Good morning!
The UMass football season starts Thursday in Piscataway, New Jersey, against Rutgers in 52,000-seat SHI Stadium (6 p.m.; Big Ten Network). According to the Rutgers athletic department UMass will be getting $1.55 million and 500 complimentary tickets to make the trip.
UMass will run onto the gridiron possessors of the FBS’s longest active losing streak, 16 straight games and 22 straight against FBS opponents.
The streak won’t end in Piscataway. Rutgers is favored by 29-1/2 points on DraftKings and the moneyline is $5,000 to make $100 on Rutgers, or $100 to make $1,800 on UMass.
Rutgers quarterback Ryan Lonergan transferred from Alabama to Boston College last season and was benched after five games but subsequently regained the starters job. His two biggest weapons are junior wideout KJ Duff who caught 60 passes including seven touchdowns last season, and junior running back Antwan Raymond who rushed for 13 TDs and won the Cornish Trophy for being the best Canadian player in college football.
UMass will rely on prodigal son Pop Watson who played at Springfield Central but chose Virginia Tech over the Minutemen. More on that later, but first the over/under for wins this season is 2-1/2. Two of those wins will be against Sacred Heart and Stonehill next month but where’s the third win?
On paper UMass won’t win a third game. CBS Sports and the ESPN Football Power Index both rank the Minutemen 137th out of 138 FBS teams, Charlotte and Louisiana-Monroe being the networks’ respective anchor teams.
Sacramento State announced Feb. 16 that it was joining the MAC after 30 years in the FCS Big Sky Conference. The Hornets host UMass on Sept. 26 but while CBS ranks them 132nd, ESPN has them 111th in the FPI. Otherwise their best hopes of victory will be in November against Ball State (135/134) and/or Akron (126/133), both at McGuirk Alumni Stadium.
Here’s the rub, every team has UMass circled as an automatic win. Indeed, losing can be a coach killer. Tyson Summers was fired by Georgia Southern the day after the Eagles lost to UMass in 2017, and Ron Turner was fired by FIU eight days after getting beaten by the Minutemen a year earlier.
Great expectations
UMass hired coach Joe Harasymiak on Dec. 4, 2024. Three weeks later, UMass athletic director Ryan Bamford released A Vision for UMass Football. In it he took responsibility for the program’s failures and vowed that UMass would go to a bowl game every year and win a MAC championship every four years. That’s heady stuff for a program that has yet to win five games in a season since 2012.
Bamford also announced a fundraising initiative called the Script U Scholarship Society, a masterpiece of bureaucratic jargon. I didn’t have a clue what Script U meant until Pat MacWilliams told me it stood for the “U” in UMass. How about simply calling it The $17 to Park Society?
The MAC got a good laugh over Bamford’s opinion it’s a pushover conference. It doesn’t have the cache of the SEC or Big Ten, but plays smash mouth football in blue-collar cities like Buffalo, Toledo, and Akron and has turned out some of the best defenders in NFL history. Steelers linebackers Jack Lambert and James Harrison played at Kent State, Dolphins linebacker Jason Taylor played at Akron, current Raiders pass rusher Maxx Crosby played at Eastern Michigan, and so on.
One other detail that will make it hard for UMass to crack the MAC is the coach’s salary. Harasymiak is the highest paid coach in the conference — $1.36 million according to HERO Sports— and no team wants to lose to a school that pays its coach that much to go 0-12.
Don’t blame Harasymiak for taking what he can get, and Bamford loves throwing money around. After UMass was blown out by Akron and fell to 0-9 last year, Bamford announced he had hired Thorr Bjorn to be the Senior Deputy Athletic Director and Chief Administrative Officer.
Bjorn’s making $395,000 a year to call alumni and ask them to come to the games. A staffer who saw him on the sideline during the rain-drenched season-ending loss to Bowling Green said, “He’s got an umbrella? He’s not one of us.”
Bottom’s Up
Harasymiak has overhauled the offense. Indeed, last year’s quarterback corps is scattered near and far. A.J. Hairston is at Merrimack, Grant Jordan is backing up Drew Mestemaker at Oklahoma State, Jacquon Gibson transferred to Virginia where he’s a wide receiver, and Brandon Rose has returned to Utah where KSL Sports reported he’ll be “a deep depth option and veteran insurance policy.”
Watson is the new kid in town. Ever so humble, he said at an Aug. 8 presser: “Pops kinda leading the program.”
Other quarterbacks include newcomer Logan Inagawa who was offered at Navy but chose Drake and subsequently transferred to UMass after compiling a 141 QB rating with the Bulldogs. Our Lads has him second on the depth chart behind Watson.
Aeden McCarthy dazzled in the spring game. “Aedan has all the skills but he’s a freshman,” said Harasymiak, inferring he’ll be waiting and watching on the sideline.
