AMHERST — Perhaps the passionate followers of the UMass football team weren’t necessarily surprised when news hit last week that Director of Athletics Ryan Bamford had fired former Minutemen head coach Don Brown after a 6-28 record with the team; it was more so the timing of the move that rubbed people the wrong way.

UMass had just come off its best four-quarter performance of the season – a 35-34 overtime loss to 8-2 Liberty – when Bamford gave Brown the boot, with only two games remaining on the Minutemen’s regular season schedule.

Why didn’t Bamford let Brown, who emptied the tank during his third stint in Amherst (one that lasted nearly three seasons), finish out the season before sending him on his way? The timing of the firing may not have made much sense from a fan or player perspective.

But the school’s athletic director determined it had to be done right then and there.

When Brown was relieved of his duties, UMass became the 11th Group of 5 school to have a vacancy at the head coaching position. And as of Monday, there are now 13 openings across G5 schools – the Minutemen’s direct competitors when it comes to staffing hires and recruiting. Bamford said sticking out the rest of the 2024 campaign with Brown and then firing him would have prevented him from talking to potential coaching candidates until Dec. 1 (UMass’ last game is Nov. 30). In order for UMass to have the best chance at getting its guy, the AD said moving quickly was an unfortunate necessity.

Even further, the transfer portal opens up on Dec. 9, and early signing day for high school recruits is the week prior to that. The sooner UMass has a head coach and a staff put together, the greater its chances are at landing transfers out of the portal. Entering the second week of December without a head coach in place would’ve put the Minutemen at a significant disadvantage in recruiting, according to Bamford.

“In order to be in a coaching candidate pool and make sure that we have the appropriate conversations and be seen as in the market place for coaches and for agents, we really needed to open the job when we did,” Bamford said on Monday, a week removed from Brown’s dismissal. “We didn’t wanna miss the opportunity to position our job against other jobs in the market. That’s how college football has changed in the last five years, and it’s predominantly because the transfer portal opens up in early December. You wanna have a head coach in place to have their staff at least somewhat organized when the portal opens.”

Bamford, who has been the UMass AD since 2015, said firing Brown was not an easy decision. The two have a strong relationship, but accumulating only two wins against FBS opponents in three years – none of which came against the MAC (where UMass is headed in 2025) – was a disappointment in Bamford’s eyes.

Bamford denied there was an ultimatum – one where UMass had to win two of its final three games in order for Brown to keep his job. Bamford and Brown met on a weekly basis throughout the season, and the AD said he clearly stated from Week 1 that there needed to be real progress shown on the field this fall or a change may be made. After winning one game in Brown’s first year and three in his second, four or five wins were expected to continue to show improvement.

But instead, the Minutemen’s only two wins this year have come against FCS opponents, and they lost every single game against MAC programs (0-5).

“I felt like after three years, we had enough in the body of work for Don to understand where we were going, and we needed some momentum going into next year as we go into the MAC,” Bamford said. “We just didn’t feel like we were able to turn the corner competitively, and there are a host of reasons for that. Without question, Don and his staff have worked tremendously hard to try to get this program turned around, and the program is in a better spot now than when Don and his group got here. There’s no doubt.”

Because Bamford fired Brown when he did, UMass now owes him up to $1.4 million over the next two years. If Brown takes another coaching job over the next two years, UMass would pay the difference between that number and his new salary. Had Bamford waited until the end of the season to fire him, UMass would have owed him $800,000 over the next two years.

“To be fair to Don, I wanted to make sure that we honored an important piece of the termination language in the contract,” Bamford said. “We recognize him coming back to UMass and trying to build a program that he really helped put on the map as an FCS program. I thanked him for that, and I felt like it was appropriate to make sure that we did it when we did to recognize his contributions to this university.”

Updates in the hiring process

Bamford neglected to share any names or front-runners in the coaching search, but emphasized the importance of hiring someone by the first week of December.

When a hire is ultimately made, it’ll be Bamford’s third head football coach hiring of his 10-year tenure at UMass. Over the course of the past decade, the Minutemen have a 21-89 football record, including an 8-54 mark of coaches he’s hired. The Don Brown hiring back in 2021 was seen as a coup at the time, although it didn’t work out.

The AD acknowledged the pressure behind this hire, but support from the administration and the help of Chad Chatlos of TurnkeyZRG Executive Search leaves Bamford confident in making a splash. Chatlos and TurnkeyZRG are highly regarded in terms of college football hiring firms, and even helped conduct the NCAA in its search for a new president back in 2022 (ultimately former Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker). It’s the first time Bamford has hired a search firm to assist him with the hiring process. When Walt Bell was hired in 2019, Bamford was assisted by a few advisors, but not a formal search firm.

At the end of the day, who patrols the sidelines next year still falls on Bamford’s shoulders.

“I have great confidence we’re going to find the right person for the job,” Bamford said. “We have a lot to sell. The job is a different job than it has been in the last two hiring cycles because we’re not [a football] independent anymore. That’s been an important ingredient in this coaching search, is the ability to go into the MAC to be resourced really well against MAC-competitive peers. I think agents and coaches, those in the business see this as a different job now. It was hard to overcome the nature of being an independent in the last two searches.”

UMass is positioned to be one of the highest-resourced programs in the MAC next season, including staff compensation and NIL money. The head football coach at UMass is as sought after a position as it’s ever been, according to Bamford.

“The reality is that college athletics has changed considerably in the last three or four years with the transfer portal, in the NIL space,” Bamford said. “Now, with us being in a league, I think we’re positioned really strongly to not only go in and make a really strong hire, but have that hire have the tools and the resources to succeed in the MAC and as an FBS program.”