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Good morning!Last week in this space UMass money man John Kennedy defended embattled athletic director Ryan Bamford, who I blamed for the football team’s terrible record (18-82) since he was hired.Kennedy’s comments didn’t go over well on social...

Good morning!On a sunny day at McGuirk Alumni Stadium, a dark cloud hung over the UMass bench. Finish strong or you’re gone, the staff had been told, and the team was hanging on for dear life against heavily favored Liberty.The visitors had chartered...

By CHIP AINSWORTH

Eight years ago, my PSA (prostate-specific antigen) level nearly doubled from 3.9 to 7.2. Fear makes us accept or deny, to act or do nothing, and months passed until I scheduled an office visit at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, New...

Good morning!UMass opens the 2024 football campaign Saturday against Eastern Michigan at McGuirk Alumni Stadium. The season outlook is bleak. UMass plays at top-ranked Georgia and at Mississippi State, and is home against No. 10 Missouri. Already...

Good morning!The UMass football program got its Welcome-to-the-MAC moment last month when a Western Michigan alum and social media freak named Garrett, aka @GfedGoCrazy, visited McGuirk Alumni Stadium, home of the Minutemen.Garrett’s hook is the...

Good morning!Last week’s Belmont Stakes Racing Festival was the biggest happening in upstate New York since Woodstock. Four days of horse racing in Saratoga after three days of peace and love at Yasgur’s farm. You half expected Arlo Guthrie to come...

Good morning!In January, Boston’s chief of baseball operations Craig Breslow told the Boston Globe’s Peter Abraham that catcher Kyle Teel, shortstop Marcelo Mayer and outfielder Roman Anthony are “guys we think are the next wave, not just big leaguers...

Good morning!Unless there’s a hole in the fence I’ll be covering the Belmont Stakes from Union Avenue. The days of slipping ushers a five spot with a wink and a nod are gone. Ticketmaster wants $164 to simply walk through the gate and $1,000 for a...

Good morning!Over 150 gridiron alumni will be at Saturday’s UMass football spring game. Recruited to UMass when they were schoolboys, they’re returning to help coach Don Brown give his players a glimpse of the program’s legacy.Longtime Minutemen...

Good morning!Sunday at Wyckoff Country Club in Holyoke, Jim Reid will be honored by the Western Mass. Chapter of the National Football Foundation, together with seven others who will be feted for their contributions to the sport.Reid has come full...

Good morning!On March 9 the Washington Nationals played the Houston Astros at CACTI Park of the Palm Beaches. Named for a hard seltzer, the 7,700-seat spring training facility has housed the Nationals and Astros since it opened seven years ago.It is...

Good morning!The UMass Minutemen are the prodigal children of college football, returning to the Mid-American Conference from whence they came.It took nine seasons of anchoring the FBS, of winning 16 games and losing 72, of burning through millions of...

Good morning! In 1928 a hurricane with winds that reached 150 mph ripped through Palm Beach County and turned north over Lake Okeechobee. The strong winds pushed the waters north and then south over a feeble earthen dike, swamping the low-lying areas...

Good morning!The wild west of college athletics began on July 1, 2021, when pay-for-play became the law of the land. Enter Pat MacWilliams, a successful businessman and Maryland native who arrived in Amherst in 1997 to open Five College...

Good morning!Three days before the Super Bowl, Caleb was headed for work at MGM Springfield. We didn’t have long to converse, but he said his job paid the bills and clothed his children, management was fair and how good the food was depended on the...

Good morning!Over the border in New Hampshire, Dave Hastings has the makings of a national champion at Keene State. The Owls are 20-2 overall, 13-0 in the Little East, ranked seventh nationally and are beating opponents by an average score of...

Good morning!The traffic jams up early on Fridays in Lowell, and the Tsongas Center is four miles and countless stoplights off Interstate 495. It was dark, wet and cold, the canals were half frozen and railroad tracks criss-crossed through the city’s...

Good morning!The UMass men’s basketball team took it on the chin against St. Joe’s on Tuesday night, losing 78-77. Seventeen turnovers were enough for the Hawks to eke out a one point road victory despite trailing by 13 with 10 minutes left. “Once...

Good morning!Nobody researches local high school sports like Turners Falls’ Mike Cadran, aka The Tabulator. Cadran’s latest effort reveals the top five winningest schoolboy basketball coaches. The all-time wins leader according to Cadran is South...