Surprise, surprise, MAC schedule is huge slap in northwest Ohio’s face

With the Mid-American Conference releasing its 2023 football schedule on Wednesday, you know what that means.

It’s time for fans in northwest Ohio to take their medicine.

See where the league slotted the Toledo-Bowling Green game again?

In an all-too-familiar pill, it will be played not on a Saturday afternoon in October where it belongs but a Tuesday night the week before Thanksgiving.

I would suggest a robocaller peddling oceanfront time shares in Indiana cares more about their customers than the MAC — and the TV network to which it’s beholden — does about theirs, but that might be misleading.

That implies the league cares at all.

Sorry, but what the hell?

If the MAC would prefer we stop beating this dead horse, here’s a deal: We’ll give it up once the league gives us back our game.

And, yes, I mean our game.

Your game.

The Toledo-Bowling Green game should belong to the community.

To the students, boosters, fans, and taxpayers who subsidize the football programs in the first place.

How many times do we have to shout it from the top row of the Glass Bowl or the Doyt?

When it comes to playing the Battle of I-75 on a frosted November weeknight for the benefit of a downstream ESPN channel, the alleged raising of the game’s profile on a national level is NOT worth killing it on a local level.

Our backyard rivalry should be a civic celebration and the centerpiece of the area sports calendar, not throwaway inventory in the MAC’s cut-rate deal with ESPN.

You might have thought the suits would finally have taken the hint after last season, when the whipsawing final minutes of Bowling Green’s 42-35 win over Toledo — a thriller ESPN itself named the 50th-best game of the 2022 college football season — played out before no more than a couple thousand shivering diehards.

Clearly not.

With the MAC and ESPN, indifference springs eternal.

Now, some will counter that I’m a hardheaded moron — get in line! — and insist all MACtion is great.

Oh, and isn’t it a sign of respect that ESPN chooses the Toledo-BG game for its late-season weeknight lineup?

Actually, no.

I’m a fan of MACtion in moderation and would even be in favor of UT-BG getting the occasional national spotlight, if ESPN put the game on one of its main networks.

The problem is ESPN walks over the rivalry like it’s an old throw rug.

Since 2016, the four UT-BG games played on a November weeknight have all been relegated to ESPNU or CBS Sports Network, the latter of which is a sublicensee in the league TV deal.

Translation: Next to no one is watching.

While CBS Sports Network figures are not available, an ESPN spokesman told me the two Battle of I-75 games on ESPNU in that span averaged 91,000 viewers, including last season’s Tuesday night thriller.

That equals a 0.1 rating, a grade to which Blutarsky might aspire but few others.

For context, I looked up the Nielsen numbers from last Tuesday. Know what shows drew more eyeballs than the MAC’s best rivalry on ESPNU? Reruns of hits such as Sex Before the Internet (9 p.m., Vice TV, 102,000 viewers), Underground Wrestling (10 p.m., Reelz Channel, 97,000), and The Real Housewives of Potomac (11:30 p.m., Bravo, 162,000), along with at least 135 other cable shows.

I think back again to last year’s game. If it had been on a sun-splashed Saturday, you can picture the scene. We’ve seen it. It would have been an all-day party, with tailgaters filling campus, fans packing the Glass Bowl, and back-and-forth roars ricocheting through the old stadium.

Instead, we got a half-empty stadium for the benefit of half the TV audience of a midnight airing of The Real Housewives of Potomac.

The Red Sox owner who sold off Babe Ruth thinks that’s a joke of a trade.

So does everyone at Toledo and Bowling Green.

“Neither team has control over the schedule,” BG coach Scot Loeffler texted, “but I would assume both schools would love to play this rivalry on a Saturday.”

He assumes correctly.

“Obviously, this is a rivalry that’s dear to many people in northwest Ohio and it’s a game we look forward to every year,” Toledo’s Jason Candle said. “I’d love to see that game played on a Saturday where families can come watch during the day and really enjoy the pageantry of college football, because that game really does it for northwest Ohio, and, really the state of Ohio, in my opinion.”

In the MAC’s defense, it’s limited by its puppeteer, ESPN.

A few years ago, I asked the conference which party technically has the final say on the schedule: ESPN or the MAC?

“Hmm,” league commissioner Jon Steinbrecher said. “I guess it’s summed up as we make best efforts to accommodate their request.”

You can read between the lines.

Regardless, something has to change.

The league’s deal with ESPN — which runs through 2026 and is believed to pay schools about $1 million per year — isn’t worth nearly enough to allow some executive in Connecticut to gratuitously hold our most anticipated local sporting event hostage.

It’s time for UT and BG leaders to remember the MAC works for the universities, not vice versa, and make their voices clear. There must be language in the next TV contract that protects the league’s top rivalries.

Either ESPN needs to give Toledo-Bowling Green a real national spotlight, or it should give northwest Ohio its rivalry back.

Contact David Briggs at: dbriggs@theblade.com, or on Twitter @DBriggsBlade.