Kent State University's Schedule Makers Are Diabolical For What They're Doing To Their Players

Part of playing football in the MAC is that once a year (or at least once every couple of years), you'll be forced to play an early season matchup with a power conference team that will most likely blow your doors off. Playing power conference schools was honestly one of my favorite things about growing Bowling Green Falcons fan. Don't get me wrong, it definitely sucked sometimes. But every once in a while the stars would align, the Falcons would catch someone on a down year, and we'd pull off the upset. 

Those are the moments you live for as a MAC fan. That's when #MACtion magic happens. Those games give you the opportunity for headlines like this.

Typically the MAC is good for at least one notable upset a year. But most of the time, the they smacked around in those games. Still… the MAC needs games like that to pay the bills. Normally, they're only forced to play one or two of them a year. And even when they have multiple, one of those teams is usually someone like a Purdue, Boston College, Mississippi State, etc. Teams that should handle a MAC schools with ease, but aren't guaranteed to beat the living shit out of them in embarrassing fashion.

Unless you're the Kent State Golden Flashes. The Kent State Golden Flashes have been willingly throwing themselves to the wolves for years on end. Part of it is bad luck. But not really. Obviously, these games are scheduled years in advance. They can't know for sure how formidable their opponent will be in the future. But they can have an idea. There's a difference between scheduling Georgia and Vanderbilt. Or Penn State and Rutgers. The way Kent State schedules …. Flashes fans can pretty much pencil themselves in for 2 top ten beat downs every god damn season.

Of all the Kent State's football schedules, this year's Golden Flashes might just have the most outrageous one of them all. This truly must be one of the toughest non-conference schedules in the history of non-conference schedules. Notre Dame doesn't even schedule like this.

Very kind of Kent State's schedule makers to throw Merrimack in there. But aside for that, their non-conference schedule feature three teams who going into Week 6 are in the AP Top 11. That's diabolical. Kent State isn't just your regular mid-tier MAC program either. Kent State is year after year a bottom 10… if not bottom 5… if not bottom 1 team in D1 college football. Kent State's administration sending their football team to collect checks at Texas Tech, Florida State, and Oklahoma all in one year is downright cruel. And 2025 isn't an outlier. It's probably the toughest schedule they've had yet. But for the last 5 years (with a rare exception in 2023) Kent State has been borderline masochistic in the way they've scheduled. Aside from that exception in 2023, it's been 3 power conference matchups for Kent State no matter what. Not the fledgling power conference schools either. The good ones. 5 out of the last 6 years, Kent State has played at least two non-conference opponents while they were in the top 10.

2024

2023 (this was their year… unfortunately it didn't matter)

2022 (Washington finished #12 this year, Michael Penix Jr.'s first season)

2021

2019 (no non-conference games in 2020, COVID year)

This doesn't happen with other MAC schools. Not even close. Rarely do other MAC schools schedule more than 2 power conference opponents. Every once in a while they'll do 3. But it's not every year. And it's not the "cream of the crop" power conference programs like Kent State insists on scheduling. 

Now to be fair to Kent State's schedule makers, Kent State could schedule three games vs the Sun Belt and still probably get blown out. So if you're going to get your ass kicked regardless, you might as well get paid for it. To be even more fair, Kent State closed their fiscal year in 2024 with a $9.9M deficit. So maybe this is their way of digging themselves out of that hole. Maybe this is their only option if they want to keep funding a football program at all. 

But holy shit. Kinda mean to put the fate of your university on the backs of these kids like that. What a miserable way for the players to start every season. That can't be good for recruiting. Who would ever want to subject themselves to that? I get their school is in financial trouble, but at this point (after two 50-point losses to Texas Tech and Florida State) I'm surprised they even have a roster's worth of healthy players left to roll out to slaughter vs Oklahoma. 

Good luck out there today Flashes. I would love nothing more than for you to make me eat my words. But I don't have a great feeling about it.