(10-09-2021 09:55 AM)Kit-Cat Wrote:  

(10-09-2021 09:13 AM)Bogg Wrote:  Don't see MAC landing Saint Louis. UIC and UW-Milwaukee? Sure, they're gettable I guess, but I'm not sure they're bringing that much to the table for the MAC. Ill St they could get, but I'd bet the primary draw for them would be getting into an FBS conference to move their football up at some point. If the goal is just to add some decent basketball schools and put a little dent in the MVC then the MAC would probably just be better off going to 14 all-sports with Illinois State and Missouri State.

Basketball only so you don't have to split the CFP money.

Offer them a FBS upgrade at a later date.

I mean, if you put it in the contract that there's, like, a five-year on-ramp to football membership, fine, but if you're a basketball school with no designs on FBS there aren't a lot of good reasons to leave the MVC for the MAC.

Why would the MAC want to go back down the “geographic outlier addition” road? Has it ever worked out for them before?

To be fair. the teams as UCF and Temple always viewed the MAC as a temporary. If you have two teams that are committed and not using the MAC as a stepping stone, it could work out. Personally think CUSA will survive and W.K. and Middle Tenn will be there as the exit fees are very steep. To be clear, UMass never asked to leave as a FB affiliate, but did not want to leave the A10 as they are a founding member and did not leave for the Big East or when most of the other early members left as, Penn State, West Virginia, Rutgers, and Villanova.

(10-09-2021 10:39 AM)BKTopper Wrote:  Why would the MAC want to go back down the “geographic outlier addition” road? Has it ever worked out for them before?

Buffalo and the second try at NIU seem to have worked, as long as they don't get poached by the AAC.

Overall the 90s adds worked better than the ones in this century ... the two new 90s adds are still in the conference, half of the "re-runs" seem to be working out, while all three 20th century FB only adds were more like the gecko lizard that loses their tail to the cat so that they escape otherwise intact.

MTSU and Western Kentucky seem like they would be more in the mold of Marshall ... only there until they can sort out a preferable place in a conference with more border state Southeastern schools.

(10-09-2021 11:27 AM)BruceMcF Wrote:  

(10-09-2021 10:39 AM)BKTopper Wrote:  Why would the MAC want to go back down the “geographic outlier addition” road? Has it ever worked out for them before?

Buffalo and the second try at NIU seem to have worked, as long as they don't get poached by the AAC.

Overall the 90s adds worked better than the ones in this century ... the two new 90s adds are still in the conference, half of the "re-runs" seem to be working out, while all three 20th century FB only adds were more like the gecko lizard that loses their tail to the cat so that they escape otherwise intact.

MTSU and Western Kentucky seem like they would be more in the mold of Marshall ... only there until they can sort out a preferable place in a conference with more border state Southeastern schools.

NIU to Ball St and the _MUs is compact. Buffalo to Cleveland metro is also compact.

I’m talking about UCF, UMass.

Not even really talking about Marshall, since it was in close proximity to OH. But even that didn’t work out for the MAC.

(10-09-2021 11:36 AM)BKTopper Wrote:  NIU to Ball St and the _MUs is compact. Buffalo to Cleveland metro is also compact.

I’m talking about UCF, UMass.

One of these things is not like the others ... NIU to Ball State is a four and a half hour drive, Buffalo to Amherst is a six and a half hour drive. So UMass is much more like the earlier expansion of the footprint than UCF.

I certainly have no inside information, but I do expect that the MAC figured that UCF would not be in long term, even if they probably hoped it would be longer than three years.

UMass remains a long term project. Similar to recruiting a big in basketball and hope he develops, a bit of risk. Our best recruiting year was our final year in the MAC rate #86. Every year as an Independent it has a bottom 25 recruiting class with in kind results. It would take time. The remote possibility that I've been pimping is to add NDSU and UMass as a FB package. NDSU will offset UMass and then when there is a new contract things could change. Offer 1M to split to the pair. 600k comes from the 300k APR from CFP so cost the MAC nothing. The MAC charges 200k in dues so the other 400k is kind of a push. It will cost the teams a small amount and is not risky with a 4 year contract. Granted very low odds, sadly don't see a strong case for the MAC to add us.

(10-09-2021 11:46 AM)Steve1981 Wrote:  ... Our best recruiting year was our final year in the MAC rate #86. Every year as an Independent it has a bottom 25 recruiting class with in kind results. ...

This would be part of the argument for an offensive system different from the current dominant systems ... hoping that in not fighting for all the same players, you can get players that are better than their recruiting agency rating when they are playing in the system.

