CMU football players happy to be back as camp opens
Anxious, hungry, lockdown-weary Chippewas happy to be on the field again, open camp
Clarity, focus and, thankfully, a chance to play some football.
Coach Jim Mcelwain’s Central Michigan football team began its training camp Monday after the Mid-american Conference’s decision on Friday to play a 2020 schedule.
MAC teams will begin playing in the firstweek innovember. The schedule is expected to be released soon with the Chippewas playing all five of their MAC West brethren — Western Michigan, Eastern Michigan, Northern Illinois, Toledo and Ball State – plus one crossover game. Each MAC team will play a sixgame schedule with the league championship game set for either Dec. 18 or 19.
“Really excited for our players,” Mcelwain said on Monday during a conference call with the media. “I will commend our conference, our (university) presidents, the commissioner, the medical team. I
thought we did a fantastic job as a conference making sure that we covered all the things that we needed to. My hat’s off to the Mid-american Conference in deciding to play this schedule and how they went about it. The conference did a great job of having their (the players’) health, welfare and well-being at the forefront.
Condensed Schedule
The six- game regular- season slate is exactly half what the Chippewas would play in any given year.
Clearly, it’s a major departure from the norm, and it makes each game take on that much more importance. The Chippewas won themacwest in 2019, making their first appearance in the MAC title game in a decade.
“This is going to be a great life-lesson: there are no doovers,” said Mcelwain, who earned the MAC Coach of the Year Award in 2019, his first season at the helm. “Everything is magnified from the