(10-11-2016 07:23 AM)chargeradio Wrote: [ -> ]There's up to 1 million reasons for any G5 school not to leave its current conference. I would expect that UMass joining the American will be more likely when the Big 12 expands.
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But if UConn can more than make that up with the Big East's TV contract, they'd at least have to consider it. The issue then turns to football, and there's no easy answer for that since everything other than P5 is a downgrade, and if a P5's offering, the Big East is no longer a consideration.
Interesting interview before the BYU game with Coach Mark Whipple. Mentions UConn and desire to land in the American, needing facilities improvements, comments on this years schedule, and mentions playing at a game at Fenway Park for possible the next two years.
Well for UMass ... none of the G5 leagues offers multiple opponents that have historical meaning for UMass fans. UConn would really be the only one.
So in that sense, being Indy almost makes more sense for them. I don't see what they would get out of playing Akron, Kent, Buffalo, etc. every year. Or for that matter, Temple, E Carolina, Navy, Cincy, etc.
Well yeah, lots of teams have played lots of other teams more than zero times.
I'm saying, what teams do UMass football fans care about? I would think UConn would be an obvious one, from Yankee history. Obviously Temple is an A10 opponent, so is URI. But do bball fans and fball fans cross-over? I don't know.
I don't think Mark Whipple has brought UMass any closer to the AAC then they were 3 years ago. It may be time for UMass to beat UConn and BC to the punch and hire a new head coach. New England is up for grabs.
(11-18-2016 11:27 AM)MplsBison Wrote: [ -> ]Well yeah, lots of teams have played lots of other teams more than zero times.
I'm saying, what teams do UMass football fans care about? I would think UConn would be an obvious one, from Yankee history. Obviously Temple is an A10 opponent, so is URI. But do bball fans and fball fans cross-over? I don't know.
You assume the existence of nontrivial numbers of UMass football fans. Games in the Boston area don't draw FBS level crowds. GAmes on campus don't draw fans. According to wikipedia's numbers, there have been 8 UMass home games with 15,000 or more attendance in the 5 years they've been FBS, 4 of those in 2013. Possibly you could say "UMass fans care a lot about playing BC", which is 2 of the games, but it's more likely that BC filled (or half-filled) the stadium.
(11-18-2016 11:27 AM)MplsBison Wrote: [ -> ]Well yeah, lots of teams have played lots of other teams more than zero times.
I'm saying, what teams do UMass football fans care about? I would think UConn would be an obvious one, from Yankee history. Obviously Temple is an A10 opponent, so is URI. But do bball fans and fball fans cross-over? I don't know.
You assume the existence of nontrivial numbers of UMass football fans. Games in the Boston area don't draw FBS level crowds. GAmes on campus don't draw fans. According to wikipedia's numbers, there have been 8 UMass home games with 15,000 or more attendance in the 5 years they've been FBS, 4 of those in 2013. Possibly you could say "UMass fans care a lot about playing BC", which is 2 of the games, but it's more likely that BC filled (or half-filled) the stadium.
People like winners, hence attendance to some degree is a trailing indicator. Not going back 40 or 50 years. our best FCS attendance number was 13k and dropped to 11k with Morris in 2011 or 2012. FBS has helped with a bad product, but we disappointed so much in those 4 years, those fans have not stuck. Most of the blame is on the old AD, especially scheduling. WTF, how are we suppose to build a fan base playing almost all P5 teams in OOC scheduled. Not to mention playing people above our weight class and still building up to 85 scholarships. Playing so banged up and not having any depth has bad things written all over it.
Looking forward to the last game and the 2017 schedule, which is the first realistic schedule.
(11-18-2016 11:27 AM)MplsBison Wrote: [ -> ]Well yeah, lots of teams have played lots of other teams more than zero times.
I'm saying, what teams do UMass football fans care about? I would think UConn would be an obvious one, from Yankee history. Obviously Temple is an A10 opponent, so is URI. But do bball fans and fball fans cross-over? I don't know.
You assume the existence of nontrivial numbers of UMass football fans. Games in the Boston area don't draw FBS level crowds. GAmes on campus don't draw fans. According to wikipedia's numbers, there have been 8 UMass home games with 15,000 or more attendance in the 5 years they've been FBS, 4 of those in 2013. Possibly you could say "UMass fans care a lot about playing BC", which is 2 of the games, but it's more likely that BC filled (or half-filled) the stadium.
If your team isn't a blue-blood or ECU, you have to win to put fans in the stadium, and then you still have to be realistic about your draw.
