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Toledo looks to Rocket past Marshall

QB Tavares Bolden is one of 16 starters returning from a 10-1 Toledo team.  Ezra O. Shaw/Allsport   1   Marshall   2   Toledo   3   Ohio   4   Western Michigan   5   Akron   6   Miami (Ohio)   7   Northern Illlinois   8   Ball State   9   Bowling Green 10   Central Michigan 11   Kent State 12   Eastern Michigan 13   Buffalo  30 Sacks against Marshall quarterback Byron Leftwich last season. "Missouri is the second-best place I've ever been." -- New Toledo head coach Tom Amstutz, who left town briefly with Gary Pinkel before returning to take Pinkel's place. By Stan Crawley, Special to CNNSI.com Some things never change, especially in the Mid-American Conference, where Marshall is king. Once again, the Thundering Herd is expected to win the East Division, while Toledo is the pick in the West Division for the 2001 season. Last year, Marshall finished a "subpar" 8-5 but still won the MAC championship. "The high point of last year? Winning the championship," Marshall head coach Bob Pruett said. "Our goal every year is to be in that championship game, and anything that comes after that is just gravy on top. For us it was great to take a team of young guys and watch them improve so much from September to the end." In 2001, Marshall should return to its dominant ways -- after the season opener at Florida. "I think we are a better football team, a more experienced football team," Pruett said. "What's the biggest challenge? I always think that the next year is the biggest challenge. Repeating is the biggest challenge." In the West, Toledo will battle Western Michigan for the championship. And neither team will play Marshall during the regular season. Toledo won 10 games last year, but like Miami in 1998, became the second team in modern I-A history with double-digit wins to stay home in the postseason. After winning 50 games in six years, head coach Gary Pinkel left Toledo for Missouri. The Rockets then hired Tom Amstutz to take over the program, who will have former Louisiana Tech head coach Rob Spence as his offensive coordinator. "I know from playing [Louisiana Tech] that I'm impressed with that kind of offense," Amstutz said. "It really tests an opposing defense and is good at getting guys into one-on-one situations with tacklers." Last year on Oct. 5, Western Michigan became the first MAC team to win at Marshall since the Herd rejoined the league. The Broncos will play at Toledo on Nov. 6. Ohio running back Stafford Owens, a redshirt freshman, was an option quarterback in high school, where he led the state of Illinois in rushing touchdowns with 30, rushed for 1,850 yards on only 152 carries and passed for 874 yards. He will play running back at Ohio. Owens made the traveling squad last fall, but the coaches preserved his four seasons of future action, and the guys the players call "Snake" should be the league's top freshman newcomer. HOT: Marshall quarterback Byron Leftwich Threw 21 touchdown passes last year and only nine interceptions. NOT: Ball State running back Anthony Jones Fifth-year senior ran for 515 yards last year but lost his starting job to junior Marcus Merriweather. HOT: Toledo running back Chester Taylor Could rush for 2,000 yards this fall with any luck at all. NOT: Northern Illinois punter Jimmy Erwin Managed only 38 yards per punt last year.   Jim Grobe was destined for a major head-coaching job. After all, he'd taken over an Ohio program that went 0-11 the year before his arrival and brought it to respectability over a six-year period. Grobe was on the verge of coaching his best team yet. The Bobcats return 17 starters from a 7-4 team, including the main components of the nation's second-leading rushing offense. But he and nearly his entire staff (only new OU head man Brian Knorr stayed behind) left for Wake Forest, which competes annually with Duke for the bottom rung of the ACC. The club he left behind may challenge Marshall for East supremacy. Toledo running back Chester Taylor Had 1,470 yards rushing in 11 games last year, and was seventh in the NCAA in rushing and scoring. Marshall linebacker Max Yates The best inside linebacker in the MAC, Yates had 115 tackles last year along with a pair of sacks and interceptions. Marshall wide receiver Darius Watts Has a body like former Marshall star Randy Moss and led his team last year in receiving yards (616) and yards per catch (17.1) on just 36 catches.   There has been some confusion about the league's version of a postseason in 2001. Here is a clarification: The champions of each division are determined by a team's record in games against division opponents only. For teams in the East, that means the league season is six games long. For teams in the West, it's five. Teams also play two teams from the opposite division, though these games can only count for or against a school should it be tied for the division lead and can act as one of the tiebreakers. These inter-division games occur on a rotation basis, with the exception of the game between Bowling Green and Toledo, which is played every year as a rivalry and was a condition of those two nearby schools (20 miles apart) being placed in different divisions. The winners of each division will meet in the nationally televised MAC championship, this year to be played at the home field of the MAC West champion. The MAC champion (Marshall) has gone on to the Motor City Bowl the past four years, but the new GMAC Bowl in Mobile, Ala., will get first selection from the MAC this year and this year only. The Motor City Bowl granted that to help sell the deal in Mobile in year one. Mobile could possibly lock up its MAC team before the title game. The opponent will be a Conference USA team. The deal with Mobile is a two-year contract, with a clause that if the SEC has more bowl-eligible teams than bowl slots (more than seven teams), the GMAC Bowl can drop the MAC and pick up the extra SEC team. Then the MAC contract would extend for an extra year. The Motor City Bowl would then have its pick of the other team from the MAC championship game, and it's assumed it would take a team from the West if Marshall stays true to form and wins the game. ... Don't be surprised if the long-rumored offer to Central Florida to become the MAC's 14th member, in football only, is forthcoming. Expect any potential move by Marshall to Conference USA or any other league to be a longer process, no sooner than 2003 at the earliest. ... Mike DeBord was 2-9 in his first season at Central Michigan. He brought a new commitment to weight training that should start paying dividends this year. ... Eastern Michigan won its first game of the season last year at Connecticut, lost seven in a row and then won two of its last three at home against Central Michigan and Northern Illinois. ... Head coach Dean Pees is 3-30 in three years at Kent State. ... Miami (Ohio) scored 35 points in one half last year in its 45-14 victory against Kent. ... Last season's 6-5 record was the first winning record of Northern Illinois head coach Joe Novak's regime and followed the first winning league record in 1999. ... Ohio's stadium will feature 4,000 more seats this fall by dropping the field and eliminating the track. Terraced end zone seating (similar to that at Virginia) for students and general admission will increase capacity still more in 2002. ... Toledo gained national attention last year by winning at Penn State and will try to beat Minnesota in its season opener Aug. 31. ... Western Michigan earned a win at Iowa last fall, a near miss at Wisconsin and has its sights set on possible upsets this year at Michigan and Virginia Tech.

Stan Crawley covers college football for Blue Ribbon.