmond, Toledo’s Steve Mix and Central Michigan’s Dan Roundfield the MAC, then as now, was usually one-and-done in the Dance.

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