MAC Media Day: Catching up with Chris Creighton, Samson Evans, Chase Kline

Sit-down interviews with Eastern Michigan's representatives at MAC Media Day, hosted by the Fox Theatre.

Jul 21, 2023

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MAC Media Day 2023 — we’re all accustomed to loving the sound of those words. It’s been seven months since these guys last got to suit up and play some real football. At Eastern Michigan, that last game was a bowl win — a rare talking point at these types of events.

“That’s not the whole story. We failed versus Toledo, that’s the pre-eminent sentiment from last season,” head coach Chris Creighton reminded me in a sit-down interview at the Fox Theatre. “We were so close to realize what we were set out to do. Now, we’re not going to dismiss winning the Michigan MAC, beating Arizona State, going to and winning a bowl game — those are huge.”

That’s certainly the message every Media Day season. Everybody has a 0-0 record and everybody’s in the hunt to get to the MAC title game. EMU hasn’t stopped kicking itself in the rear ever since it dropped a fourth-quarter stinker to the Rockets at home last season. Even though EMU marched on to win every game the rest of the way, the result of the Toledo game is why EMU can’t talk about trying to repeat as MAC West champs.

There was no media poll this year, but the MAC did publish a coaches’ poll. The results: the experts have EMU as their second-favorite team in the MAC West, but Toledo’s the divisional favorite by a landslide. Eleven first-place votes went to Toledo, just one went to EMU. No, coaches can’t vote for their own team to win the division.

MAC Coaches Poll

MAC West

Toledo, 66 pts. (11 first place votes)
EMU, 55 pts. (1)
NIU, 38
CMU, 37
Ball State, 27
WMU, 23

MAC East

Ohio, 63 pts (9)
Miami, 52 (2)
Buffalo, 51 (1)
BGSU, 35
Akron, 26
Kent State, 19

For this year’s media event, I decided to bring my new toy: a photo/video camera that hooks onto the coolest little tripod ever. I sat down to interview Creighton, running back Samson Evans, and linebacker Chase Kline for the video shown above, and I even fielded some questions anonymously across the MAC playing field.