The first Saturday in December ended plenty of teams’ pursuit for perfection. A trend which was especially prevalent involved undefeated teams losing to squads with losing records. This was noticeable in Marshall’s loss to Rice and Washington’s shortcoming against Stanford. The MAC took this to the extreme, as a winless Eastern Michigan derailed Western Michigan’s unbeaten campaign in Kalamazoo, 53-42.
The shootout victory marked the Eagles’ second-straight win over the Broncos. Still, the Michigan MAC Trophy (awarded to a Michigan-based MAC team that finished 2-0 against the other Michigan MAC teams) remains with the Broncos by default due to a circle of parity forming between the three rivals for the second-straight year.