I recently struck up a conversation with three visitors from 1200 miles away. They came to watch their alma mater, Missouri, tackle UMass in football. One worried it could be a “tough road game” for Mizzou: “an unfamiliar team in an unfamiliar stadium.” I laughingly replied, “If they win by less than 50 points they should fire the coach.”
Maybe Ryan Bamford, the captain of the RMS Titanic–sorry, UMass Athletic Director–thinks it a moral victory that losing by 45-3 beat my 50-point spread, though an unsubstantiated rumor holds that Missouri dressed the cheerleading squad for the fourth quarter. Are there any adults in the UMass administration with the courage to pull the plug on the brain-dead experiment? A chemistry professor with a success/failure rate of 24-112 would be denied tenure. In the 14 years since UMass moved “up” (?) from Division II it has burned through 5 coaches and has paid out enough termination money to blow up the Tower Library and build a rational facility.
I love UMass. It’s where I got my doctorate, made good friends, and taught. I even had UMass in my will. I’m feeling just fine right now, but if UMass can waste money and young lives on gridiron folly, there are hundreds of more worthy causes. CTE brain injury research for instance.
Who’s to blame for a program that allows young bodies to be savaged by bigger, faster, stronger, and more skilled opponents? Bamford gets some of the blame, with assists from coddling chancellors, male legislators who took too many blows to the head, and far-flung alums who haven’t been to Amherst since their graduation kegger. But I assign most of the blame to the Patriots who carelessly won a few Super Bowls. Prior to the Tom Brady era, New England football was an afterthought. On a warm cloudy fall day a few thousand might show up for games at UMass, Harvard, or Boston College. Elsewhere it was in the hundreds. (When it was warm and sunny, rational people went leaf-peeping.)
Against Missouri, UMass failed to fill McGuirk Stadium’s 17,000 seats. That bespeaks the difference between non-football and football cultures. If fewer than 17,000 showed up for a Michigan game, the AD and coach would be hanged, the president stripped naked and forced to run a gauntlet through Ann Arbor, the faculty reorganized, and the entire student body expelled. UMass is so far out of its league it couldn’t find it in a hall or mirrors. Yet next year, in still another misguided effort, UMass will join the Mid-American Conference (MAC). In the name of “fixing” the football program numerous well-established men’s and women’s teams will be forced to join the MAC, not the least of which are its nationally known basketball programs. Imagine the hordes (not!) parading into McGuirk or the Mullins Center to see UMass play natural rivals like Akron and Ball State. Watch as they take on Miami and Michigan; that is, Miami of Ohio and Eastern and Western Michigan. For what it’s worth, MAC member Northern Illinois beat Notre Dame this year, but if you dream that UMass will ever do so, kindly see one of the many fine therapists in the Pioneer Valley.
Want to sell out McGuirk? Dump football and do as the Romans did. Begin with a few bloody Ultimate Fight Club bouts, let the band march at halftime, and then bring on the main event: Christians versus gladiators, lions, and tigers. The crowd will go wild!
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