With all due deference to Gerald R. Ford, the uber-long UMass FBS independent football experiment/nightmare seems over. The 2025 season will find the Minuteman team still competing in an FBS conference, the Mid-American Conference, but the MAC mercifully aligns more with UMass football athletic talent.

For those who have followed and enjoyed Minuteman football for decades, the announced MAC compact is long overdue and welcome news. Yet, while the conference affiliation is full of promise, to get to the 2025 season, the UMass team must make it through the 2024 season. The University of Georgia, the University of Missouri, and Mississippi State await the Minuteman this fall. The UMass Athletics Department’s rapacious and shameless greed at the expense of player safety and the university’s reputation is legendary.

In one last-ditch, brainless attempt to exploit the football team as a vulgar money-making enterprise, the athletics department overlords have arranged a foolhardy and pointless 2024 trial by ordeal. As Cyndi Lauper has prophesied, “Money changes everything.” So caution is advised. The director of athletics and his underlings warrant sustained monitoring lest their lowest proclivities go unchecked once more at the expense and humiliation of the football program. Stay frosty.

Jack Tulloss

Belchertown