It was neither a merry Christmas nor a happy New Year for Mid-American Conference football fans.
If Santa Claus has rosy cheeks to show his jolliness, all MAC Commissioner Rick Chryst has is a red face to show his embarrassment following the conference's performance during bowl season.
We are talking getting-caught-trying-to-sell-a-Senate-seat embarrassing.
Don't believe me?
Central Michigan fans, who were once proud of a team that had won two straight conference titles, refused to come out of their rooms for weeks following the Chippewas lost to - gulp - Florida Atlantic, 24-21, in the Motor City Bowl.
Northern Illinois supporters ate the 10 dozen cookies Grandma brought on Christmas and went into sugar comas after a loss to Louisiana Tech, 17-10, in the Independence Bowl.
Western Michigan fans still haven't accessed their Facebook accounts, fearing that pesky Rice fans will have littered their wall with insults following the Owls' 38-14 Texas Bowl win over the Broncos - Rice's first bowl win since 1954.
The only vacancy Buffalo's Turner Gill - a hot prospect for coaching positions around the country before the bowls began - appears ready to fill is the one at a remote motel far from Buffalo's campus following a 38-20 loss to Connecticut in the International Bowl.
But there was still hope.
The conference champions, the Ball State Cardinals, came into its bowl game ranked No. 22 in the country with a chance to put a Band-Aid on the MAC's bowl season.
But coach Brady Hoke - perhaps sensing his team's impending doom - took a job at San Diego State University before his stock could fall further than the shares of Freddie May and Fannie Mac.
His former team was dismantled, 45-13, by Tulsa in the GMAC Bowl, leaving the MAC with a combined bowl record of 0-5.
Even the Big Ten was able to win one bowl game and they didn't have the advantage of playing teams from the Sun Belt Conference.
Still worse, the universities likely came out having lost more than just a game.
When Ohio went to the GMAC Bowl in 2007, the university was forced to foot the $277,550 bill for the football team's success, according to a Feb. 9, 2007 article in The Post.
Only 19 of the 119 Football Bowl Subdivision institutions had positive net revenue in the 2006 fiscal year, a different article in www.insidehighered.com reported. Only 16 athletic departments turned in a net profit from 2004-2006.
Other than the major bowls, which pay out millions of dollars to both teams, lesser bowls are nothing but a black hole for athletic departments across the country.
I think you have to look at the intangibles that are associated with it
then Athletic Director Kirby Hocutt told The Post. We've been in USA Today every day with the bowl lineups we've been on the scroll of ESPN every night in (December). We're exposing Ohio University to the entire country.
The question remains.
Is it a good thing that sports fans across the country saw the MAC get lambasted by other teams they have never heard of?
Are recruits calling coaches around the conference as you read this because they saw Western Michigan on the bottom line?
Chryst and college football, in general, need to do something about the current system.
While it appears that a playoff format is out of the question for the foreseeable future, there are still ways to tweak the current system.
Teams should be rewarded for successful seasons, but not if it comes with hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt in a bowl game with little meaning.
Matt O'Donnell is a senior studying journalism and is the sports editor at The Post. If you were as bored as he was with this year's bowl games, send him an e-mail him at mo134405@ohiou.edu
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