BC, when they were winning, drew 40K depending on the opponent.
The northeast isn't the South as far as college football is concerned. The team has to earn their fans presence.
(11-21-2016 06:29 AM)johnbragg Wrote: [ -> ]Possibly you could say "UMass fans care a lot about playing BC", which is 2 of the games, but it's more likely that BC filled (or half-filled) the stadium.
First game was 50-50, second game was 80% UMass fans, like the basketball games. BC fans are in a deep depression. UConn fans are in a deep depression. UMass fans don't know what non-depression feels like. It's not a good time to be a New England college sports fan. Even UConn basketball looks like it stinks this year.
There may not be a lot of people on the East Coast that care to watch a game between less than blue blood opponents at midnight the Saturday of Thanksgiving weekend but there are a few of us.
I was getting excited for the last game of the season, clearly hasn't gone how UMass fans would have liked, however the team has played well in spurts. The schedule and lack of depth have hurt at times but I am hoping for a "bowl" win.
To find out that the game isn't available to stream anywhere is crazy. Is this just a Hawaii thing or are most of the MW games not televised unavailable for streaming? Even the independent little sisters of the poor in Amherst have every home game available on either tv through ASN/NESN or ESPN3 streaming. I get UMass gave up some money for the home games vs good teams to get the lesser value games televised but I still am shocked at this.
(11-28-2016 10:43 PM)Native Georgian Wrote: [ -> ]UMass played much better than their record indicates. Who can say what the future holds but I hope they can make it (FBS) work for them.
Yup, we had 13 players in Phil Steele's Postseason All Independent Team.
Against Notre Dame, BYU, Army and UMass we took our fair share of 25% of the roster.
Injuries hurt and Shane Huber especially deserves to be there.
The first half of the interview with AD Ryan Bamford is about football and continues to cover most of the Olympic sports.
Saw this article link on UMass74.blogspot.com comparing NMSU and UMass schedule as an independent.
Quote:Comparing NMSU and UMass
UMass athletic director Ryan Bamford walked into a difficult scheduling situation when he took the job in 2015.
UMass was making the transition to Football Bowl Subdivision in the Mid American Conference but their fate was tied to Temple. When Temple left for the American Athletic Conference, UMass — somewhat like NMSU in the Sun Belt — was the odd man out as a 13th affiliate member and given a choice of playing as a full member institution or playing as an independent football program and remaining in the Atlantic 10 in Olympic sports. UMass will compete for the first time as an independent football program in 2016.
“When I arrived a year ago, we hadn’t done a great job setting up the 2016 and 2017 schedule and we had one game when I took the job and a year out from the season that was a challenging task,” Bamford said. “Beggars couldn’t be choosers when we were selecting games to get us six home games and we have a really challenging 2016 schedule too.
“But my philosophy is to try to be competitive building a schedule with balance. You have to be able to make up revenues without being in a league by getting some guarantee games versus teams you think you can compete with as well as opponents that are 50-50 games. We have a mixture of Power 5 and Group of Five and one FCS game every year.”
Bamford did not write off a possible meeting with New Mexico State in 2019 because, like Moccia, Bamford doesn’t know what the future in conference realignment holds. But it won’t be in 2018 when NMSU’s Sun Belt Conference membership expires. UMass has only a FCS game to complete its 2018 schedule.
Bamford said UMass has six open dates in 2019 but will not schedule further until at least next summer or unless it becomes clear UMass will remain an independent past 2018.
“I would never close the door on any opportunity,” Bamford said. “It’s a far enough time away that I don’t know what the status is going to be for us. I don’t want to stack 10 or 12 games and then have to get out of those games.
“I put together a 2016 schedule a summer ago with less than a year to the season so I’m not worried about three years away.”
Bamford said geography and putting his team on the field in competitive games in an effort to become bowl eligible are the two factors that built his schedule. UMass has Group of Five home-and-home contracts with Sun Belt members Troy, Appalachian State and Georgia Southern. The eastern Sun Belt and Conference USA schools make sense for UMass in the same sense that western Sun Belt and C-USA and Mountain West programs make sense for the Aggies.
“You look at when leagues are uneven and need a game to make a league schedule even,” Bamford said. “I have not had a ton of issue with that yet but I could see it as a problem or something to keep a close eye on down the line.”
UMass has games against Power 5 opponents Florida, Boston College, Mississippi State, South Carolina South Florida, Tennessee and Georgia the next three years. UMass is in the final year of a five-year split schedule agreement with Gillette Stadium, which helped them land a two-for-one series with Mississippi State with MSU playing at UMass in 2016.
