Thank you, Hustle Belt. From, Texas.

The date was Sept. 14, 2016. I was a sophomore chemistry major at The University of Texas, partaking in typical college student Wednesday night dorm activities — procrastinating. That unfinished organic chemistry lab report gave me the most chilling death glare, causing my eyes to quiver, my heart to palpitate. I didn’t even finish collecting data in the allotted lab time. I had nothing to work with, nowhere to go.

So I sat there, hopeless, mindlessly staring at my MacBook screen. My brain wandered elsewhere, and my fingers raced around the keyboard as I decided to immerse myself in a more stress-free world — the world of college football. Four days prior, Central Michigan stunned Oklahoma State on a controversial, untimed Hail Mary/lateral combo play which should have never occurred by the rulebook (this game was later the subject of the best piece I ever wrote for this site).

Fascinated by that incomprehensible ending, I scrolled through various sites to consume as much Central Michigan vs. Oklahoma State content as possible. While navigating through SB Nation’s coverage of it, I noticed their Mid-American Conference site Hustle Belt had a post calling for new contributors. I was glued to Midweek #MACtion every Tuesday and Wednesday night in high school. So why not?

While it wasn’t the productive activity I planned to complete that night, I immediately crafted an entire memoir about Jordan Lynch and 2013 Northern Illinois Huskies as my formal application to Hustle Belt. Two days later, I was in. A Delaware-born, Texas-raised college student living roughly 400 feet from the Texas Longhorns’ home stadium was writing about the MAC. Sure.

Later that September, I dropped the chemistry major and reclassified to actuarial sciences (it’s essentially math… I have to explain this to everyone). I never had to fret about a lab report again, and this opened up the writing doors for me. It turned out to be the perfect time to join Hustle Belt, as Western Michigan reveled in the national spotlight — serving as a fixture in the rankings, hosting College GameDay, and punching a ticket to the Cotton Bowl with a spotless 13-0 record. As Hustle Belt’s lone native Texan, I had to take advantage of a historic MAC team playing a major bowl in my own state. So I told our managing editor Alan Rucker I wanted to cover the game live.

At age 19, this marked my first time as media at a college football game, and the setting was beyond mesmerizing. I’ll never forget entering the Dallas Cowboys’ locker room, anxiously wondering what I was going to ask Taylor Moton in my first-ever solo interview. I’ll never forget that first walk through the tunnel of AT&T Stadium, feeling my shoe collide with the turf, and gazing up at the larger-than-life steel arches and the 160-by-72 foot videoboard that characterize the grandiose venue. And after covering 134 live games to date (including four Cotton Bowls), I can assure you nobody does hospitality better than the Cotton Bowl. Looking back at it, covering the Cotton Bowl was an insane way to kick off a sports media career.

From that point onward, through offseason previews, NFL Draft content, weekly analysis columns, and 1,197 total stories, gamedays were always my favorite part of writing at Hustle Belt. Even in year 10 of coverage with the site, every time I stroll through the tailgates, enter a stadium, and pick up a crisped-edge copy of a freshly printed depth chart in the pressbox, the juices are suddenly flowing. It’s a feeling I can’t recreate outside of the fall, and one I long for in these dog days of February.

I’m reminded why I do this. And why I’ll keep doing this. Every game truly feels like that 2016 Cotton Bowl.

While I travel for college football on a weekly basis due to other beats and obligations, I still always made time for the MAC no matter how geographically inconvenient. Hustle Belt brought me to 15 different games in nine different states, directing me to people and experiences I would have never otherwise known, from riding cable cars at the New Mexico Bowl to walking through the historic Rose Bowl to accidentally winding up at Bucky Badger’s house at 2 a.m. while waiting for an Uber. And while MAC country is a long way from Texas, I even fulfilled my mission of covering Midweek #MACtion live in 2023, flying up to the Rust Belt for a Wednesday night showdown between Kent State and Bowling Green.

With countless memories and stories attached to each entry, here’s an exhaustive list of every game I covered live under the Hustle Belt umbrella:

And thus, I conclude with thank yous:

• To Alan Rucker, the managing editor who brought me on and stayed with the ship until the end. Alan’s commitment behind the scenes was vital over the years, and he allowed us to manufacture our own voices here.
• To James Jimenez, who made Hustle Belt the best possible site it could be for over a decade. James is one of the best writers I know, and his dedication to Hustle Belt and the MAC cannot be understated.
• To Zach Follador, who did a standup job of running the MAC Bandwagon podcast here in the early 2020s. We had a great podcast. I miss those recording sessions dearly. That Herman Moore episode was the best.
• To Dave Drury, Keith Gregorski, Sam Kasuga, Alexis Baker, Omar-Rashon Borja, Kenneth Bailey, Spencer Roberts, Justin Coffin, Ben Roush, Brandon Fitzsimons, John Elrod, Drew Crabtree, Zack VanNieuwenhze, and all contributors I crossed paths with over the last decade, I genuinely enjoyed working with you all.
• To all MAC SIDs, especially the ones I’ve interacted with in person — Vince Briedis, Dan Griffin, Adam Bodnar, Sarah Newgarde, Dave Meyer, Jon Fuller, Kellan Godfrey, Mike Haase, Donna Turner, and others — thank you all for helping with coverage over the years, whether it was providing interviews, photos, stats, etc.
• And to anybody who read or interacted with our work, that meant everything to me.

As somebody with zero geographic or personal connection to the MAC prior to joining Hustle Belt, this gritty Midwestern conference of underdogs will forever be apart of me and my identity. For now, I’ll still reside on the SB Nation network at our sister site Underdog Dynasty, but for the future of our MAC coverage… just stay tuned.

Until then, thank you Hustle Belt. And Hustle Belt forever.

— Steve Helwick