Four Downs: Four Non-Football But Still Football-Related Things I'm Watching Out For in 2024

Can we please get an ACC rendition of The Real World?

Image via Unsplash / Parsa Mahmoudi

First Down: Continued UMass discourse

UMass, lest I remind you, is coming to the Mid-American Conference next year. The buzz among UMass fans was largely split at the time. UMass pushed its chips into bettering its football program by joining the only FBS conference that really wanted them.

If football is your whole thing, thing UMass did everything it could to say it’s competing with the best of the best, so to speak. Being a conference-independent in the FBS provides less than negative value to the program, so why not get into a conference that helps to them get the most out of their football program.

This, of course, hasn’t been a new struggle for UMass. This was kind of the whole conundrum it found itself in in the years after it won an FCS-level national championship. It was ready to prove that it could hang on the field with the rest of ‘em. But what conference outside of the MAC ever wanted to take them in the first place?

The Toledo Blade’s Dave Briggs thinks the MAC’s expansion plans are dumb, and he’s not alone. At least half of UMass’ fanbase probably hates this too. The most crazed UMass football fan has to be thrilled with simply no longer being an independent. Being in the MAC is secondary. Is there too much of a social divide between New England and The Great Plains for this to make sense? Or could we figure out ways to bond over our differences?

Is basketball truly that unimportant these days?

Here’s a local report from when the Big East was looking to expand in the early 2000’s:

It wouldn't be reasonable or proper to expect UMass to make a decision of such huge financial repercussion on such short notice, but it has been through this feasibility study before and circumstances now dictate that it stop asking questions and start finding some answers.

The biggest proponent of an upgrade is, of course, UMass football coach Mark Whipple, the man who elevated the University of New Haven football program to uncharted heights in the early 1990s. Whipple, who took UMass to the national Division I-AA title in 1998, is typically and refreshingly candid when he says that if UMass doesn't do it now, it will be resigned to playing against the likes of Central Connecticut State and Stony Brook.

"It's like going to the prom," Whipple said of a UMass move to the Big East. "You've got to get a new dress before you can go. If you don't dress up, you have no chance of going, and the stature of UMass (football) will go (down) with it. We don't have a rival right now. Holy Cross won't play us. No Ivy League school will play us. It's like I'm back at New Haven (where scheduling was a monstrous headache)."

UMass does have a league affiliation in the Atlantic-10, but who's excited about a UMass-Richmond or UMass-Delaware football game?

According to Whipple, UMass was invited to join the Division I-A Mid-American Conference (including, among others, Ball State, Bowling Green, Marshall, Akron and Buffalo) several years ago when the school first toyed with an upgrade. But at best, it would have been considered an inferior product because geographically it sits in the midst of three Big East teams -- UConn, Boston College and Syracuse.

-Dave Solomon (The Middletown Press, 2003)

Maybe UMass is sitting on 25-or-so years of some missed-out opportunities by not being in the MAC. Basketball always had to be its own thing until one day kind of recently enough people were convinced that basketball didn’t have to be much of a priority anymore for these sorts of considerations.

Hockey either.