Good morning!
The wagons are circled after the UMass football team’s 27-26 loss to Bryant University, an FCS team that was 2-10 last year. Shock and despair, thy name be UMass football. Fans hoping for a five-win season are praying it won’t be an 0-12 catastrophe.
Saturday’s loss took over four hours — six hours counting a weather delay that could’ve been avoided with a noontime kickoff — and the announced attendance was 3,714. Tickets cost $25 and the stadium ticket office didn’t offer senior discounts. “But sometimes we do,” cooed the young box office attendant.
UMass is Last Chance U. The 50-odd transfers were mostly benchwarmers on their former teams. Malachi Madison played four games in two years at Va. Tech and made two tackles. David Onuoha played three years at Rutgers and made two tackles. Quarterback Brandon Rose played three games in three years at Utah.
In two weeks UMass becomes part of the Mid-American Conference when it hosts Western Michigan. When Tik Tok star and WMU grad Garrett Fedewa — aka GFed— visited McGuirk Alumni Stadium he said, “As a MAC alum and someone who’s been to every MAC stadium, I’m kind of embarrassed it took 25 years for the MAC to add anybody, and this is who we chose.”
Loyalists don’t want to pin the Big Fail on athletic director Ryan Bamford. They argue he’s built winning programs in non-spectator sports like field hockey, women’s lacrosse, and men’s soccer. That’s great Ryan, get a job at Oberlin.
The apologists say former AD John McCutcheon is responsible for the program’s failure to launch. Indeed, McCutcheon gets the Tilson Farm Steam Plant Award for putting UMass in the FBS, but that was 10 years ago and the program is 21-93 under Bamford’s watch. You’d think he’d have figured it out by now, considering he makes over $700,000 a year.
Nine months ago Bamford promised the fat cats and season ticket holders that UMass would win a MAC championship every four years and go to a bowl game every year. “Opportunity + Investment = Success,” he declared, something you’d see on a white board in a cheap hotel.
The Minutemen could beat MAC opponents like Kent State and Akron (68-0 losers at Nebraska), but they won’t be going to a bowl game or winning a MAC championship anytime soon.
Saturday night they’re 35.5 underdogs at Iowa. Even if Hawkeyes coach Kirk Ferentz shows mercy, his third stringers will dominate the UMass first stringers. You’ve heard the saying an irresistible force meets an immovable object? UMass is a resistible force meeting a movable object.
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Head over to Murphy Park next Saturday and watch the third annual Bases and Badges Softball Tournament.
The eight-team tourney matches cops against firefighters from departments throughout western Mass. The first pitch is at 9 a.m. and the championship game is scheduled to start between 1:30 and 2 p.m.
This year’s “Never Fight Alone” theme honors Greenfield Fire Captain John Whitney, who’s battling cancer. “We’re raising money for him and his family,” said tourney director Barney Collins. “His surgery went well and he’s going through treatment.”
Raffle prizes will include autographed Red Sox and Bruins memorabilia. There’s no admission fee and money raised will help support John, his wife Emily and their boys Jake, Sam and Cooper. “Emily might dust off her cleats,” said Collins. “She was a standout softball player at Stoneleigh Burnham and played four years at Trinity College in Hartford.”
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Kudos to UMass field hockey coach Barb Weinberg for notching her 100th victory on Sept. 6 against Brown. On Friday, the No. 14 Minutewomen played No. 4 Boston College in Chestnut Hill. The MAC schedule starts next Friday at 4 p.m. against Kent State at Gladchuk Field.
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We can’t mention field hockey without giving props to BC coach Kelly Doton who was born and raised in Greenfield and played for Donna Woodcock.
At Wake Forest she led the Demon Deacons to back-to-back national championships and won the 2003 Honda National Player of the Year Award. Last year she was inducted into the USA Field Hockey Hall of Fame.
According to her bio in BC’s media guide, Doton was “one of the best attack corner hitters in the country.” Former opponents from these parts probably still have sore knees from those shots.
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Hockey fans of a certain age remember listening to WBZ Radio’s Bob Wilson calling the seventh game of the 1971 Stanley Cup quarterfinal against Montreal. The Bruins took 50 shots including 11 by Phil Esposito and seven by Ken Hodge — and rookie goalie Ken Dryden stopped all but two of them. Dryden’s goaltending prowess lifted the Canadiens and stopped what was supposed to be a golden era for the Bruins.
Dryden died last week at age 78. In his book “The Game” he wrote what encapsulates every players’ passion for hockey: “In the off-season, it wasn’t games that the players missed — it was their teammates. It was the team.”
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SQUIBBERS: Bryant football coach Chris Merritt was 172-45 at Christopher Columbus High School in Miami before the Bulldogs hired him in 2018. … Earlier on Saturday, Bryant’s soccer team handed the Minutemen their first loss of the season, 1-0, at Rudd Field. … Mike Francesa on Aaron Rodgers driving the Steelers into field goal territory to beat the Jets at MetLife Stadium: “Last year he loses that game and he knows it. He’s saying as he walks up the field, ‘I lost this game five times last year.’” … Former Red Sox prospect Kyle Teel went deep to straightaway center for the Chisox on Tuesday. The Red Sox will long regret trading him for Garrett Crochet, Cy Young season or not. … The MAC conference schedule starts Saturday at Kent State where Buffalo is favored by 22.5 points to beat the Golden Flashes. … In non-conference games Ohio is a 31.5 dog at Ohio State, Central Michigan is getting 27.5 points at Michigan, and Eastern Michigan is a 23.5 underdog at Kentucky. … Former Bosox southpaw Eduardo Rodriguez beat his former team last week and is seven shy of his 100th win. The Red Sox got him from Baltimore when he was a rookie for Andrew Miller and he’s since made stops in Detroit and Arizona. … Last week was the 47th anniversary of the Boston Massacre, when Thurman Munson, Reggie Jackson, Ron Guidry, Graig Nettles & Co. rolled into Boston and won four straight by a cumulative 42-9 score that wiped out a 14-game midsummer lead in the standings. … The NY Post’s Jon Heyman reports the Red Sox will be fishing the free agent pond for Kyle Tucker, Bo Bichette, Kyle Schwarber, Shane Bieber, Michael King, Pete Alonso, Eugenio Suarez, Dylan Cease and Japanese infielder Munetaka Murakami, and they’ll try to keep Alex Bregman. … WFAN’s Joe Benigno on the NFL commissioner: “Roger Goodell is the worst. The great Pete Rozelle must be rolling over in his grave.” … The Post’s Phil Mushnick wrote that Joe Tessitore’s play-by-play of the Alabama-Florida State game was “so loaded with forced hysteria we couldn’t hear what he was screaming. The TV execs are convinced we prefer to be spoken to as drooling dolts.” … Mushnick cited research by The Guardian which reported the average sports fan is exposed to a gambling ad every 13 seconds. … Mets radio voice Gary Cohen spoke for many on Tuesday when he said, “The more we see position players pitch in one-sided games, the more ire it is beginning to draw from everyone around baseball.” … Lastly, sadly, RIP Charlie Kirk. Only the good die young.
Chip Ainsworth is an award-winning columnist who has penned his observations about sports for decades in the Pioneer Valley. He can be reached at chipjet715@icloud.com.