Catching Up: Week 0 MACtion vs. Sacramento State

Author’s Note: I’ve been absent from the writing game for a while. But now I’m back. Let’s catch up on some old headlines.

Sacramento State might not really be in the Mid-American Conference until its toes are really standing in it. Well, look no further than Ypsilanti on Week 0 of this year, because that’s exactly where it’ll get its true introduction to the MAC. Eastern Michigan will host new MAC football-only member Sac State on August 29 to begin the season.

Forty-three years ago, Week 0 was used as a way to make a big spectacle out of a single game. The country’s top-ranked team, Nebraska, elbow-dropped #4 Penn State 44-6 at Giants Stadium in New Brunswick, then the rest of the college football season kicked off a week later in 1983.

Then Week 0 was used to give Hawai’i a 13th game on the schedule. Not because the Rainbow Warriors need more football on their schedule than anybody else, but because an extra game on the schedule would help offset traveling costs (driving busses would be cheaper, but it’s Hawai’i).

Sac State at EMU might not reach the heights of a Nebraska versus Penn State — but in a world full of football fans desperate to watch something weird and funny: I think we’ve correctly captured that.

Sac State is going to be so far deep into the MAC that it’ll have its very first snaps played with the conference’s patch sewn onto its uniforms be played on the grey turf of EMU. And there won’t be many other games that weekend to be otherwise distracted by. How lovely?

Other games going on that day: North Carolina vs. TCU (in Dublin, Ireland), NC State vs. Virginia (in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil), Hawai’i at Stanford, New Mexico State at Florida State, Memphis at UNLV, San Jose State at USC, and Jacksonville State at North Dakota State.

I’m not over here saying millions of people will bring in millions of eyeballs to… wherever this game gets aired. But is it unfair to say at least a few thousand people will be at least a little bit curious enough to check out the scene?

While the Week 0 slot is different, this isn’t the first time EMU has opened the season with a conference opponent. Far from it. When EMU first joined the MAC in 1976, EMU opened its first two seasons with three-straight conference matchups. EMU hosted Ohio to a 23-7 loss in the 1976 opener, then won at Northern Illinois 25-2 to begin the ‘77 season.

In 1980, the first four games of the season were against MAC foes. EMU lost the season opener at WMU 37 to 0. But EMU would get WMU back with a 1986 season-opening win at Rynearson Stadium (21-14).

From 1976 through 2012, EMU has opened up its seasons against MAC teams 12 times. EMU has won 6 of these MAC season openers, and four of those six win have come at home.

EMU is 4-1 in season openers vs. MAC foes; the only loss of such came back in its introduction to the league. On the road, EMU’s record is 2-5.

The 2020 season was, well, the 2020 season — only six games and MAC teams only played league games. On Nov. 4, EMU had its season opener at Kent State and lost by 4 (27-23).

In 2024, while UMass at the time wasn’t in the MAC (again) yet, the two did play each other in the season opener (EMU won 28-14).

As I wrote recently about Eastern’s non-conference games scheduled through 2036, this year’s schedule got really, really funky in a hurry. The two reasons why: the ACC pulled up its pants by forcing a 9-game conference schedule for its members this year, and Sacramento State’s $18 million self-invitation to the MAC.

EMU expected to open this season up with a Week 1 home game vs. San Jose State, then go to Michigan State, then host FCS Lindenwood before going to Marshall. But the ACC’s decision to go to a 9-game conference schedule meant teams like Pitt had to drop a non-conference game, like its scheduled road trip to Wisconsin in Week 3 this year. Pitt at Wisconsin was dropped, Wisconsin added EMU to its schedule, and EMU was able to punt the Marshall trip to 2031, and Lindenwood’s game moved down a week.

That was in November. Then, Sac State to the MAC officially turned into a thing in February. The MAC ended up being the last FBS conference to release its schedules for the 2026 season, and Sac State’s first opponent, as you should know this far into reading, will be Week 0 at EMU in always sunny Ypsilanti.

So EMU will instead open with Sac State, then host the Hornets’ neighbors SJSU, face two Big Ten teams on the road, then come home to Lindenwood as the team’s fifth opponent on Week 4. In October, EMU will have faced its sixth through ninth opponents of the year before seeing a Halloween-time bye week: at UMass and Akron, home to Toledo, then at Ohio. For midweek MACtion festivities, EMU will play three games at three different stadiums: Ford Field in Detroit vs. Central Michigan, at Waldo Stadium to see Western Michigan, then return home to face Kent State at Rynearson Stadium.