If you're one who is not beyond saying that a struggling team "stinks," then the Kent State Golden Flashes are in the running for one of the most odorous squads you've ever encountered. Not only are they historically unsatisfactory, but they entered last season with just one win to their name from the two before it.
Dips like those never last forever though, and that was evident once the Flashes finished 2025 just a single dub short of earning a bowl berth (a step upward that was taken in spite of having oppressors like Texas Tech, Florida State and even Oklahoma in their non-conference gauntlet).
So, for nothing more than the sake of being helplessly optimistic, I must ask: is Kent State football on its way to some rarely experienced relevance in 2026?
Before we can actually look at the games that further confirm this question is worth asking, we need to write off those that do the opposite. Those games would be the ones against FBS-level opponents the Golden Flashes have outside of the MAC slate, because—as the 2025 batch implied—such opponents typically reside above KSU's pay grade. In other words, visits to South Carolina, Ohio State and USF will likely not be landing in the win column.
Now it's time for the league play, and as we learned in our recent chat on UMass's potential, it's difficult to not get hungry for success with some of the guys the MAC plops in front of you. In Kent State's case, the array of beatable opposition is five teams wide at the slimmest, consisting of Ball State, Akron, Sacramento State, Bowling Green, and Eastern Michigan. That goes without mentioning Miami (OH) who, while capitalistic at times, didn't even go positive in 2025, or Wofford, the sole non-conference adversary we didn't lock in as a loss.
A schedule like that gives the Flashes a path to bowl eligibility with at least the possibility of finishing in the green, which would make for their best season in several years. I say that'd be a fine successor to the hope we saw crown from the ashes last fall. So good for you, Kent State—2026 won't see you become America's next hot team, but it'll certainly feel like it had.