Good morning!
The UMass football team plays its home opener this afternoon against mighty Stony Brook at McGuirk Alumni Stadium. The much-anticipated Don Brown Era began with back-to-back losses at Tulane and Toledo by a combined score of 97-20. UMass was penalized 21 times for 200 yards.
So much for that trip to Nassau for the HomeTown Lenders Bahamas Bowl.
“Yet another drubbing,” wrote a UMass maintenance worker. “Here’s the kicker, a lot of us UMass employees who worked through the pandemic were promised $1,000 and $2,000 bonuses and still nothing. I’m far from well off and $2,000 would really help right now.
“It sucks to see Coach Brown making $700,000 to get blown out and have us get treated like doormats.”
A spokesman for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees confirmed the allegation. “The money was supposed to come in May 27 for working with students face-to-face, pre-vax. We didn’t have the luxury of working from home.”
The Seawolves’ only game thus far has been a 35-14 loss at home against URI. Quarterbacks Joshua Zamot and Daron Bryden combined to go 8-for-24 for 83 yards with no touchdowns and three interceptions.
You’d think it would be a cupcake win for the Minutemen, but USA Today’s Jeff Sagarin rates Stony Brook 213th and UMass 221st out of 261 teams between FBS and FCS. Odds Shark lists the Seawolves as 2½-point favorites.
Kickoff is at 3:30 p.m. to accommodate Boston area alumni who got lost in Three Rivers. Tickets are $23 at the box office; online tickets cost $23 plus a $3 ticket fee and $5 order charge. To show just how petty — or desperate — it is, UMass is tacking on a $1 service fee to the $10 online parking charge. Parking on game day — that’s today — is $20.
An advisory statement issued this summer added: “UMass Athletics anticipates the parking lots surrounding McGuirk will reach capacity.”
Who makes this stuff up?
“You can tell AD Ryan Bamford that I will not be attending any more football games until I can drive down, park for free and purchase a senior ticket from a kiosk, and I am speaking for many seniors,” said retired GHS golf coach Doug Gaudet.
What Gaudet and others should do is continue up Rte. 9 to Pratt Field and watch Amherst College host Middlebury.
Amherst coach E.J. Mills enters his 25th season with a 145-51 record and six NESCAC championships. “An interesting tidbit about Amherst football,” writes Amherst alum Jim Still. “The famous HOF coach, Jim Ostendarp, retired a few years too late. Sadly, it appears that he was in the very early stage of Alzheimer’s Disease which ultimately took him.
“They replaced him with a guy named John McKechnie, a class of ’77 graduate. I’m not sure how to put this but John was not a good fit from the outset and he was fired after one year. He was replaced by Jack Siedlecki, who controversially brought his entire recruiting class from WPI to Amherst.
“He turned the program around but the WPI recruits didn’t try to fit in at Amherst. When Siedlecki left for Yale his defensive coordinator stayed.
“His name? EJ Mills.”
Today’s kickoff is at 2 p.m. and there’s no charge for admission or parking.
This has been the most depressing Red Sox season since 1976 when they followed up their thrilling World Series run by finishing 15½ games in back of the Yankees.
Think about it. Jerry Remy passed away during last year’s World Series, Dennis Eckersley announced this will be his last year in the booth, J.D. Martinez has 11 home runs and 52 RBIs and Xander Bogaerts is out the door.
Except for signing an Ohtani or Judge, fans have little to look forward to next year but higher ticket prices.
They say we build our heroes up only to bring them down, but Brett Favre brought himself down. Favre schemed with a non-profit executive named Nancy New to divert $5 million in welfare aid to build a volleyball complex at his alma mater Southern Miss., and he knew what he was doing.
“Will the media find out we’re using welfare funds intended to help the poorest residents of America’s poorest state?” he texted New.
“Nah,” she replied, “and oh yeah, the governor’s fully on board.”
Sports biographer Jeff Pearlman has asked people not to buy or read his book about Favre called “Gunslinger.” Burn it, like he did. “He’s a bad guy,” said Pearlman.
Cleveland Guardians’ longtime announcer Tom Hamilton, ruminating on a smokey day in Oakland: “Some clown thought it was OK to take his portable grill with hot coals and put it in the trunk, because why wouldn’t you? His car exploded and it gutted the two cars on each side of him. The next day we drove past three burnt-out vehicles that looked like some movie scene.”
The Tampa Bay Times reports that slugger Yandy Diaz was caught three times trying to escape Cuba and spent three weeks in jail after each capture. “The fourth time we made it,” said Diaz, who doubled in his first major league game and mailed the ball to his mother in Cuba.
SQUIBBERS: Cooper Rush will be the Cowboys quarterback while Dak Prescott’s on IR. In 2013, Rush threw two touchdown passes for Central Michigan in a 37-0 win against UMass. … Conventional wisdom says Tom Brady will be an NFL analyst for Fox after he retires, but maybe he’ll want to cover that other blood sport, presidential politics. … Winless BC gets a team it can handle today when it hosts Maine. The Black Bears were brutalized by New Mexico last week, 41-0. … The UMass record for the longest kickoff return is 102 yards, shared by Dennis Dent and the late Noel Reebenacker. Dent, who lives in Springfield and refs youth football, says he doesn’t watch his alma mater on the gridiron. “I tried once a few years ago but it was disorganized. It seemed like they didn’t care.” … Point spreads of note: UConn is a 46.5 underdog at Michigan today, New Mexico State is getting 37.5 points at Wisconsin, and Toledo is getting 31.5 at Ohio State. .… The N.H. hunting and fishing tabloid “Hawkeye” has a photo of Danica Patrick flexing her muscle and holding a 51-pound halibut she caught in Alaska. … The Palm Beach Post ran a story about a woman who was walking her little yapping dog next to the water. She stopped, picked it up and threw it into the lake. A fisherman told her the dog was struggling to stay afloat. “Oh, he loves to swim,” she said. The dog was rescued and she was arrested. … Derek Jeter’s middle name is Sanderson, as in Derek Sanderson the former Boston Bruin. … Mookie Betts will play second base in next spring’s World Baseball Classic and stay at the keystone corner once the Dodgers’ season starts. … When a fan phoned the Dan Patrick Show and accused Todd Fritz of being a wimp, the show’s longtime sidekick quipped, “Everybody’s real tough in their parent’s basement with their laptop.” … Asked why his Notre Dame football team lost in the last minute, coach Knute Rockne replied: “I won’t know until Monday when my barber tells me.”
Chip Ainsworth is an award-winning columnist who has penned his observations about sports for four decades in the Pioneer Valley. He can be reached at chipjet715@icloud.com