Marriage of UMass and Mid-American Conference a winner, for now: Analysis

To understand why Wednesday's announcement is a good move for UMass and the MAC, one must first recognize where the conference stands.

View full sizeAP photoBy moving their football program to the Mid-American Conference, the Massachusetts Minutemen can ease their way into the Football Bowl Subdivision without being overmatched by its league opponents.

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- To understand why Wednesday's announcement that the University of Massachusetts will play football in the Mid-American Conference is a good move for both, one must first recognize where the MAC stands.

Over the last decade, MAC schools have been a stopping point of five years or fewer at every level from president to athletic director to head coach. Not one school in the conference has a five-year foursome of president, AD, football coach and men's basketball coach. Most schools would be lucky to have two of the four with five or more years of tenure at their positions.

Efforts by the league to put together a long-term conference plan are constantly revisited and revised by new voices on almost every level, but never implemented.

So UMass arriving in the MAC for football only should be viewed as a move that benefits both parties for now, but the future is open-ended.

"This was the right situation at the right time," UMass athletic director John McCutcheon said Wednesday. "We're pleased this has worked out the way it has."

Neither McCutcheon nor MAC commissioner Jon Steinbrecher would address how much UMass will pay to join the league, how much UMass would have to pay if it decides to leave, or even the length of the contract.

Massachusetts football

• Who: The Minutemen.
• Where: Amherst, Mass.
• Closest MAC school: Temple, 229 miles.
• Farthest MAC school: Northern Ill., 1,029 miles.
• Current league: Colonial Athletic Association.
• MAC timeline: 2011 — last season of CAA play; 2012 — begin MAC play, ineligible for title or bowl appearances; 2013 — eligible for MAC title and bowl appearances.
• UMass to do list: 1. Increase scholarships from 63 to 85. 2. Meet minimum attendance requirement of 15,000 per home game for two straight years.
• Record last five years: 2006, 13-2; 2007, 10-3; 2008, 7-5; 2009, 5-6 and 2010, 6-5.
• MAC play: An 8-game league schedule with six games against division opponents and two cross-division.
• Did you know? UMass will play its home games off campus in the NFL Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Mass. nearly 100 miles away from its campus. UMass AD John McCutcheon said Gillette will be “our primary home for quite some time.”

— Elton Alexander

"First and foremost our deal here, not only with UMass but with Temple, is a sustaining deal," Steinbrecher said. "In other words, we've moved away from contracts in which there is a fixed term on it. I think all parties involved thought that was important we get rid of this idea there is a clock ticking."

UMass gets to move its football program upward from the Football Championship Subdivision (formerly Division I-AA) to a league in the Football Bowl Subdivision. The MAC is a lower-tier league in the FBS, but still competes against teams from the most powerful football conferences in the country: the Atlantic Coast Conference, Big East, Big Ten, Big 12, Pacific-10 and Southeastern.

UMass football has played for three FCS championships, most recently in 2006 when it lost to Appalachian State; and 1998, when the Minutemen won it all. They averaged 13,004 fans last season when they finished 6-5. According to media reports, UMass loses $3 million annually on football.

This move gives UMass entree to the same big non-conference paydays the MAC currently enjoys, -- such as Kent State's $1.2-million trip to play at Alabama this fall -- to help cut those financial losses significantly. In time, it gives UMass opportunity to play in one of the MAC's three contracted bowl games in Detroit, Mobile, Ala., and Boise, Idaho.

For the MAC, the deal will allow it to balance its two football divisions at seven teams each, up from 13 teams now. It ensures the MAC continues to satisfy the NCAA minimum of 12 teams to hold a championship football game, which is key to the league's ESPN TV contract.

And for a while, at least, it gives current MAC teams an opponent they should be able to beat.

But it also gives the league two teams, UMass and Temple, that apparently have no interest in joining the MAC in all sports, which means they are open to be courted by other conferences. In the current world of college athletics, where conferences are poaching from each other almost annually to build new alliances, this does leave the MAC vulnerable.

The partnership announced Wednesday is a positive step for both UMass and MAC football. The length and outcome of this partnership is yet to be determined.

Source: http://www.cleveland.com/sports/college/index.ssf/2011/04/marriage_of_umass_and_mid-amer.html

Enjoy England TwiTrips Marcus Bent La Liga Stan Collymore Classical music Stephen Carr