But of course, "install a triple option or wing-T and focus on building a tough defense" means still having to recruit for the same players as everybody else on the defensive side of the ball.

I was flipping to the game during the Carolina debacle. Congrats UMass!

Here’s hoping UConn gets their first win next week vs the Elis.

(10-08-2021 12:57 PM)ken d Wrote:  

(10-06-2021 12:35 PM)bill dazzle Wrote:  

(10-06-2021 09:26 AM)UpStreamRedTeam Wrote:  

(10-05-2021 08:50 PM)bill dazzle Wrote:  If I'm UMass, there is absolutely no way I want to have all sports in the MAC, and there are many reasons for this. The MAC is a fine league, very stable and with lots of solid rivalries and history. But UMass basketball works well in the A10.

Does UMass basketball work well in the A-10? They have only on tournament appearance this century, and if you take out their run from 92-98 during Calipari’s time (plus the two years after he left) UMass hasn’t been to the tournament since 1962. Calipari’s run was so good I think it clouds our entire perception of UMass basketball.

I suppose it works well, specifically, for travel, rivalries and fan interest. I could be wrong.

As a Memphis fan, I would be fine with the AAC adding UMass because the Minutemen hoops program offers a solid history and UMass is a "basketball school." I'm in the minority compared to most AAC fans.

Bill, I think a lot of people make the mistake of assuming that because UMass sucks at football they must be a "basketball school". They are not. Dr. J is not coming back and neither is Camby. Take those few years out of their history and UMass has just been mediocre at best. I don't know what sport they're good at, but it's not hoops.

There really isn't any FBS conference that should be interested in the Minutemen. They are lucky to have gotten in to the A-10 before anyone realized how little they bring to the table.

UMass is lucky to have gotten into a conference it helped found?

(10-10-2021 03:01 PM)e-parade Wrote:  

(10-08-2021 12:57 PM)ken d Wrote:  There really isn't any FBS conference that should be interested in the Minutemen. They are lucky to have gotten in to the A-10 before anyone realized how little they bring to the table.

UMass is lucky to have gotten into a conference it helped found?

"Some wait for luck to strike, others go out and make their own luck."

Also I meant to reply to some other stuff as well.

Try not to give our current AD too much credit for the hockey program. Carvel basically just walked up and said "I want to coach the UMass hockey program" because of his (and his wife's connections to the school and area.

UMass should have moved up. We should be FBS. We just did it at the wrong time. The right time would have been at some point in the first Whipple stint throughout the Brown one. Those teams would have been instantly competitive in the MAC (not winning it, but at least being close to bowl eligibility in the first few seasons, if not eligible for a couple). Brown wanted to stay, but wanted UMass to move up. The Morris came in and gutted the program leading up to moving up. After he was fired it was our first season of FBS, and Brown actually came in and wanted to coach the team again, but the then AD saw a guy who had never been a head coach but had "Notre Dame" on his resume and made another terrible choice.

Bamford is definitely an improvement at AD, but there's still definitely room for improvement there.

(10-10-2021 04:43 PM)e-parade Wrote:  Also I meant to reply to some other stuff as well.

Try not to give our current AD too much credit for the hockey program. Carvel basically just walked up and said "I want to coach the UMass hockey program" because of his (and his wife's connections to the school and area.

UMass should have moved up. We should be FBS. We just did it at the wrong time. The right time would have been at some point in the first Whipple stint throughout the Brown one. Those teams would have been instantly competitive in the MAC (not winning it, but at least being close to bowl eligibility in the first few seasons, if not eligible for a couple). Brown wanted to stay, but wanted UMass to move up. The Morris came in and gutted the program leading up to moving up. After he was fired it was our first season of FBS, and Brown actually came in and wanted to coach the team again, but the then AD saw a guy who had never been a head coach but had "Notre Dame" on his resume and made another terrible choice.

Bamford is definitely an improvement at AD, but there's still definitely room for improvement there.

Brown’s not doing much now after having one of the best D’s at Boston College a few years back.

(10-10-2021 03:17 PM)BruceMcF Wrote:  

(10-10-2021 03:01 PM)e-parade Wrote:  

(10-08-2021 12:57 PM)ken d Wrote:  There really isn't any FBS conference that should be interested in the Minutemen. They are lucky to have gotten in to the A-10 before anyone realized how little they bring to the table.

UMass is lucky to have gotten into a conference it helped found?

"Some wait for luck to strike, others go out and make their own luck."

