Mac Conference
Nine of the twelve full member schools are in Ohio and Michigan, with single members located in Illinois, Indiana and New York. For football, the MAC participates in the NCAA's Football Bowl Subdivision.
The MAC is headquartered in the Public Square district in downtown Cleveland, Ohio.
The MAC has been referred to as the Conference of Quarterbacks because of the accomplishments of numerous former players in the National Football League. The MAC ranks highest among all eleven NCAA Division I FBS conferences for graduation rates.
Member schools participate in baseball, men's and women's basketball, men's and women's cross-country, field hockey, football, men's and women's golf, women's gymnastics, men's and women's soccer, softball, men's and women's swimming, men's and women's tennis, men's and women's indoor and outdoor track, women's volleyball and wrestling.
Member schools
There are twelve schools with full membership:
Five schools have affiliate membership status:
Division breakdown
History
Former conference logo
The Mid-American Conference charter members were Ohio University, Butler University, the University of Cincinnati, Wayne State University and Western Reserve University, one of the predecessors to today's Case Western Reserve University.
Miami University and Western Michigan University took the place of those charter members for the 1948 season. By the time the University of Cincinnati left after the 1952–1953 season, the MAC had already added University of Toledo (1950), Kent State University (1951) and Bowling Green State University (1952).
The membership stayed steady for the next two decades except for the addition of Marshall University in 1954 and the departure of Western Reserve, which chose to de-emphasize intercollegiate athletics. Marshall was kicked out of the conference in 1969. The first major expansion since the 1950s took place in the mid-1970s with the addition of Central Michigan University and Eastern Michigan University in 1972 and Ball State University and Northern Illinois University in 1973.
The conference became the largest in Division I-A with the re-admittance of Marshall and Northern Illinois and addition of the University at Buffalo's Bulls in 1997 and 1998, respectively. Both tournaments have flourished since moving to Cleveland in 2000, with the men's semi-finals and championship regularly drawing large crowds at Quicken Loans Arena (the 2007 semi-final between Akron and Kent State drew a crowd of more than 15,000).
In 2007, the MAC also announced a format change for both tournaments, bringing all twelve men's and women's teams to Cleveland.