Preseason Polls

[TheInsider]

You are correct UMass has screwed this up at every turn going back to when we had a chance to get into the original Big East. Umass sacrificed football for basketball the first time around when it had a chance to join the MAC. No idea what would have happened but we probably would have positioned ourselves in a better spot to join a better conference if we joined the first time around. But besides all that, if we actually invested and made good decisions we would probably be a top G5 program.

[Steve81]

You are correct UMass has screwed this up at every turn going back to when we had a chance to get into the original Big East. Umass sacrificed football for basketball the first time around when it had a chance to join the MAC. No idea what would have happened but we probably would have positioned ourselves in a better spot to join a better conference if we joined the first time around. But besides all that, if we actually invested and made good decisions we would probably be a top G5 program.

Personal, wish we went 3 years ago when CUSA was on the brink and Western Kentucky was looking for a safe harbour. Can not think of a better #14 as WKU. Also close enough to Nashville to visit as well. Let's not lose sight of the positive. We have a chancellor that gets it and helped make this move possible. View the chancellor as the most important person that can influence our university president and our AD.

The MAC waited a long time on UMass and hope they could wait 3 years for WKU. CUSA departed members revenue will dry up in 3 years.

[eldonabe]

You are correct UMass has screwed this up at every turn going back to when we had a chance to get into the original Big East. Umass sacrificed football for basketball the first time around when it had a chance to join the MAC. No idea what would have happened but we probably would have positioned ourselves in a better spot to join a better conference if we joined the first time around. But besides all that, if we actually invested and made good decisions we would probably be a top G5 program.

Personal, wish we went 3 years ago when CUSA was on the brink and Western Kentucky was looking for a safe harbour. Can not think of a better #14 as WKU. Also close enough to Nashville to visit as well. Let's not lose sight of the positive. We have a chancellor that gets it and helped make this move possible. View the chancellor as the most important person that can influence our university president and our AD.

The Chancellor, despite his vocal support, cannot get water from a stone when it comes to the money. Sure it is great that we have someone in that position who wants what we all want, but he has to appease everyone, not just the sports minded.


Umass is Cal Berkley - East. They care far more about social issues (multiples more) than they do about D1 sports. That will always be a lead weight around the AD and administration's neck.

[Steve81]

You are correct UMass has screwed this up at every turn going back to when we had a chance to get into the original Big East. Umass sacrificed football for basketball the first time around when it had a chance to join the MAC. No idea what would have happened but we probably would have positioned ourselves in a better spot to join a better conference if we joined the first time around. But besides all that, if we actually invested and made good decisions we would probably be a top G5 program.

Personal, wish we went 3 years ago when CUSA was on the brink and Western Kentucky was looking for a safe harbour. Can not think of a better #14 as WKU. Also close enough to Nashville to visit as well. Let's not lose sight of the positive. We have a chancellor that gets it and helped make this move possible. View the chancellor as the most important person that can influence our university president and our AD.

The MAC waited a long time on UMass and hope they could wait 3 years for WKU. CUSA departed members revenue will dry up in 3 years.

The Chancellor, despite his vocal support, cannot get water from a stone when it comes to the money. Sure it is great that we have someone in that position who wants what we all want, but he has to appease everyone, not just the sports minded.


Umass is Cal Berkley - East. They care far more about social issues (multiples more) than they do about D1 sports. That will always be a lead weight around the AD and administration's neck.

Adding in a edit to my previous post here and academics should be most important. Student Athletic fees have not gone up and is so much less as a percentage than it was a dozen years ago. The amount the administration or students fees are not sacrificing academics and affordability. Sports is driving revenue on it's own and why those G5 revenue streams became a major influence.

[eldonabe]

Personal, wish we went 3 years ago when CUSA was on the brink and Western Kentucky was looking for a safe harbour. Can not think of a better #14 as WKU. Also close enough to Nashville to visit as well. Let's not lose sight of the positive. We have a chancellor that gets it and helped make this move possible. View the chancellor as the most important person that can influence our university president and our AD.

The MAC waited a long time on UMass and hope they could wait 3 years for WKU. CUSA departed members revenue will dry up in 3 years.

The Chancellor, despite his vocal support, cannot get water from a stone when it comes to the money. Sure it is great that we have someone in that position who wants what we all want, but he has to appease everyone, not just the sports minded.


Umass is Cal Berkley - East. They care far more about social issues (multiples more) than they do about D1 sports. That will always be a lead weight around the AD and administration's neck.

Adding in a edit to my previous post here and academics should be most important. Student Athletic fees have not gone up and is so much less as a percentage than it was a dozen years ago. The amount the administration or students fees are not sacrificing academics and affordability. Sports is driving revenue on it's own and why those G5 revenue streams became a major influence.

