The last time the MAC added a new football school to their collective, they were taking on the floundering Temple Owls, recently booted from the Big East for what amounted to failure to run a successful program. It's been seven years since then, and Temple football has performed admirably in the MAC, leading the conference in attendance and posting three consecutive winning records. Now it's 2012, and the MAC is set to take on another program in transition, the UMass Minutemen. Though UMass is moving up from the FCS rather than moving from a BCS conference like Temple was, the concerns surrounding the team that will determine the success of the move are very similar. Temple was removed from the Big East due to poor attendance, lack of competitiveness, and a dearth of support from the university. While lack of support at UMass is not very concerning, considering the institution has put a serious amount of time and energy in evaluating and encouraging the move, the other two areas certainly warrant a close look.
The biggest obstacle to overcome for the UMass Minutemen, if they are to have a successful transition to the FBS and to the MAC, is attendance. As the NCAA requires an average attendance of 15,000 for home games for FBS teams, UMass would have had to almost sell out their home stadium in Amherst, MA, every game. Seeing as how their most recent sellout was in 2006, and assuming that some games would draw less than 15,000 fans, this would be a tough goal to accomplish in an area that is not as heavily populated as other locations. This drove the move to Gillette Stadium, home of the New England Patriots. Like Temple, the Minutemen will be playing in a full-size NFL stadium, and with Gillette positioned in the populous and alumni-heavy market of Greater Boston, the team should be able to draw a greater base of support. UMass has played two games in Foxboro over the last two years, both against FCS rival New Hampshire. The games drew 32,848 and 24,022, suggesting two things: 1) UMass students are willing to travel to games despite the distance from campus, and 2) locals are willing to buy tickets to the games. However, the significant drop in game attendance from 2010 to 2011 is not to be overlooked. Did the novelty of college football in the Patriots' Palace wear off? Did the Boston-based fans decide to catch only one game and chose the match at Boston College instead? Could fans sense the team was not going to have a great year, and backed off? Or, since the team was ineligible for the postseason due to the FBS move, did many simply lose interest, waiting for 2012? These are questions that will have to be answered this season.
UMass' attendance at football games in the past has been consistently solid, considering the level of play, the size of the stadium, and the location of campus. In the past five years, average attendance at McGuirk Stadium in Amherst has never crept much higher than 13,000, yet has also never dipped below 10,000. The fans consistently fill 60-80% of the venue, and speaking as an alum myself, tailgating has always been very popular. With a bigger venue, better location, free student busses to and from the stadium, and bigger opponents, I am confident that we will see that attendance number move upwards over time. Of course, this is dependent on the team remaining fairly competitive, scheduling solid non-conference opponents to draw additional fans, developing rivalries with MAC schools, and generally making Saturday games at Gillette a fun experience.
Sports fans are a fickle bunch, this we know. If the team begins to mire in mediocrity, fans will stop showing up; to what degree is the question. During the Minutemen's run to the FCS National Championship in 2006, attendance during the season hovered around the average stated above. However, when UNH came into town for a home playoff game, McGuirk sold out early. The fans of the Minutemen are real and are willing to support a winning club, so the degree to which UMass can produce that will go far to prove they belong in FBS football. And they certainly proved they were a consistently talented team in the FCS. Though their prior coach finished one game below .500 over three seasons, Massachusetts has enjoyed 22 conference titles, 3 National Championship appearances, and one National Title over the previous five decades. This is not a team that is foreign to success, and new coach Charlie Molnar will be tasked with both returning the program to that success and making the transition to FBS as smooth and successful as possible.
The team has played recently played very well against FBS opponents. Though they have not won in these interdivisional games since 1984 (against Ball State, of all teams), they have played tough. Beginning in 2005, they played Army, Navy, Boston College twice, Texas Tech, and Michigan, only letting two of those games get out of hand, including the game against AP #11 Texas Tech. In 2010, the Minutemen faced AP #20 Michigan on the road. One fumble in the red zone cost UMass, as they ended up losing by 5 in a shootout against Denard Robinson and the lethal Michigan offense. This team can compete at the FBS level, and it's up to Molnar and his recruiting staff to ensure that continues.
While we're on the topic of Michigan, UMass has agreed to go back to the Big House in 2012, highlighting what ended up becoming a very impressive and very strong non-conference schedule for their first year in FBS. Opening the season on the road against former arch-rival UConn, the team then hosts Indiana in their first official home game as a member of the MAC before traveling to Michigan and Vanderbilt later in the season. The Vanderbilt game is part of a four-game home-and-home series over the next four years, and the Indiana series is a two-gamer. The university is also working with Boston College to set up a potential bi-annual rivalry game, and has agreed to visit Florida in 2016. Less than a year after making their announcement of the move, the university has proven it is committed to scheduling games against talented schools. This should only help to aid both local support in the form of ticket sales as well as recruiting. However, the two biggest names are each only one-game series, and will both be on the road. The issue may end up being trying to find top-tier teams to come to Gillette in order to boost the average attendance number and prestige. This is not to overlook MAC opponents by any stretch. UMass is moving into foreign territory, and will be playing a majority of their schedule against teams with whom they have little if any shared history. Rivalries are the lifeblood of college football, and the Minutemen and their fans will be looking to develop some fast. The two most logical candidates are Temple and Buffalo, both geographically and historically. UMass and Temple have a long history in basketball, both being members of the Atlantic 10 Conference and experiencing many emotional and intense moments over the years. While the basketball rivalry has died down recently due to UMass slipping into years of under-performance, many fans still harbor these feelings. Buffalo and UMass went through a stretch in the 1990s where they faced off against each year in football until UB moved up to then-Division I-A. While these games did not produce the kind of passion that typical rivalries might, routine encounters do encourage resentment and enthusiasm amongst both fans and teams alike. It is impossible to predict who will become entangled in this type of situation with the Minutemen, as sports have a way of organically producing these environments, but it is something to keep an eye out for.
Of course, it does not matter where UMass plays, against what teams, and for what purpose, if they cannot win games. Fans will not continue to attend games for a team that routinely finishes in the bottom of the league, at least not in numbers that they would if the team was winning. And for this experiment to work, they need these fans to attend. This leads us to recruitment. The Northeast is not exactly a hotbed for college football; there are now only three FBS schools in the six New England states, the same amount that play in New York alone. And with the increased talent level, UMass will have to compete much more directly with BC and UConn if they hope to win the region's best talent. The Minutemen have never strictly recruited from New England, however, and with Charlie Molnar taking over the program, it would not be unreasonable to expect this to continue to be the case. The 2012 recruiting class for UMass is ranked around the Internet to be the 11th- to 14th-best class in the MAC, and it will most likely remain around that level for the first couple years in the conference. However, we are already seeing the program profile rising; this year, two alumni (Victor Cruz and James Ihedigbo) participated in the Super Bowl, and having the team play their games in a world-class venue like Gillette Stadium, home of the three-time champion Patriots, should only help the recruitment effort. It will be interesting to see how this evolves over the course of the next five seasons.
UMass is positioned very well to succeed in the next level of college football, though it will certainly take some time and effort to see this through. Like anything, there will most likely be some growing pains, and the hope is that the region and university are patient. Us UMass fans have to hope the team will compete early, continue to bring big games and good football to Gillette Stadium against MAC and non-conference schools, and that Molnar and his staff have what it takes to build a successful program from nearly the ground up. I do have confidence, and I'm more than looking forward to this upcoming season and what twists and turns it will bring. Go UMass!
