The Mid-American Conference football awards are given annually by the

Mid-American Conference The Mid-American Conference (MAC) is a National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I collegiate athletic conference with a membership base in the Great Lakes region that stretches from Western New York to Illinois. Nine of the twel ...

(MAC) at the conclusion of each

college football College football (french: Football universitaire) refers to gridiron football played by teams of student athletes. It was through college football play that American football rules first gained popularity in the United States. Unlike most ...

season. The conference gives out a total of five awards, the Offensive, Defensive, and Freshman Players of the Year, the Coach of the Year, and the Vern Smith Leadership Award, which is given to the league's

MVP In team sports, a most valuable player award, abbreviated 'MVP award', is an honor typically bestowed upon an individual (or individuals, in the instance of a tie) whose individual performance is the greatest in an entire league, for a particu ...

in that season. The Vern Smith Award is selected by a vote of the coaches in the MAC while the remaining awards are selected by the MAC News Media Association.

Offensive Player of the Year

Winners

Source:

Winners by school

Defensive Player of the Year

Larry-English Chargers-vs-49ers Sept 4 2009

Winners

Source:

Winners by school

Special Teams Player of the Year

Justin-McCareins-TitansvsPackers-Nov-2-08

Scott Secor headshot, Ball State Football, Aug 2014

Winners

Source:

Winners by school

Freshman Player of the Year

The Freshman Player of the Year award was first given by the MAC after the 1982 football season. That year's winner,

Brian McClure Brian McClure (born December 28, 1963) is a former American football quarterback who played in the National Football League for the Buffalo Bills. He played college football at Bowling Green. College career McClure played for the Falcons from 198 ...

, won a slew of MAC accords, including Offensive Player of the Year three times, and the Vern Smith award twice.

Ball State Ball State University (Ball State, State or BSU) is a public research university in Muncie, Indiana. It has two satellite facilities in Fishers and Indianapolis. On July 25, 1917, the Ball brothers, industrialists and founders of the Ball C ...

Central Michigan Central Michigan, also called Mid Michigan, is a region in the Lower Peninsula of the U.S. state of Michigan. As its name implies, it is the middle area of the Lower Peninsula. Lower Michigan is said to resemble a mitten, and Mid Michigan corre ...

and

Western Michigan West Michigan and Western Michigan are terms for an arbitrary region in the U.S. state of Michigan's Lower Peninsula. Most narrowly it refers to the Grand Rapids-Muskegon-Holland, Michigan, Holland area, and more broadly to most of the region a ...

are tied with the most awards, with players from each school winning five times.

Winners

Source:

Winners by school

Vern Smith Leadership Award

Brad Maynard (Chicago Bears training camp, 2009)

The Vern Smith Leadership Award was started in 1982 by the Downtown Toledo Athletic Club. In that year, it was known as the Jefferson Award and the name was changed to honor the

University of Toledo The University of Toledo (UToledo or UT) is a public research university in Toledo, Ohio. It is the northernmost campus of the University System of Ohio. The university also operates a Health Science campus, which includes the University of T ...

Athletic Director Vern Smith in 1987. The award is given to the top football player in the Mid-American Conference. Only four players have won the award multiple times, with the most recent winner,

Larry English Larry English (born January 22, 1986) is a former American football player. He played college football as a defensive end at Northern Illinois and was drafted by the San Diego Chargers as an outside linebacker in the first round of the 2009 N ...

, being the only non-

quarterback The quarterback (commonly abbreviated "QB"), colloquially known as the "signal caller", is a position in gridiron football. Quarterbacks are members of the offensive platoon and mostly line up directly behind the offensive line. In modern Ame ...

to win it.