I know we seem like we are different ends of this Steve, we actually are not. We need to be in the MAC as this point - I am not actually disputing that, but we should have been in the AAC (at worst) by now. That is my problem - my utter disappointment and disgust in the people in charge fucking this up over and over again - especially when everyone except they themselves knew it was a mistake.




Instead of doing the Monday QB thing, I will look ahead....


The problem we have now is the still unknow effect of the NIL stuff. This is root of my position of being 3 steps behind right now. If NIL goes into the school's full control, UMass is fucked. The top 80 or so schools will pull out into their own thing and leave the rest behind, far behind. UMass should be in that top 80, not wallowing (for 12+ years) in the 120's and 130's.


Umass athletics have little to no control over it's future when they should have.

[ZooMass84]

I am not pissing on football as a jaded basketball fan, I am pissing on football because it is bad all by itself. I am not pitting one sport against the other, I don't need to.

MAC Football sucks dude... And UMass is not in any way, shape, or form improving it. Their rankings suck before Umass is added and Umass's ranking weighs it down even more. Those are not my numbers, I am reporting them as they are provided by outlets that know a whole lot more about CFB than we all do.

You seem to think we are going to be0come the Liberty of the MAC.... Liberty is spending the money needed to do that, UMass is spending a fraction of that. IDGAF what the administration and AD say, their wallets do not back up their words....

MAC Football sucks??!!?? huh??? It's a G5 conference not the SEC or ACC or whatever. What's the difference between that the Sun Belt or CUSA??? You know we HAD to join a conference or we were going back down to 1AA.

I understand all of that, this whole thing is just disappointing. MAC brings basically zero regional ties for rivals (maybe you can consider Buffalo), it is arguably 9th or 10th in football conferences (out of 10), and it is a huge drop in Basketball exposure.

The part that pisses me off is that Umass should be 3 or 4 steps farther along in this process at this point. They said no to joining MAC all sports however many years ago (8 or 9 I think?), and ended up there anyways. Does that not frustrate any of you?

You know who is not as crazy as he sounds? Stevemaz.

His predictions are only crazy because the school continues to make dumb decision, after dumb decision. Everything is about cutting corners to save $5 bucks, and they are too fucking blind to understand that by saving that $5 bucks, they lost millions in conference affiliation revenues. I blame administration, I blame the state for their lack of proper support, I blame the fair weather fans (sort of). With a half competent administration, some of Steve's predictions would actually be bearing fruit by now.


Again, Umass spokespeople say all the right things, but their actions DO NOT back up their words. They have 5 years to make football truly relevant (I will leave the definition of relevant to each of you) or this is yet another failure on the part of these fucking people. The MAC should be in our rear view mirror at this point, but instead, it is our future as we are not even there yet......


I am sorry to continue to beat on this dead horse, but I am frustrated by all of this.

The MAC should be in our rear view mirror at this point, but instead, it is our future as we are not even there yet......

In less than 1 year we are full on MAC. You have to remember that college football is basically stadium size and endowment. It's an expensive endeavor. Our endowment is not that bad (although by Big 10 or major college football standards its a joke) but our "stadium" is an embarrassment. It's got to be replaced fairly soon or it'll just decay away. I personally like the MAC. It produces a lot of NFL draft picks like Khalil Mack remember him???? I get it, we should be with Temple etc. in the AAC but NO ONE is going to admit us because the "stadium" holds all of 17,000 or whatever.

[ZooMass84]

50 years ago or whatever you could have Major college football being played in 20,000 or 30,000 stadiums, but those days are long gone. Northwestern's new stadium can rival an NFL stadium. BC's alumni stadium in the built in 1957 I think held 26,000. now its 44,000 but for a P5, it's smallish. We need a stadium that holds 25,000. I dont care if its endzone seating.

[Miami (Oh) Yeah !]

https://www.cbssports.com/college-footb ... -rankings/

Miami gets 1 vote in the Pre-Season Top 25 Poll

[stevemaz]

MAC Football sucks??!!?? huh??? It's a G5 conference not the SEC or ACC or whatever. What's the difference between that the Sun Belt or CUSA??? You know we HAD to join a conference or we were going back down to 1AA.

I understand all of that, this whole thing is just disappointing. MAC brings basically zero regional ties for rivals (maybe you can consider Buffalo), it is arguably 9th or 10th in football conferences (out of 10), and it is a huge drop in Basketball exposure.

The part that pisses me off is that Umass should be 3 or 4 steps farther along in this process at this point. They said no to joining MAC all sports however many years ago (8 or 9 I think?), and ended up there anyways. Does that not frustrate any of you?

You know who is not as crazy as he sounds? Stevemaz.

