Behold Jordan Lynch. Fear Jordan Lynch. (AP)

Make tonight a MACtion night, won’t you? We’re here to answer any questions you may have, as long as they do not involve divining a winner of the MAC East.

Ohio at Ball State

• What information do I, the discerning consumer, require in order to consume this game? The Bobcats and Cardinals are scheduled to kick off at 8 p.m. ET at Scheumann Stadium. The game will be televised on ESPNU and streamed on WatchESPN.

• What’s at stake here? Jockeying for bowl invites, mostly. Both squads have clinched bowl eligibility, with 8-2 Ohio and 7-3 Ball State each holding a 4-2 record in the conference, respectively.

As to whether Ohio can still win the MAC East: If Kent State loses its last two games, giving it two conference losses, one would have to be to Ohio in the regular-season finale. That would leave both teams with identical 6-2 league records, and Ohio would hold the head-to-head tiebreaker over the Golden Flashes.

But Bowling Green — which is 5-1 in the MAC and beat Ohio last Wednesday — plays Kent State Nov. 17. Both teams can’t lose (and the MAC is very, very good this year, so that isn’t even a joke!), so while the Bobcats could end up tied with the Falcons at two losses apiece, they’ve already lost the tiebreaker.

Ball State, too, has two teams sitting above it in the West standings, Northern Illinois (6-0 in the MAC) and Toledo (5-1). The Cardinals lost to the Huskies in October, so even a two-game skid by NIU wouldn’t help them at all. Ball State holds a head-to-head advantage over Toledo, but a Rockets loss to NIU would only be enough to nudge the Cardinals into second place in the division.

That all make sense? We have now thoroughly confused ourselves, to the point where general consensus in our office is that Johnny Manziel will probably win the MAC East, by himself.

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We will never tire of using this photo of Tyler Tettleton, points and pointing enthusiast. (AP)

A full, uninterrupted week of glorious football continues with a little Wednesday night MACtion. We’re sure you have so many questions. 

• What information do I, the discerning consumer, require in order to consume this game? The Falcons and Bobcats are scheduled to kick off at 8 p.m. ET in Athens’ Peden Stadium. The game will be televised on ESPN2 and streamed on WatchESPN.

• What’s at stake here? With Ohio’s loss to the Miami RedHawks, the Bobcats and Falcons are both 4-1 in league play, trailing 5-0 Kent State in the MAC East. Kent State’s remaining regular-season opponents, by the way: Miami, Bowling Green and Ohio. November in the MAC is gonna be FUN. More sentimentally: A win tonight would wrap up an undefeated home season for the Bobcats (their first since 1988). Ohio has won four of the past five meetings in this series, including last year’s 29-28 nail-biter in Bowling Green.

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Will Branden Oliver and Buffalo buffalo the Golden Flashes? Tune in and find out or we cannot be friends anymore. (AP)

Kent State and Buffalo play the first Wednesday college football game of the year tonight. We’re sure you have so many questions.

• What information do I, the discerning consumer, need to consume this game? The Bulls and Golden Flashes kick off in Buffalo at 7 p.m. ET. The game will be televised on ESPNU. Both teams are 1-1 entering their first conference contest.

• Why should we care? Because MACtion! Weeknight games are the perennial best bet for high-scoring all-nighters.

• But Kent State is averaging fewer than 28 points per game! First, that’s after two games. Second, Buffalo is averaging close to 40. Finally, through two games, there is a statistical certainty that Kent State will do something like this, or like this, on television. We want to be there to see it.

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Banged up tailback Bernard Pierce and Temple are looking to bounce back from their surprising Week 8 loss to Bowling Green. (US PRESSWIRE)

Temple @ Ohio, 8:00 p.m. ET, ESPN: Is it safe to keep calling Temple one of the nation’s best three-loss teams after seeing what that did to Toledo last night? Let’s find out! The Owls have aspirations of AQ conference membership, and have put on a rollicking good show this season, right up until last week. There’s no shame in dropping a game to a team with vastly superior resources like Penn State, and getting clocked by Toledo is a pretty common occurrence this season. But before their Week 9 bye, the Owls sustained a 13-10 loss to Bowling Green, leading to some very familiar-sounding cries against Steve Addazio’s playcalling.

Rockstar tailback Bernard Pierce has been playing hurt — no stranger to hampering injuries, he has been stifled by a recurring hamstring problem in recent weeks — and he’s not getting a lot of help against defenses that now know exactly who he is and that he needs multiple bodies placed in his path. His No. 2, Matt Brown, rushed 22 times for 119 yards against the Falcons, but air support was not forthcoming. Chester Stewart completed seven of 13 passing attempts, and was sacked four times.

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