[1] Wittenberg withdrew from membership in November 1929 on charges of using professional players after the Tigers won the football championship in 1927 and were co-champs with Ohio Wesleyan in 1928.
The Flyers of the University of Dayton were also considered, but there seemed to be resistance to the UD program from both Cincinnati and Miami.
Finally, in 1935, the University of Dayton was added to the league and Marshall, which opened league play with a win in 1933 over Wittenberg in its first game, would then lose or tie the next 14 games in a row (1-13-1, 1933–35), but hired Coach Cam Henderson from Davis & Elkins College in 1935 to coach Herd basketball and football and act as director of athletics.
By 1936, however, Marshall was 2-2-1 in the league and third behind Ohio (3-1-1) and Miami (2-1-1), declared co-champs with matching losses and ties.
The University of Cincinnati resigned its membership on February 18, 1953, with an effective date of June 1, 1953 of leaving the league.
The Thundering Herd were a member of the league from 1953-69 - terminated by the league for violations in the football and basketball program unearthed in 1968, as Marshall got a one-year probation from the NCAA but never earn another hearing with the MAC in the early 1970s, eventually joining the Southern Conference in 1977.
The MAC has also had football only members in the Knights from UCF in 2002, the Temple Owls in 2007 and the Minutemen of the University of Massachusetts in 2012, but all those schools left just a few years after joining.