Mid-season MAC check-up

[DrG]

Buffalo bills themselves as New York's SUNY flagship campus, and they are members of the AAU, which we have not yet been able to achieve. Ohio is a good school, but I think UBuffalo is a better model for a MAC partner.

[SignMan]

https://amherstwire.com/40037/investiga ... ransition/

[Steve81]

https://amherstwire.com/40037/investiga ... ransition/

The 1.2M spent on travel is mostly for a spread out Atlantic 10, which has members in Missouri, Illinois, Ohio, along with other teams with URI, Fordham, and the Philly teams a bus ride. Seems that after her attention grabbing titles and statistics, the reason is more of an NCAA compliance issue and the addition of Loyola account for last years 31% travel budget increase.

Dr. Emily Must, director of internships and a senior lecturer of sports management at Isenberg, spoke to the athletics department’s travel expenses. On weekends, she said, it used to be more common for athletic teams to take a bus when traveling out-of-region, “and now, if it’s on a Tuesday, we’re flying in and flying out.”

In compliance with NCAA’s regulations on countable athletically related activity, student-athletes cannot spend more than 20 hours per week on their sport, which Must says long bus rides could eat into.

According to the Director of Athletics, Ryan Bamford, most varsity teams will continue to travel on commercial flights. However, flying commercial is not feasible for the football team, a party of 180. Instead, for them and the basketball teams, optimizing the turnaround time with private charters is essential, Bamford said.

The cost will go up 5-8% by joining the MAC, which she fails to mention while mentioning other statistics. I get a sense for her negative views by the way framing the big revenue offset MACtion. See how she uses "roped" and not clearly stating the 5-8% travel increase for the MAC all sports, but takes time to mention Hockey East compact travel. Perhaps she fails to investigate if the 31% reason was the addition of Loyola and the NCAA compliance issue of 20 hours and now flying to DC teams of GW and George Mason.

These are just some of the costly accommodations afforded to the athletic department as UMass transitions to the Mid-American Conference (MAC). All sports teams besides Men’s ice hockey, which competes in the Hockey East Conference, will have to travel further in fall 2025 to compete in their associated leagues. Most of the schools in the MAC are based in the Great Lakes region, UMass being the sole representative from New England.

A lucrative, long-term media deal between the MAC and ESPN ensures the UMass Minutemen will be roped into the network’s popular Wednesday Night Football programming.

[stevemaz]

wait til the highest paid state employee is a 20 year old QB..

[TruBluMaroon]

wait til the highest paid state employee is a 20 year old QB..

Still haven’t heard if the money paid by the school in NIL will be subject to the same public release like the staff salaries.

When everyone had the same scholarship, there wasn’t the jealousy that could arise and ruin team chemistry when player A starts and finds out that player B who sits, gets more than he does!!

[eldonabe]

wait til the highest paid state employee is a 20 year old QB..

Still haven’t heard if the money paid by the school in NIL will be subject to the same public release like the staff salaries.

When everyone had the same scholarship, there wasn’t the jealousy that could arise and ruin team chemistry when player A starts and finds out that player B who sits, gets more than he does!!

The law of Unintended Consequences.

[Floyd]

Who is Scott Fisher? Tough YouTube video out saying UMass football is the most miserable program in the country. Ouch

[Juice Stand]

^ Who cares what that jackwagon has to say. I'm sure he has plenty of "followers", but anyone can post a youtube video and say whatever they want. Is he an insider, does he live in New England or have ties to the football program? His page is full of miserable click-bait trash: "from 5-star QB to NFL BUST", "The 5-star who THREW HIS CAREER AWAY", "Meet THE BIGGEST BUST in Alabama Football History", etc, etc.

I'm not going to watch it and give him the clicks and views he so desperately wants, and I encourage others to ignore him as well.

[Floyd]

Settle down Juicy, just pointing out the video on YouTube. Didn't say it was great viewing, but it does suck to hear us viewed that way. I never heard of the guy before

[Juice Stand]

I'm good, Floyd. I'm just going to choose not to watch UMass hate from a click-bait farmer.

[Floyd]

Who is the guy Juice? Any connection to UMass or just a random guy?

[Quann]

I watched it. Everything he said was pretty factual in the video, he didn't really try to dump on the program, he gave a pretty detailed background on our long football history. Hopefully this is the bottom for the program right now and it's only improvement from here on out.

[UMassNet15]

wait til the highest paid state employee is a 20 year old QB..

Wait until players learn about deferred compensation... and the high taxes in MA...

[Steve81]

The MAC Conference Talk forum has a few basketball threads that may interest a few people, who visit the board. Especially would appreciate if others post on the "Post Up!!!" thread, as not as dedicated watching tweeter/X etc for commitments as have stuff going on. Did give 69MG and wmmmmfan credit on the two big posts. Cleveland like that fact UMass went after Juco players and feels there are a lot of JUCO players and other MAC teams should follow UMass lead.

[Steve81]

Could be anything from a new MAC Media Contract, Basketball schedule, partners, members... Who knows