“Pop is our 1 (on the depth chart). His ability to transform the offense, there’s that feeling of confidence,” said Harasymiak. “His arm has gotten stronger and more accurate.
“His relationship with the OC is critical,” added Harasymiak referring to offensive coordinator Max Warner who replaced Mike Bajakian who’s now the Cleveland Browns quarterbacks coach.
This is Warner’s third stop at a Mid-American campus after stints at Toledo and Bowling Green. He made his mark at Bloomingdale High School in Valrico, Florida, where he was 24-10 in three seasons and took the Bulls from being ranked 184th in the state to 28th.
Joe Griffin and T.Y. Harding are penciled in as the top two receivers, and Our Lads puts Murray State transfer Jordan Washington first on the depth chart at running back.
Harasymiak credited George Greene with having the players ready for training camp. “We’re a more explosive team. We move around better.” In another era Greene would simply have been called the strength coach; now he’s the Director of High Performance and Head Football Sports Performance Coach.
Ever the optimist
Time will tell if the excitement and optimism in Harasymiak’s voice is genuine or merely hopeful. Only 11 players are back from last year’s catastrophe but a lot of the newcomers are of the same ilk, transferring not for NIL money but for love of the game.
“Violence takes care of everything,” said Harasymiak.
“Where I lost my way last year, we say we wanna do something we gotta act that way.”
His take on the Mario Cristobal school of brutality likely stems from his friendship with ‘Canes defensive coordinator Corey Hetherman. A Bay State native, Hetherman played at Oxford High School and Fitchburg State and coached with Harasymiak at Maine and Rutgers.
The 40-year-old Harasymiak focuses on stats, trends and percentages. Last year he drilled it into the team that “there’s an 85 percent chance to win if we block a punt.” Alas, UMass blocked just one punt last season and it was during a 47-7 loss at Iowa.
This year’s magical combination to crack 2-1/2 wins will be “Explosive plays, turnover margin and our third column is gonna be sacks, because there’s a crazy stat out there if we can do all three we’re going to be in good shape.”
Can UMass get to six wins and a bowl game? By some standards it’s an easy schedule. The combined record of MAC opponents is 37-50, not counting Sacramento State which was 7-5.
Deep down though you know it’ll never happen, because UMass fans are the Charlie Browns of college football.
Tickets, who’s got tickets
Trying to figure out what UMass will charge for a game-day ticket is a challenge. Usually an adult ticket costs $25 depending on the quality of the opponent. The two best home games will be during Family Weekend against Eastern Michigan on Oct. 3 and Homecoming against Miami-Ohio on Oct. 10.
Rambling to Grambling
Quarterback R.J. Johnson transferred to UMass from Florida A&M and stayed long enough to throw a touchdown pass in the spring game but left after Pop Watson was named the starter.
Johnson left for Louisiana to play for Grambling, a member of the D-II (FCS) Southwestern Athletic Conference. As a result of passing for 2,597 yards and 18 touchdowns at Florida A&M last year he’s been named to the Historically Black College and University (HBCU) National Football Player of the Year Watchlist. The winner will receive the Deacon Jones Trophy which was won by Shedeur Sanders at Jackson State.
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OUTTAKES: Six-foot-two defensive end Tim Passmore came to UMass from UConn by way of Central Michigan. He has a quarterback’s name but a weightlifter’s bulk and at 340 pounds is the heaviest player on the 103-man roster. … Edge rusher Joshua Nobles has a message stuck waist-high on the back of his jersey, a tribute to Marshawn Kneeland of the Cowboys who killed himself last season and was posthumously diagnosed with CTE. “Long Live MK to # 94 Marshawn Kneeland.” Nobles played four games at Jackson State in 2024 after transferring from Western Michigan and was out all of last season with an unspecified injury. … Harasymiak thinks the defensive line will be above average but “the young OL needs to develop.” Translated that means the defense will see plenty of playing time. Last year’s defense allowed opponents to score all but six of the 54 times they reached the red zone. … Six-foot-three, 230-pound freshman linebacker Moritz Strempel of Cologne, Germany, attended the NFL Academy in Loughborough, England, where his bio says he “played soccer before discovering American football [and] enjoys combat sports.” … Rutgers lost to Penn State 40-36 as a 13.5-point underdog in the ’25 season finale. …. Miami-Ohio QB David McComb is a redshirt freshman transfer from Kansas. … UMass plays at UConn on Friday, Oct. 23. The Huskies were 6-0 at Rentschler Field in 2025. … UMass is at Toledo on Nov. 11. The Rockets are 7-0 all-time against UMass. … The season ends after Thanksgiving at Bowling Green which is 5-0 against the Minutemen. The Falcons open against Nebraska and Iowa St.
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@gmail.com.