I\u2019ve been to over 100 college football stadiums<\/p>\n
I say with full confidence this is the worst one in the country pic.twitter.com\/G9EQDcGn2v<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 GFed (@GfedGoCrazy) July 5, 2024<\/a><\/p>\n Quinton Sales just shakes his head. As one of the captains during UMass\u2019 FCS-to-FBS transition, he knew his team would ache through the program\u2019s inevitable growing pains. But growing pains require growth, not double-digit losses to Buffalo and Northern Illinois like he withstood 12 years ago.<\/p>\n \u201cNo reason to be this bad for this long,\u201d Sales said. \u201cNo reason.\u201d<\/p>\n The explanation goes beyond the typical problems of losing programs: poor quarterbacking (UMass hasn\u2019t had a passer with 10 touchdowns in a season since 2018), bad coaching hires (first-time flops Charley Molnar and Walt Bell, unsuccessful retreads Mark Whipple and Don Brown, who was fired last November), lackluster recruiting (one class ranked in the top 105 of the 247Sports Composite) and the instability of five coaching changes in 15 years. Deeper woes require deeper roots.<\/p>\n The trouble began, according to interviews conducted by The Athletic with more than a dozen UMass stakeholders, when a sliding FCS program jumped to the sport\u2019s highest division without a plan, in a move its chancellor said might not last. The flagship university of the state with the nation\u2019s highest median household income gave its front porch a bare-bones budget that made a future NFL head coach one of the lowest paid assistants in the nation. The Minutemen started from behind and never caught up.<\/p>\n Most losses by FBS teams since 2012<\/p>\n TeamWinsLossesW%Avg. margin<\/p>\n 26<\/p>\n 122<\/p>\n .176<\/p>\n -16.7<\/p>\n 38<\/p>\n 117<\/p>\n .245<\/p>\n -13.4<\/p>\n 44<\/p>\n 110<\/p>\n .286<\/p>\n -10.5<\/p>\n 46<\/p>\n 107<\/p>\n .301<\/p>\n -10.2<\/p>\n 46<\/p>\n 105<\/p>\n .305<\/p>\n -12.1<\/p>\n 51<\/p>\n 103<\/p>\n .331<\/p>\n -7.6<\/p>\n 44<\/p>\n 103<\/p>\n .299<\/p>\n -11.2<\/p>\n 56<\/p>\n 102<\/p>\n .354<\/p>\n -6.4<\/p>\n 54<\/p>\n 102<\/p>\n .346<\/p>\n -10.2<\/p>\n 50<\/p>\n 102<\/p>\n .329<\/p>\n -9.2<\/p>\n 63<\/p>\n 102<\/p>\n .382<\/p>\n -8.1<\/p>\n When UMass prioritized the other revenue sport, men\u2019s basketball, it doomed football to the purgatory of independence and years of laughers against Penn State (63-0) and Pitt (51-7), FIU (44-0) and Toledo (55-10) and even FCS programs Southern Illinois (45-20) and Maine (35-10).<\/p>\n \u201cFrankly,\u201d said booster Marty Jacobson, whose name adorns the football performance center and press box, \u201ca lot of us are tired of losing.\u201d<\/p>\n And they\u2019re starting to do something about it.<\/p>\n The potential for disaster was evident long before the jokes. The proof rests near the back of a nondescript box in the tallest building on campus.<\/p>\n It\u2019s part of a task force report submitted to UMass\u2019 chancellor in 1996 as the school considered moving its up-and-down program to Division I-A, now called FBS:<\/p>\n If a decision is made to implement the move to IA, the move will most likely meet failure without full support of all parts of the University including: academic, student, administrative, and staff.<\/p>\n James Madison supported its move to the FBS in 2022<\/a>; according to figures submitted to the U.S. Department of Education, the Dukes entered the Sun Belt with the largest athletic budget in the conference. They are 28-9 over three seasons. Georgia Southern supported its jump, too; its students preemptively approved <\/a>a $75 semester fee to fund a potential bump up and have watched their Eagles become a regular bowl team. Liberty started with the sixth-highest football budget ($22.9 million) in the Group of 5 and has never had a losing FBS season.<\/p>\n UMass didn\u2019t want to listen. The prescient warning was cut from the task force\u2019s final version and is buried on the last page of a minority report, now housed in the W. E. B. Du Bois Library\u2019s archives.<\/p>\n Though the Minutemen did not leap to the FBS then, they probably would have been better off if they had. Their athletic department was still buzzing after John Calipari led the men\u2019s basketball team to that year\u2019s Final Four, and football was about to peak by winning the 1998 FCS national championship and playing for another in 2006.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you had the right people in place with the right forethought, I think it would have been a home run,\u201d said ESPN analyst Rene Ingoglia, UMass\u2019 All-American running back in 1994-95. \u201cThey went the opposite way.\u201d<\/p>\n When a football-only invitation to the Mid-American Conference came in 2011, the Minutemen weren\u2019t ready. On the field, UMass didn\u2019t move up with the momentum or roster depth of James Madison (a perennial FCS power), Appalachian State (a regular FCS playoff team) or Sam Houston (two years removed from an FCS title). The Minutemen went 23-22 over their final four FCS seasons.<\/p>\n Off the field, UMass had not sufficiently prepared to join the highest division. The necessary support was missing. Schneider, then a recruiting\/operations intern, said it felt like the Minutemen were simply in the FCS one day and the MAC the next because he witnessed so little build-up.<\/p>\n \u201cI would say that I think the institution as a whole and the athletics department were surprised by the level of investment and commitment it took to be relevant in the Football Bowl Subdivision,\u201d said athletic director Ryan Bamford, who took over in 2015.<\/p>\n Though the school increased its football expenses by almost $2.2 million from 2010-12, UMass started from behind. In Year 1, its $750,000 assistants salary pool was seventh-lowest nationally and third to last in the MAC (ahead of only Kent State and Bowling Green), according to USA Today\u2019s database. The next year, it was $200,000 behind FBS startup Georgia State. By 2015, the total coaching salary pool was $1.43 million \u2014 ahead of only Buffalo in the MAC and almost $1 million behind P.J. Fleck\u2019s Western Michigan staff, according to the Knight-Newhouse database.<\/p>\n \u201cI think the truth and the reality is that there wasn\u2019t a ton of investment and resources at the time when that transition was made,\u201d said former UMass tight end Adam Breneman, now a Front Office Sports podcast host and analyst for CBS Sports and Yahoo. \u201cWhen you have position coaches making under $100,000 a year, you\u2019re not going to be able to keep anybody in college football if they\u2019re good.\u201d<\/p>\n UMass is 0-14 against teams from the SEC since 2012. (Eric Canha \/ Imagn Images)<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/USATSI_24504177-scaled.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/USATSI_21218818-scaled.jpg\")
<\/p>\n