I don't know why college sports in the Northeast was so slow to rise at public universities. UMass and UConn were slow to rise to FBS status and didn't become relevant in the NCAA men's tournament until the 1990's. Rutgers was barely known in FBS football until the 2000's. And Buffalo is still a MAC in football and had some success in men's basketball in 2018 and 2019 only to lose Nate Oats to Alabama. The only public football powers pre 2000 from Northeast public schools were luckily for me from my own state, Penn State and Pittsburgh (West Virginia could also qualify as well but their population was and still is too small). If UMass, UConn, Rutgers, or Buffalo football were as good as West Virginia was in the 80's and competitive with Penn State, imagine their fan base? Better yet, imagine if Stony Brook had an FBS football team (today they still don't)? Or what if Stony Brook was in the Big East or Atlantic 10 and their men's basketball team was competitive in it? I was growing up in Wilkes Barre and probably didn't realize Villanova was in the Philly area until I got to college (certainly didn't associate them with Philly in 1985 when they won the national championship). I knew the Philadelphia pro sports teams (Phillies, 76ers, and Eagles, didn't like the Eagles since they weren't good in the early 80's and Washington was better). Obviously I remembered Penn State and their two national championships. New York State residents never had a "Penn State" to cheer for (Syracuse, but they're private). New Jersey residents never had one either (Rutgers, but they were barely relevant, Seton Hall in men's basketball but they were private). It was hard to even associate Temple with Philadelphia and they're a public school. Boston College is a private school but it was easy for Boston residents to get behind them during the Flutie era just like it's easy for Miami people to get behind the University of Miami. The Big Ten would be so much better if the University of Chicago had stayed in the Big Ten and "Northwestern" de-emphasized sports (how many people associate Northwestern with Chicago?)

I know I beat names to death but "New York University" received the 6th most applications of any university in the country and the most of any university not in the U-C system.

https://www.usnews.com/education/best-co...plications

They play athletics in Division 3, the same level as Wilkes University (and I'm not making this up!) They received more applications than Columbia, an Ivy League university in the same damn city. I'm sure there's people who don't even know Columbia is in New York, everyone knows where NYU is (well they can at least guess it is in New York State at the very least).

New York, Connecticut, and Massachusetts can't get one P5/P4 football public school? Mississippi has two of them! Kansas has two of them! Oregon has two of them! Iowa has two of them! South Carolina has two of them and one of them won two national championships in the last decade and it wasn't even their primary one!

As for that conference UMass formed? 1975. Big East was 1979. The Big Ten, ACC, SEC, and Pac 12 (then 10) are all looking at the A-10 and Big East and asking what took you so long? No wonder the Big 10 was able to get Penn State. And you had two conferences dominated by private schools in a public school world. The Eastern leagues were doomed. Forget the names but imagine a conference with Penn State, Pittsburgh, Temple (Philly), Stony Brook (NYC), Buffalo, Rutgers (NJ), Massachusetts, Connecticut, and West Virginia, all with decent FBS football and men's basketball teams and fan bases. If you can get a decent fan base out of Starkville and Corvallis being the #2's in those states, you can't in major states and cities?

I think location matters more than name. For instance, when St. John’s is good the city gets behind them.

Imagine if Fordham football didn’t fold in the 50’s, or NYU.

There are a lot of what if’s. Villanova’s AD tried to start an eastern all sports conference in 1953! It involved Fordham, BC, Syracuse, Temple, Penn State, Pitt, and a few others.

On the subject of Villanova, in 1997 there was a plan in place to play at Franklin Field for a few years while transitioning to the Big East. Imagine if they effectively swapped out Temple. Who do you think would have gotten the lease at the Linc in 2003?

(10-11-2021 06:43 AM)schmolik Wrote:  I don't know why college sports in the Northeast was so slow to rise at public universities.

It probably has not helped that public universities have long been considered second-class in these states. It's a real cultural difference from Middle America, where many of the best universities are the publics.

(10-11-2021 06:43 AM)schmolik Wrote:  

(10-10-2021 03:17 PM)BruceMcF Wrote:  

(10-10-2021 03:01 PM)e-parade Wrote:  

(10-08-2021 12:57 PM)ken d Wrote:  There really isn't any FBS conference that should be interested in the Minutemen. They are lucky to have gotten in to the A-10 before anyone realized how little they bring to the table.

UMass is lucky to have gotten into a conference it helped found?

"Some wait for luck to strike, others go out and make their own luck."

