Roosevelt Nix says it hit him on the ride home. He was on a JetBlue flight out of Newark with his Kent State teammates and a bunch of guys started yelling, "Turn the channel!" He quickly jabbed at his armrest console and there was his team, Kent State, beating Rutgers, on the highlights.

"That was something new," he says, laughing.

Very new.

The Golden Flashes beat a ranked team last weekend for the first time ever – the program played its first game in 1920 – shocking unbeaten and 18th-ranked Rutgers 35-23. Kent State has won five straight for the first time since 1940, and its seven wins are fifth-most in school history.

The crazy thing is, Kent State is only one of several surprises in its conference. The unheralded MAC, once a collection of whipping boys for Big Ten powers, has six bowl eligible teams and four one-loss teams (Ohio, Toledo, Northern Illinois and Kent State). A conference virtually ignored by realignment is now the most improved in the nation. By the end of October, MAC teams had 16 wins over non-conference FBS opponents.

"We've got some people that deserve some attention," says commissioner Jon Steinbrecher in an understatement typical of the Midwest.

Those people are everywhere you turn in the MAC. Toledo's head coach, Matt Campbell, is only 32 years old. His record in less than a year at his job is 9-1. (The one loss came on the road against Arizona, which just beat No. 10 USC.) Dri Archer, of Kent State, is second in the nation in all-purpose running. Bowling Green's Chris Jones is tied for tops in the nation with 11½ sacks.







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Oregon vs. USC





For most of the last half century, the USC Trojans have been the power in West Coast college football. The numbers are staggering: 37 conference championships (in the Pacific Coast Conference, Athletic Association of Western Universities, Pac-8 and Pac-10) and 11 national championships.

By comparison, the Oregon Ducks are mere neophytes struggling to find daylight underneath the giant shadow cast by the Men of Troy. The Ducks have 11 conference titles, four in the old PCC, six in the Pac-10 and the first Pac-12 title in 2011.

But the Ducks have made a remarkable journey from relative obscurity over the past decade. They played for a national title in 2010, losing to Auburn on a last-second field goal. While the pundits believed this would be the year that USC would set the West Coast football world right, Oregon has just kept on keeping on.

The Trojans were the preseason No. 1 team in both the Associated Press and USA Today polls. But a stumble at Stanford in September cost them the top spot, and now USC prepares to host Oregon on Saturday coming off its second loss of the season, a wild 39-36 defeat at Arizona.

The Ducks, meanwhile, have steamrolled everyone in their path this season. Oregon is 8-0 heading into Saturday's showdown at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Their closest contest was a 43-21 win at Arizona State on Oct. 18, a game in which they led 43-7 at the half before taking their foot off the gas.

The journey for Oregon has taken it to unfamiliar territory. The Ducks are heavy favorites to beat the Trojans. The hunter has become the hunted. USC is in the position of being the upstart trying to knock the champion off its throne.

USC has been on the top of the mountain in terms of West Coast football for a long, long time. But its road has taken some detours. There were the struggles of the 1990s, followed by the dynasty of the Pete Carroll era from 2002-08. But that run was ended by NCAA sanctions from which the Trojans are finally emerging this season.

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