“You just have to be creative,” Bamford said. “The guarantee for (Mississippi State) was not as high as the $1.25 million we are getting for Florida this year. We get a total of $750,000 but we got a home game out of it.”
The challenge Bamford and Moccia will face that fellow independents but national brands Notre Dame, Army and BYU do not face is scheduling games later in the year.
The SEC typically has a window late in the year that the Aggies have used to fill open dates in the past and UMass has BYU on the schedule in November in 2016 (road), 2017 (road), 2018 (Gillette Stadium) and 2019 (Gillette Stadium).
Army enters the UMass schedule with a November road game in 2019 and a home game in 2020 with plans to extend the contract.
“You can’t schedule too many home games or road games in a row and we are taking a bye later in 2016 in November then we would want to but some things you can’t control when you are an independent,” Bamford said. “I have to be cognizant that I don’t load September and October. If I can get a game in November, I have to try to get a game in November.”
Sports Editor Jason Groves can be reached at 575-541-5459. Follow him on Twitter @jpgroves.
Mike Traini just put up a 2016 Football review. Here is a large portion of the article.
Quote:There are a lot of ways one could describe the 2016 Massachusetts Minutemen football season. Some are good, some are not, and some are in-between. UMass made some strides in the past year, improved in some areas, but didn’t get better in others where a step up remains a necessity. They competed in their first season as an FBS Independent in 2016, and against a very difficult schedule managed to hang tough with some strong Power Conference opposition. They also, despite that schedule, left some wins on the table and are still plagued by some of the same issues that existed in their first FBS season.
This article is long overdue, and for that, we apologize. What it lacks in punctuality we hope it makes up for in content and analysis. As it stands, a season recap with some time in between the end of the season can allow for a more thorough and even-toned synopsis, leaving out the potential for knee-jerk reactions or opinions driven on emotion.
Let’s start with the positives. Against the most difficult and high-profile schedule in the school’s history, the Minutemen competed in the majority of their games, including putting scares into all three SEC opponents they faced on the year. In fact, the depth and strength of UMass’ schedule became even more clear during the College Football Bowl Season:
All nine of UMass’ bowl-competing opponents either won or nearly won their postseason games. South Carolina was the only team to lose, and that was in overtime to USF.
Moral victories are not a trackable stat, but it is a sign of progress for the Minutemen to remain competitive against that level of competition, as opposed to the far more lopsided losses they suffered in years past at the hands of Power Five teams.
In the face of that schedule, the Minutemen played a ton of young players, not only on special teams but in key positions. The Minutemen’s 2016 recruiting class was their best ever, and many of those athletes chose the University of Massachusetts for the opportunity at early playing time. True freshman offensive lineman RaQuan Thomas started the majority of the season at left guard, where his 6-foot-5, 390-pound (!) frame helped fool opponents into thinking he wasn’t a first-year player. True freshman cornerback Isaiah Rodgers earned a starting nod before midseason and seized the opportunity, showing he’s ready for an even bigger role in 2017. True freshman wide receiver Sadiq Palmer saw action in most games, and while his utilization (or lack thereof) can be debated, he made the most of the routes he was given to run.
It wasn’t only the freshman that contributed either. JUCO transfers like quarterback Andrew Ford, who started the season as the backup, came on as an injury replacement, subsequently earned the starting job and is now the de facto starter for next season, and linebackers Tedrick Lowery and Colbert Calhoun, all played significant minutes (Lowery’s limited by injury) to help the UMass units perform the best they could.
The Minutemen competed on national television on several occasions, which is always beneficial in an attempt to build their brand as an FBS team. They also cashed some large checks from their SEC opposition, which is always beneficial in an attempt to balance the books as an FBS team.
While their record was not what anyone might want to see at 2-10, UMass handled what was always going to be their most difficult year ever quite well, all things considered. This writer was telling anyone who would listen as far back as two years ago that 2016 was going to be a bear, and it certainly was.
Despite those difficulties, UMass had a chance to improve on that 2-10 mark over the course of the season last year, and they failed to accomplish that. Games against Tulane, Old Dominion, and Hawaii were all serious missed opportunities for UMass to pick up victories in a results-driven industry. The manner in which they lost those games, and the others on their schedule, is a cause for concern.
I'ts not all sun and roses, but I'm a fan and looking forward to some signing season surprises and the spring football game.