I don't know why college sports in the Northeast was so slow to rise at public universities. UMass and UConn were slow to rise to FBS status and didn't become relevant in the NCAA men's tournament until the 1990's. Rutgers was barely known in FBS football until the 2000's. And Buffalo is still a MAC in football and had some success in men's basketball in 2018 and 2019 only to lose Nate Oats to Alabama. The only public football powers pre 2000 from Northeast public schools were luckily for me from my own state, Penn State and Pittsburgh (West Virginia could also qualify as well but their population was and still is too small). If UMass, UConn, Rutgers, or Buffalo football were as good as West Virginia was in the 80's and competitive with Penn State, imagine their fan base? Better yet, imagine if Stony Brook had an FBS football team (today they still don't)? Or what if Stony Brook was in the Big East or Atlantic 10 and their men's basketball team was competitive in it? I was growing up in Wilkes Barre and probably didn't realize Villanova was in the Philly area until I got to college (certainly didn't associate them with Philly in 1985 when they won the national championship). I knew the Philadelphia pro sports teams (Phillies, 76ers, and Eagles, didn't like the Eagles since they weren't good in the early 80's and Washington was better). Obviously I remembered Penn State and their two national championships. New York State residents never had a "Penn State" to cheer for (Syracuse, but they're private). New Jersey residents never had one either (Rutgers, but they were barely relevant, Seton Hall in men's basketball but they were private). It was hard to even associate Temple with Philadelphia and they're a public school. Boston College is a private school but it was easy for Boston residents to get behind them during the Flutie era just like it's easy for Miami people to get behind the University of Miami. The Big Ten would be so much better if the University of Chicago had stayed in the Big Ten and "Northwestern" de-emphasized sports (how many people associate Northwestern with Chicago?)

I know I beat names to death but "New York University" received the 6th most applications of any university in the country and the most of any university not in the U-C system.

https://www.usnews.com/education/best-co...plications

They play athletics in Division 3, the same level as Wilkes University (and I'm not making this up!) They received more applications than Columbia, an Ivy League university in the same damn city. I'm sure there's people who don't even know Columbia is in New York, everyone knows where NYU is (well they can at least guess it is in New York State at the very least).

New York, Connecticut, and Massachusetts can't get one P5/P4 football public school? Mississippi has two of them! Kansas has two of them! Oregon has two of them! Iowa has two of them! South Carolina has two of them and one of them won two national championships in the last decade and it wasn't even their primary one!

As for that conference UMass formed? 1975. Big East was 1979. The Big Ten, ACC, SEC, and Pac 12 (then 10) are all looking at the A-10 and Big East and asking what took you so long? No wonder the Big 10 was able to get Penn State. And you had two conferences dominated by private schools in a public school world. The Eastern leagues were doomed. Forget the names but imagine a conference with Penn State, Pittsburgh, Temple (Philly), Stony Brook (NYC), Buffalo, Rutgers (NJ), Massachusetts, Connecticut, and West Virginia, all with decent FBS football and men's basketball teams and fan bases. If you can get a decent fan base out of Starkville and Corvallis being the #2's in those states, you can't in major states and cities?

I don't really agree with the bolded. Being a lifelong Chicagoan, Northwestern is frankly much more well-known as a local school compared to the University of Chicago. Now, I'll grant that might be directly because of Northwestern playing Big Ten sports, so it could be a chicken-or-the-egg situation. Even putting that aside, though, Northwestern and UChicago are *very* different schools in terms of atmosphere. It's actually pretty clear to me that Northwestern fits very well into the Big Ten despite being a private school - the types of students that Northwestern attracts are very Big Ten-student-like that just happen to be super-smart, whereas UChicago has a totally different academic culture. It's similar to Stanford in the Pac-12 - they still fit into the Pac-12 in a way that, say, the Claremont colleges or Cal Tech never could.

As for NYU, the application difference with Columbia has NOTHING to do with the name. If a student that doesn't know that Columbia is in New York, then they wouldn't have a chance in h*ll of getting into Columbia in the first place and they'd be an irrelevant applicant, anyway. NYU is a *significantly* larger institution compared to Columbia, so it's natural that they attract way more applicants. NYU has 27,000-plus undergrad students compared only 6000 for Columbia. So, NYU's undergrad population is more akin to a Big Ten school than it is to an Ivy League school. So, in a way, NYU is treated as sort of the "state school" for New Yorkers in the sense that if you're a good/great academic student in that region, virtually everyone applies there. Granted, NYU is faaaaaar from a state school price with a COA of $80,000 per year. When you then add in people from across the country that have the New York City dream and are smart (but not necessarily Ivy League qualifications), NYU is a destination school.

