You sound like a BCU fan. "yeah no one cares about any of our sports but look at the checks we are cashing!" Football will do nothing at UMass to drive the bus
The MAC will simply ensure they have less fans. Lucky them but look at the checks they are cashing!
Here is the way I see it. UMass is not just very bad, it is putrid. It is in the worst FBS conference and can't come close to sniffing a W. That is the reason no one goes to the games. I think the only way out of the crevasse is for UMass and donors to find enough cash to hire a proven coach but that would take serious $$. Maybe an FCS coach who can bring FCS talent with him. UMass isn't wowing recruits with anything else.
UMass hasn’t beaten an FBS program since a win over Army on 10/28/23.
MAC football actually is a detriment to fan base engagement. Ask any current MAC school and they'll tell you the midweek maction games are hated.
They should have dropped back to FCS where they were good and left hoops in the A10. Football in the MAC does nothing for them and won’t propel them into something better. And now hoops in the MAC will draw like 2k per game and no one will care about any of those games. There is no long term fan connection with them being in the MAC. They still have one of the worst stadiums at any level of football and aren’t committed to it so there’s no point to what they are doing. Complete clown show there
Again, UMass problems run far deeper than playing maction games, but those games are actively hurting them instead of helping them. In fact, it is hurting all MAC schools. It's why they have to front load a bunch of P4 games, and losses, early in the season, to make up for the shortfall in revenue that the Tue and Wed games will bring.
I guess we can agree that UMass sucks and its fan base sucks. You think the MAC has something to do with that, I don't. The fan base is soft if they choose not to follow the team just because of the MAC. But in the end it doesn't even matter
Hoops wise it is a major step down. The A10 is a top 8 conference while the MAC is putrid ranking in the 25th range. No one cares about East, West, Central Michigan or the many Ohio schools in that conference. I know a few large donors who are mostly basketball aligned there - they pulled everything. Not donating, not getting season tickets, they are done. It will get worse for UMass, not better. This wont lead to them getting to the top level of anything and it will just result in less fans, now and going forward. And this is knowing that they really can't afford to lose fans at this point. There will be games at Mullins this year with less than 1500 fans which is why I was saying they should not play there and just go back to The Cage but didnt realize they re purposed that place.
At kickoff, there did not appear to be a thousand people in McGuirk stadium. Maybe more were there out of camera range, but the #s dropped a lot during the game. Friends, family and smallish band representation ahead of no Wednesday classes.
Can’t shake the same feeling.
Feels like this is probably worth mentioning again since it took a handful of days from this post for it to start to feel uncomfortably prophetic.
