(11-21-2016 06:29 AM)johnbragg Wrote:  

(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.