OT: UMass looking to drop to FCS
After Idaho dropped, EMU refuted talk of dropping, UMass is pushing for dropping out of FBS and going back to FCS at their faculty senate meeting.
UMass has been an utter disaster since joining FBS.
Once a proud FCS program that won a national championship in 1998, UMass joined FBS in 2012 and gained MAC membership as an affiliate member with a requirement to join the league in all sports a couple years later or get booted like Temple did.
UMass has gone 8-40 overall and 7-25 in the MAC since the jump. They went 2-22 in their first two seasons. Michigan played them in their first FBS season in 2012, a game which was a far cry from the 2010 meeting where the #17 ranked FCS team put a scare into us.
UMass was booted from the MAC recently after not joining for all sports, so now they face a similar fate as Idaho. Play as an independent or drop.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/ncaaf/2016/04/27/umass-football-fa…
The University of Massachusetts faculty senate continues to call for the school to either drop down to FCS or cancel its program altogether, a revised agenda for Thursday's upcoming meeting revealed.The faculty senate, meeting for its second-to-last session of the spring semester, does not have the power to bring on the change but has a motion that will urge the university's chancellor, president and board of trustees to "end Division I football (Football Bowl Subdivision) at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and either move to a different division or discontinue NCAA football."
Div 1A football is interesting to me because it has the variety. Actually would want less of this power 5 vs other 5 stuff. Give the other 5 teams more chances to be in the playoff and the top bowls.
Absolutely do not agree with some overall scheme that tells the conferences how big they have to be and who can be in them.
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they were playing their home games 95 miles away (!!) in Foxborough for most of their first years at the FBS level.
Point being, UMass is sort of "pot-committed" at this point. They're going to try to make FBS-level football work. They are a viable candidate (if football can have any measure of success) if the American Conference ever expands or needs a back-fill. The MAC would likely gladly take UMass back if the Minutemen agreed to play ALL their sports there (that's the only reason the MAC "booted" them, the MAC is no longer interested in football-only schools).
Whereas I can see EMU or NMSU going the "Idaho route" in the near-future (next 5-10 years), I honestly can't see it for Massachusetts.
I wanted them to make the jump and thought it would be successful but it hasn't worked out. They should drop down. They just don't have the full support of the school, fans, or the state.