His predictions are only crazy because the school continues to make dumb decision, after dumb decision. Everything is about cutting corners to save $5 bucks, and they are too fucking blind to understand that by saving that $5 bucks, they lost millions in conference affiliation revenues. I blame administration, I blame the state for their lack of proper support, I blame the fair weather fans (sort of). With a half competent administration, some of Steve's predictions would actually be bearing fruit by now.


Again, Umass spokespeople say all the right things, but their actions DO NOT back up their words. They have 5 years to make football truly relevant (I will leave the definition of relevant to each of you) or this is yet another failure on the part of these fucking people. The MAC should be in our rear view mirror at this point, but instead, it is our future as we are not even there yet......


I am sorry to continue to beat on this dead horse, but I am frustrated by all of this.

The MAC should be in our rear view mirror at this point, but instead, it is our future as we are not even there yet......

In less than 1 year we are full on MAC. You have to remember that college football is basically stadium size and endowment. It's an expensive endeavor. Our endowment is not that bad (although by Big 10 or major college football standards its a joke) but our "stadium" is an embarrassment. It's got to be replaced fairly soon or it'll just decay away. I personally like the MAC. It produces a lot of NFL draft picks like Khalil Mack remember him???? I get it, we should be with Temple etc. in the AAC but NO ONE is going to admit us because the "stadium" holds all of 17,000 or whatever.

Im a secret genius..

[eldonabe]

I found Althon's Rankings - posted on July 8th.

They have Umass slotted at #125 right after the Fighting Insurance Salesmen in Storrs and ahead of 3 other MAC teams.

[eldonabe]

Star Local Media has posted (whoever that is) their ranking looks eerily similar to the Althon.... - When I say similar - I mean EXACTLY like Althon.

[eldonabe]

Massey Ratings - which is sort of like KenPom clocks Umass in at #133.

Similar to KenPom, I have a hard time with their numbers until about 25% of the current season games are played because they are reliant on last year's data.

Massey is a great site for Hoops lines if you like to wager on such thing.... but again, you need to wait until about Christmas for enough cross reference games to get numbers not skewed by previous season.

[Quann]

I am not pissing on football as a jaded basketball fan, I am pissing on football because it is bad all by itself. I am not pitting one sport against the other, I don't need to.

MAC Football sucks dude... And UMass is not in any way, shape, or form improving it. Their rankings suck before Umass is added and Umass's ranking weighs it down even more. Those are not my numbers, I am reporting them as they are provided by outlets that know a whole lot more about CFB than we all do.

You seem to think we are going to be0come the Liberty of the MAC.... Liberty is spending the money needed to do that, UMass is spending a fraction of that. IDGAF what the administration and AD say, their wallets do not back up their words....

MAC Football sucks??!!?? huh??? It's a G5 conference not the SEC or ACC or whatever. What's the difference between that the Sun Belt or CUSA??? You know we HAD to join a conference or we were going back down to 1AA.

I understand all of that, this whole thing is just disappointing. MAC brings basically zero regional ties for rivals (maybe you can consider Buffalo), it is arguably 9th or 10th in football conferences (out of 10), and it is a huge drop in Basketball exposure.

The part that pisses me off is that Umass should be 3 or 4 steps farther along in this process at this point. They said no to joining MAC all sports however many years ago (8 or 9 I think?), and ended up there anyways. Does that not frustrate any of you?

You know who is not as crazy as he sounds? Stevemaz.

His predictions are only crazy because the school continues to make dumb decision, after dumb decision. Everything is about cutting corners to save $5 bucks, and they are too fucking blind to understand that by saving that $5 bucks, they lost millions in conference affiliation revenues. I blame administration, I blame the state for their lack of proper support, I blame the fair weather fans (sort of). With a half competent administration, some of Steve's predictions would actually be bearing fruit by now.


Again, Umass spokespeople say all the right things, but their actions DO NOT back up their words. They have 5 years to make football truly relevant (I will leave the definition of relevant to each of you) or this is yet another failure on the part of these fucking people. The MAC should be in our rear view mirror at this point, but instead, it is our future as we are not even there yet......


I am sorry to continue to beat on this dead horse, but I am frustrated by all of this.

There is nothing you can do about the past which is what the majority of this board seems to be obsessed with. Keep moving forward, staying pat with indy football was a path toward destruction for the program.

[tdmass]

Well, you certainly can Learn from the past which is another failure on the administrations over the years!

[ZooMass84]

Massey Ratings - which is sort of like KenPom clocks Umass in at #133.

Similar to KenPom, I have a hard time with their numbers until about 25% of the current season games are played because they are reliant on last year's data.

Massey is a great site for Hoops lines if you like to wager on such thing.... but again, you need to wait until about Christmas for enough cross reference games to get numbers not skewed by previous season.

Massey's sucks. They always have us dead last.....doesn't matter the record