Northern Illinois Northern Illinois is a region generally covering the northern third of the U.S. state of Illinois. The region is by far the most populous of Illinois with nearly 9.7 million residents as of 2010. Economics Northern Illinois is dominated by th ...

leads with seven awards all-time, followed by

Bowling Green A bowling green is a finely laid, close-mown and rolled stretch of turf for playing the game of bowls. Before 1830, when Edwin Beard Budding of Thrupp, near Stroud, UK, invented the lawnmower, lawns were often kept cropped by grazing sheep on ...

and

Marshall Marshall may refer to: Places Australia * Marshall, Victoria, a suburb of Geelong, Victoria Canada * Marshall, Saskatchewan * The Marshall, a mountain in British Columbia Liberia * Marshall, Liberia Marshall Islands * Marshall Islands, an i ...

tied with four awards in each school. The Vern Smith award is the only one voted on by the coaches, with the Coach of the Year, as well as the Players of the Year are selected by the media.

Winners

Source:

Winners by school

Coach of the Year

The MAC has awarded a Coach of the Year award every year since 1965. The first award went to

Bo Schembechler Glenn Edward "Bo" Schembechler Jr. ( ; April 1, 1929 – November 17, 2006) was an American football player, coach, and athletics administrator. He served as the head football coach at Miami University from 1963 to 1968 and at the University of ...

Miami University Miami University (informally Miami of Ohio or simply Miami) is a public research university in Oxford, Ohio. The university was founded in 1809, making it the second-oldest university in Ohio (behind Ohio University, founded in 1804) and the 10 ...

. Only one coach has won the award more than twice, with

Frank Lauterbur Francis Xavier Lauterbur (August 8, 1925 – November 20, 2013) was an American football player and coach. He served as the head coach at the University of Toledo from 1963 to 1970 and at the University of Iowa from 1971 to 1973, compiling a care ...

winning the award in 1967, 1969, and 1970. Only two coaches have won the award beyond their tenth year of coaching.

Bill Hess William R. Hess (February 5, 1923 – June 10, 1978) was an American college football coach. He served as the head football coach at Ohio University from 1958 to 1977. In his tenure as head coach for the Ohio Bobcats football team, Hess compiled ...

won the award in 1968 in his 11th year of coaching the

Ohio Bobcats The Ohio Bobcats are the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I Intercollegiate athletic teams that represent Ohio University, located in Athens, Ohio, United States. Ohio University is a charter member (1946) of the Mid-Amer ...

and

Herb Deromedi Herb Deromedi (born May 26, 1939) is a retired American football coach and college athletics administrator. He served as the head football coach at Central Michigan University from 1978 to 1993, compiling a record of 110–55–10. His 110 wins re ...

won the award in 1990, his 13th year of coaching

. Also, only one coach,

Bill Mallory William Guy Mallory (May 30, 1935 – May 25, 2018) was an American football player and coach. He served as the head football coach at Miami University (1969–1973), the University of Colorado at Boulder (1974–1978), Northern Illinois Universi ...

, has won the award coaching two separate teams. He first earned the award in 1973 while coaching Miami University, and then won ten years later giving

their first Coach of the Year award. Toledo leads all schools with nine awards.

Temple A temple (from the Latin ) is a building reserved for spiritual rituals and activities such as prayer and sacrifice. Religions which erect temples include Christianity (whose temples are typically called churches), Hinduism (whose temples ...

won their first award in

2009 File:2009 Events Collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: The vertical stabilizer of Air France Flight 447 is pulled out from the Atlantic Ocean; Barack Obama becomes the first African American to become President of the United States; 2009 Iran ...

when head coach

Al Golden Alfred James Golden Jr. (born July 4, 1969) is an American football coach who is the defensive coordinator for the Notre Dame Fighting Irish. He is a former head coach at Temple from 2006 to 2010. He has also served for five years as defensive ...

won his first MAC Coach of the Year award.

Winners

Source:

Winners by school

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Mid-American Conference Football Awards College football conference awards and honors

Awards An award, sometimes called a distinction, is something given to a recipient as a token of recognition of excellence in a certain field. When the token is a medal, ribbon or other item designed for wearing, it is known as a decoration. An award ...