Good morning!
Thank goodness that silliness is over. The UMass Minutemen were 4-0 but you’d have thought they were challenging Oklahoma’s 47 straight wins under Bud Wilkinson.
The UMass publicity machine — marketing, sales, fan experience, and creative services — used an upset against Rutgers and three wins against the little sisters of the poor to generate the kind of disconnect from reality that hadn’t been seen since the ’08 housing crisis.
State U’s first four-game win streak had caused a run on tickets they said, and Saturday’s game against Eastern Michigan was a sellout. UMass was a six-point favorite; Caitlyn Clark had picked UMass to win. The epicenter of college football wasn’t College Station or South Bend, it was Amherst, Mass.
Come sundown the natural order would be restored and UMass would be relegated to its usual spot near the bottom of the heap. UMass returned to its old habits — Elijah Faulkner fumbled inside the EMU 10-yard line, Derek Morris missed his first field goal attempt in eight tries, the defense was 0-fer in sacks and quarterback Pop Watson tossed a crucial second half interception.
The 38-14 drubbing was the Minutemen’s fifth straight loss to EMU, and the 24-point margin of defeat their worst ever against the Eagles. “We crapped the bed,” said UMass coach Joe Harasymiak. “We didn’t sniff the quarterback the whole game.”
Watson spoke to the press for less than four minutes. “Watch the film, clean up mistakes and tag Miami of Ohio,” he said.
Sellout, what sellout?
The tendency to make this UMass football season the most glorious in program history was helped along by a narrative that Saturday’s game was a sellout.
Indeed whoever tabulated the announced attendance of 17,119 didn’t bother to notice that there were about as many fans in Sections 11, 12, and 13 as there’ll be leaves on the trees next month. EMU noted this fiction during its radio broadcast, and TV cameras tell no lies.
Undaunted, the publicity crew still spouted it was the first sellout since Sept. 27, 2014, against Bowling Green on band day when every high school kid in the commonwealth sat in the stands with his tuba, piccolo or glockenspiel waiting to play at halftime.
The last real sellout was Dec. 2, 2006, when Liam Coen passed for two touchdowns, Steve Baylark rushed for 198 yards and Don Brown’s Minutemen beat UNH, 24-17, in the I-AA quarterfinals. It was a night game, it was cold, and the student body was pickled.
Two weeks later UMass played for the I-AA title at Finley Stadium in Chattanooga and lost to App State, 28-17.
No day at the beach
Today is Homecoming and another big crowd is expected for the 2 p.m. kickoff against Miami-Ohio whose alumni include Ben Roethlisberger, John Harbaugh and Sean McVay
The RedHawks reign supreme with 17 conference titles including two in the last seven years, and they’ve won seven of their eight meetings against UMass.
Miami is a 2-1/2 point favorite despite being without quarterback David McComb who was injured in their win against UConn and is out for the season. The 2-3 RedHawks also beat Holy Cross and have lost to Pitt, Cincinnati and Bowling Green.
It seems the MAC is one of those on-any-given-Saturday kind of conferences. Last week the RedHawks were 13 1/2-point favorites to beat winless Bowling Green, yet the Falcons scored on their last drive to pull off a 24-20 upset in front of 12,474 at Fred C. Yager Stadium in Oxford.
“Disappointing is an understatement. We made so many damn mistakes,” said Miami coach Chuck Martin who’s in his 13th season.
Senior quarterback Caleb Heavner, a transfer from Fort Hays State, was 24-of-33 (72 percent) for 234 yards with a touchdown, an interception and 60 yards rushing.
****
Kudos to Tampa Bay for sweeping the Yankees three straight by gaining home field advantage and beating the Bombers at their own game. Jonathan Aranda’s solo home run and Drew Rasmussen’s one-hit pitching beat them in game one, bad defense and timely hitting beat them in game two and Jose Mesa’s two-run blast off Max Fried was the difference in Wednesday’s elimination game.
The top of the order came through for Tampa Bay. Yandy Diaz, Junior Caminero and Aranda were 7-for-21 and scored five of the Rays’ ten runs.
