Ball State Football: After MAC title, what will Cardinals do for encore?

Ball State football was seen as a dark horse contender for the MAC title in 2020 and they lived up to that in a major way. After a season opening loss to Miami (OH), the Cardinals went on a seven-game winning streak that resulted in an upset win over Buffalo in the MAC title game and then another upset win over San Jose State in the program’s first-ever bowl win.

Ball State finished the season ranked in the final AP poll for the first time in school history and return 18 starters from the team that did all of this last season.

After the best season in school history, what will the follow-up look like for head coach Mike Neu and the Ball State football program?

In the four seasons prior to 2020, Mike Neu had just been treading water as a program and was looking for that first major breakthrough. Neu’s teams always appeared better than their records showed, but there was a little bit of pressure on Ball State heading into last season to show that Neu was taking them in the right direction and that they would reach a bowl game sometime in the near future.

After last season,  the question has shifted to if Neu can build a sustainable winning program that can compete for MAC titles every season and not go into another near-decade-long bowl drought. All signs point to the former with so many starters returning and a pretty manageable schedule and expectations are high in Muncie, Indiana this upcoming season.

Anything less than a return to the MAC title game can be seen as a huge disappointment.