Its offense impotent at inopportune times and its defense unable to slow down Toledo's high-powered offense, Ball State's regular season ended in disappointment Friday afternoon at Scheumann Stadium. The Cardinals lost 45-28 on Senior Day, a surprisingly-promising run at the Mid-American Conference championship ending with back-to-back losses.
Ball State will have to wait and see if its season is over as well. The Cardinals are bowl eligible for the first time since 2008, but unlike that year when they were assured of a bowl game by virtue of their MAC West title, their bowl prospects this year are uncertain.
Senior safety Sean Baker said hopes to go a bowl game because he wants the chance to be a part of the first Ball State team to win a bowl game.
"That would solidify our senior class as one of the greats," Baker said. "I'm proud of everything we've done, but there's more to be accomplished and we want a piece of it."
At 6-6, Ball State has the worst record of the six-bowl eligible MAC teams. Their record all but eliminates the Cardinals from the discussion for the conference's three primary bowls — the GoDaddy.com, Little Caesars Pizza and Idaho Potato bowls. By winning their divisions, Northern Illinois and Ohio guaranteed themselves a spot in one of the three primary bowls. With its win Friday, Toledo improved to 9-3 and will likely fill the third spot.
The MAC also has agreements with four other bowls — the New Mexico, BBVA Compass, Beef ‘O' Brady's and Kraft Fight Hunger bowls — to provide teams should another conference not have enough bowl eligible teams. If Ball State goes to a bowl game this year, it would likely to be one of these secondary bowls.
With that in mind, coach Pete Lembo has been keeping an eye on scores from across the country that could help secure the Cardinals a bowl game.
"It'll be interesting," Lembo said. "I know San Jose State [beating Navy] helped us the other day. We just have to sit back and hope for the best."
Of the secondary bowls, the Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl is the only one assured of an open spot for a MAC team so far. It is supposed to pit a Pacific-12 Conference team against Army, but the Black Knights will finish their season with a losing record and are not eligible for a bowl. If the Atlantic Coast Conference has nine bowl-eligible teams it can send a team to the game, but the conference will only be able to send eight teams to bowl games after Miami announced it would self-impose a bowl ban this year because of the ongoing NCAA investigation at the school.
As many as two other secondary bowl agreements could come into play depending on whether Stanford earns an at-large Bowl Championship Series bowl bid and the results in two Big East games this week.
Even though Ball State is 6-6, the MAC's secondary agreements could make it possible for it to be selected ahead of a team with a better record from another conference, Ken Mather, the MAC's assistant commissioner for media and public relations, said in an email.
"As a general rule of thumb, if a primary conference partner is not able to fill their primary slot, the secondary agreements trumps any other potential at large team from another conference," he wrote.
While some bowl bids have already been announced, most will come out this weekend as the conference championship games finish. Until then, the Cardinals will likely remain in limbo as they wait to see if they get one more chance to play.
And until then, Lembo is not ready to talk about the end of the season.
"Let's not sell ourselves short," Lembo said. "There's still a chance we're playing another ballgame here."
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