The goat for New York was Trent Grisham who was 0-for-11 with five strikeouts. Luis Garcia Jr., Cody Bellinger and Jazz Chisolm went a combined 2-for 31. Manager Aaron Boone probably wishes he started Anthony Volpe all three games instead of just Wednesday when he was 2-for-4 and nearly missed hitting a game-tying home run.
At this writing Cleveland was still alive against the White Sox, but it’s hard to fathom either team beating the Rays in a seven-game series. There’s been some bad October baseball. Notably game three of Guardians-White Sox in Chicago where the pale hose hadn’t closed out a playoff series since 1906 and didn’t do it Wednesday either, whiffing 19 times in a 9-3 loss.
Pity the poor Braves fans who had to endure four games’ worth of silent movies watching their hitters go 18-for-129 (.124) and whiff 39 times en route to being eliminated by the Dodgers. Maybe this year the Brewers with the home field advantage will give LA a run for its money in the NLCS.
****
Former Indians southpaw flame thrower “Sudden Sam” McDowell died this week at age 84. In 1970, McDowell went 20-12 and struck out 304 batters in 305 innings but said that not long afterward, “I had cemented my standing as the worst drunk in baseball.”
McDowell got sober and helped other alcoholics. “I must have called that man every day, every hour of the night,” former pitcher Mike York told the LA Times. “He was always there when I needed him.”
SQUIBBERS: Fans at McGuirk today will see the smallest player in D-1 football when 5-foot-5 freshman receiver Scoop Smith lines up for the RedHawks wearing No. 24. … Amherst College goes for its fourth straight win today when it hosts Middlebury (2-1) at 2 p.m at Pratt Field. The athletic department is trying to boost interest, announcing “free food to first 100 students at the game.” … Detroit sportscaster Mike Valenti on Minnesota Vikings defensive coordinator Mike Flores: “He has a blitz rate of over 80 percent, that’s like a kid playing Madden.” …. Just wondering, since when did statistics come to be called “data points”? … UMass hockey coach Greg Carvel said in his newsletter that Jack Musa’s little brother Jason will be with the team next year. “Jason earned OHL Player of the Week honors and currently leads the league in scoring,” wrote Carvel, whose Minutemen host back-to-back games against RIT this weekend. … Pop Watson’s NIL valuation is $62,500 according to The Sideline NIL Tracker. One of his deals is with Next Trend, a sportswear apparel company whose tiny logo was on the white turtleneck Watson wore to Saturday’s postgame presser. … Ron Darling said Chase Meidroth reminded him of Dustin Pedroia. “Rub it in for the Red Sox, said sidekick Alex Faust. Three players in Wednesday’s lineup came from the Red Sox in the Garret Crochet trade — Kyle Teel, Braden Montgomery and Meidroth. … After 20 games and 535 passing attempts the Jets defense finally had an interception when Minkah Fitzpatrick stepped in front of a Bears pass on Sunday. … Congrats to Matt Kempf on his retirement from the Franklin County jail after 32 years. Now Kempf can work on his moves against Tom Echeverria at the DA rink. … Miami-Ohio used a hook-and-ladder play against Bowling Green last week. Watch for it today against UMass. … The third-ranked UMass field hockey team beat Miami-Ohio, 3-2, last week at Gladchuk Field, but lost on Sunday to No. 7 UConn in Storrs. UMass (11-1) hosted App State yesterday and their only remaining home game is Oct. 30 vs. JMU at 2 p.m. … Each summer, Eastern Michigan football coach Chris Creighton takes his seniors to Colorado to hike up Pike’s Peak. The trek to the 14,115-foot summit begins at 4:15 a.m. and its aim is to build senior leadership. … After coming back from a 27-7 deficit against Syracuse, UConn lost on a controversial roughing the passer call. “And heading for the exits on a full sprint are the referees,” said UConn announcer Mike Crispino. … Dodgers broadcaster Rick Monday on how quickly it takes a reliever to warm up in 103-degree heat: “You can sneeze and be warm.”