The Northeast has several other private schools that effectively have the enrollment sizes and student bodies that are more in line with flagship public schools if they were anywhere else in the country, such as Syracuse, Boston University, Northeastern, George Washington University, etc. There are just a lot of historical reasons why public universities were treated as second class citizens in the Northeast for a long time.

Note that the acceptance rate last year for NYU was 12.8%, which is certainly very low. However, getting into Columbia is a true lottery in every sense of the word: their acceptance rate this past year was an insane 3.7%!!! The people that "matter" definitely know the difference between Columbia and NYU... and that's even an easy one when Columbia has the Ivy League pedigree. Think about the elite liberal arts colleges like Williams, Amherst and Swarthmore - they have very little "layperson" fame and are smaller than your typical suburban public high school, yet they send more people to places that "matter" like Wall Street and Capitol Hill than massive SEC schools with 10 or 15 times as many students.

I guess what I'm saying is no one that "matters" gives two winks about the name. (It's like the obtuse people that try to claim that the University of Southern California is a "directional school" in the same way as Southern Illinois.) They know exactly where the schools are on the prestige scale and hire accordingly.

To answer the thread's question, perhaps but probably not in the cards. There is a chance CUSA could look favorably towards UMass as a FB only. Looking at the ratings, 3 out of the very bottom are independent universities. Independency is a terrible head wind with no defined bowl or conference championships to excite recruits.
If the chairs stop in a few years, we'll have to see what happen with both BB and football performance and the A10.

At least the students stayed and stormed the field after a solid beat of UConn. Last part of the highlight reel.

I went to UMass over the weekend to cover the UConn game. I talked to their AD a little about their conference affiliation situation. You might find it interesting:

https://www.extrapointsmb.com/umass-coll...ccess-fbs/

(10-11-2021 01:28 PM)MattBrownEP Wrote:  I went to UMass over the weekend to cover the UConn game. I talked to their AD a little about their conference affiliation situation. You might find it interesting:

https://www.extrapointsmb.com/umass-coll...ccess-fbs/

Thanks, a very nice read and nice to hear from the AD and see the reindeer and the base of fan support is real at 75% capacity and some of the quotes.

Quote:After all, there are things within a program's control that can help put butts in seats. I wandered into the student section multiple times to talk to folks and ask why they kept coming. To a student, they all told me that it was fun, that their friends went, that it was an important part of campus life. But they also mentioned that UMass apparently has the best campus dining facilities in the country, and students can swipe a meal card and essentially get a delicious catered meal. Will college students show up to support bad football if you feed them? Apparently, yes.

Quote:Building a sustainable program isn't cheap, and Bamford told me that UMass isn't spending huge money on the department. In fact, he says, the school was almost $2 million less on football than they were back when the school was reclassifying back from FCS. And unlike many other schools in the bottom third of FBS in spending, Bamford added that 50% of the UMass football budget is program generated.

Quote:So is conference affiliation.
"I would love to be in a football conference. Right? I think if we were still in the MAC, we would be different in 2021 than we are now." Bamford told me. A lack of football conference affiliation doesn't just make bowl eligibility or tangible goal accomplishment more difficult, simply building out a schedule can be hard.

"Take this season," Bamford added. "We built out this schedule four, five years ago. You know that Pitt is going to be good, that BC is going to be a good ACC team...but Coastal Carolina had just jumped up to FBS. We didn't realize 17th in the country when we played them. My first year here, we beat Eastern Michigan at Eastern...now they're much better.

When you're trying to build a program, you have to hit everything right."

To the extent possible, the school is trying to find regional opponents. The Minutemen will face two local FCS programs (Rhode Island and Maine) this season, and there are future dates with local teams like Buffalo, Temple and Army on future schedules. There's no formalized annual game with UConn set up at the moment, but Bamford expects the series to continue.

"It isn't formalized, but we have them in pencil on our schedule for the next ten years. UConn needed schedule flexibility, because they needed to get games, so I said, look, we both know we're gonna play each other, so go get games, here's roughly the dates we want to play. It's just a matter of us memorializing it in a contract."

Bamford mentioned that even before COVID, other schools at the FBS and FCS level had reached out to learn more about their experience as an independent, and with all of the massive changes happening in college sports, he floated the idea that potentially other schools could decide to go independent, which would help provide clarity and predictability to future schedules.

But at the end of the day? "We want to be in a conference. But somebody has to want us to be in a conference."