MAC Provides UW with Opponents, Reunions, Local Sportscaster

Eastern Michigan is the fifth team from that conference to tour Montlake.

Cam Davis (22) rushes for a touchdown against the Kent State Golden Flashes in 2022. / Joe Nicholson-Imagn Images

Order up.

MAC and cheese, for Montlake table No. 2.

In college football parlance, this means what's formally known as the Mid-American Conference -- which is a cross between the Mountain West or the Big Sky back east -- is sending another football team to Seattle for a game against the University of Washington and what could be a mismatch.

On Saturday afternoon, Eastern Michigan will become the latest MAC visitor to stop by Husky Stadium after four previous encounters involving conference members and the UW were decided by anywhere from three and a half to seven touchdowns.

What's fun about these games -- which involve a 12-team league spread out across five states -- is there's always an interesting local connection to them. For example, the MAC literally provided Seattle with Paul Silvi, currently the city's longest-running sportscaster at KING-TV.

In 1986, Bowling Green from Ohio came to Husky Stadium with Silvi as its kicker, as a second-team All-MAC selection after making 10 of 12 fields and all 40 of his extra points the season before. In a forgettable 48-0 loss to the UW, Silvi was a 5-foot-9, 158-pound senior from Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, a Detroit suburb, who had a field goal blocked and supplied a lone kickoff. Yet this was a memorable trip for him.

He counted Jeff Jaeger as an idol because the then UW kicker was headed to a first-team AP All-America season. Husky Stadium had its allure for him, too.

"Going down the tunnel, just that one time in my entire life, it was so cool to walk into a stadium that size because it was so much bigger than what we were used to playing at Bowling Green," said Silvi, who wore No. 1 for the Falcons. "Coming down the tunnel was an awesome feeling. Warming up out there and seeing the seats slowly fill up, it was very cool. It was a thrill to come out here."

Paul Silvi, KING-TV broadcaster, was a Bowling Green kicker in 1984-86. / Paul Silvi

Seven years later in 1993 as the football season was about to begin again, Silvi joined KING-TV, ultimately becoming the station's sports director and he's been in town ever since -- covering plenty of Husky games along the way. He credited his Bowling Green football trip for making all of it happen.

"I always wanted to see Seattle," Silvi said. "Being able to come out here and visit the city for a long weekend, it was very cool and sold me on Seattle. That's how i ended up coming back out there."

In 1984, Miami of Ohio was the first MAC team to play against the Huskies, who were in need of a replacement home game when LSU pulled out of the schedule late. Then UW athletic director Mike Lude and legendary football coach Don James -- who both came to Montlake from the MAC's Kent State -- used their old conference connections to bring in the RedHawks, who lost 53-7 but took home a nice payday from the game receipts.

In 1991, with the Huskies poised to make a 12-0 run and win a national championship, they welcomed Gary Pinkel and the Toledo Rockets to the city and made him and his new team one of their victims that fall. Pinkel had just left the UW after 12 seasons as an assistant coach, after being elevated to offensive coordinator for James, who was his college coach at Kent State, when the MAC job opportunity presented itself to him.

HUSKY STADIUM MAC ATTACK
UW 53, Miami of Ohio 7, 1984	Don James faces old league
UW 48, Bowling Green 0, 1986	Paul Silvi visits before moving here
UW 48, Toledo 0, 1991	Gary Pinkel's return to Montlake
UW 45, Kent State 20, 2022	Don James' former workplace

Toledo was Pinkel's first head-coaching assignment and he couldn't pass that up. He later would go on to have great success at Missouri, leading that program into the SEC and being named national coach of the year, but not before suffering through a miserable 48-0 loss at Husky Stadium with his MAC team in '91.

"I know every single player in that program," Pinkel said before the game. "I helped assemble that team and now it appears I may be shooting myself with the gun I helped load."

Two years ago, the Huskies hosted Kent State, which was a nostalgic game because James, Pinkel, Lude and others had come to Seattle from there. This time, it marked Kalen DeBoer's UW coaching debut and it was a much closer game against the MAC that still wasn't very close, ending up 45-20.

Now comes Eastern Michigan, one of three Michigan MAC teams and coached for the past decade by Chris Creighton. He knows his way around Seattle. He was the 1986 first-team All-Metro quarterback for Roosevelt High School, which sits just several blocks north of the UW, when James was turning the Huskies into a powerhouse.

Creighton shared in those same accolades in a star-studded league with Ingraham running back Greg Lewis and linebacker James Clifford, and Franklin wide receiver Mario Bailey and tight end Aaron Pierce, all eventual Husky football standouts. Eventual UW kicker John McCallum was a Creighton teammate at Roosevelt.

Typical of what he could do, the then 6-foot-3, 185-pound Creighton threw 3 touchdown passes of 2, 23 and 68 yards and ran for 2 more scores in the Roughriders' 35-0 victory over Blanchet as a senior.

Creighton, 55, would go on to play his college football for Division III Kenyon College in Ohio, where he became a record-setting passer and an eventual school hall of fame inductee. He coached at Ottawa (Kansas), Wabash (Indiana) and Drake (Iowa) prior to moving to the MAC, where he's guided the Eagles to a 53-68 record, (192-114 at all stops), six bowl games and a 30-21 upset of Arizona State in 2022.

He hasn't forgotten his Northwest football roots, which brought him to Husky Stadium more than once.

"I went to Husky games as a kid.," Creighton said Monday. "We actually were close enough where I walked to a couple of those."

Eastern Michigan coach Chris Creighton looks on during a game against the Minnesota Golden Gophers. / Matt Krohn-Imagn Images

Putting together a staff in his first season at Eastern Michigan in 2014, Creighton actually hired DeBoer to be his offensive coordinator and Ryan Grubb to be his offensive-line coach, responsible for bringing them to the FBS level for the first time. They were together for three seasons, dealing with 2-10 and 1-11 teams before getting things going with a 7-6 season that ended in the Bahamas Bowl against James Madison in 2016.

DeBoer and Grubb left Eastern Michigan for Fresno State, spent their two seasons at the UW and DeBoer now coaches Alabama while Grubb is the Seattle Seahawks offensive coordinator.

Creighton is coaching in his 11th season at Eastern Michigan in Ypsilanti, which is 10 miles east of Ann Arbor and the University of Michigan and 35 miles west of Detroit, certainly a cradle for high-level football ambitions.

As far as homecomings go, Creighton might want to consult with Pinkel and see if he can come up with a different outcome or at least something far less painful. He also might recall that once the late Don James came to the city he never left, even though Ohio State tried its best to hire him, an Ohio native, away from the UW. Yet it was Silvi who has had a most workable idea -- the MAC kicker couldn't beat the Huskies so he joined them in Seattle.

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