Kent State

1-23. That's what Kenni Burns left behind across 2023 and 2024, and it's about as low as the MAC gets. Kent State fired him in April 2025 and did the unglamorous thing — promoted offensive coordinator Mark Carney to interim, watched him steady the program, and made it official on October 30, 2025.

The results showed up fast. Carney's Golden Flashes went 5-7 (4-4 in the MAC) — more wins in one season than the previous two combined — and the signature moment came in Akron: a 42-35 overtime win that took back the Wagon Wheel trophy after Akron had run away with it 38-17 the year before. The Wagon Wheel is old — the rivalry dates to 1923, ten miles separating two campuses that have played for that trophy every year since the postwar era resumed it — and getting it back in overtime, mid-turnaround, is the kind of win a fanbase needed after two years like that.

Kent State's national name recognition, for what it's worth, runs almost entirely through one guy who never played for this era: Julian Edelman started at quarterback from 2006 to 2008, threw for nearly 5,000 yards, then went on to twelve years with the New England Patriots, three Super Bowl rings, and Super Bowl LIII MVP. He's in the Kent State Hall of Fame and, as of 2025, the Patriots Hall of Fame too — proof that a MAC program's ceiling, at least for one player, went all the way to the top of the sport. The program's actual on-field peak was more recent and more modest: Dustin Crum's 2019-2021 stretch, the first bowl win in school history and three straight .500-or-better seasons. That's the bar Mark Carney is trying to get back to, one turnaround season in.