Points After Week 0: UMass on Top of the College Football World
An unlikely program ushered in the 2023 college football season and provided a reminder of what makes the game so special.
Patrick Mayhorn of The Aggship and Meet At Midfield wrote an excellent piece this past week on where college football traditions actually originate. It’s a heartfelt and poignant commentary well worth your time.
Patrick and I chatted a few weeks ago about the Coastal Carolina-BYU game in 2020 — it’s actually the conversation at Circa’s Long Bar referenced in the column — and what that game meant to us.
The 2020 offseason was — and I put emphasis on was — the most dismal of any since I began closely following college football decades ago. As the COVID-19 pandemic lingered, I was mostly ambivalent about having a season; if the athletic departments believed they could make it happen with minimal risk, then they should go ahead so long as those athletes who didn’t feel comfortable were afforded a choice without penalty. That was my stance.
But I didn’t feel comfortable with the sniping that stemmed from the pandemic-season debate. The decision whether or not to play took on the same nasty undercurrent of that year’s presidential election with different sides taking positions that felt less than altruistic.
Don’t get me wrong, I watched the 2020 season as closely as every campaign preceding it. I continued to cover games live once I was able — some great games, at that. The year’s USC-UCLA rivalry showdown in the Rose Bowl was an instant classic that, because of the moratorium on crowds, is my football equivalent to the famed Terry Funk (RIP)1 vs. Jerry Lawler Empy Arena Match of 1981.
However, it was the week prior when the most unlikely of matchups — a game that could only be played as a result of the unprecedented circumstances the pandemic created — that all the negativity surrounding the game in the months prior evaporated.
Mormons vs. Mullets: Those three words embody an irreplicable moment that became college football lore. Even the origin of the nickname reflects what makes the sport so unique: It’s the creativity, the quirks, the passion of the people involved.
Corporations aren’t people. Before you unsubscribe, allow me to preface that this isn’t a political statement about tax codes or anything of the sort but rather a simple fact as it pertains to college football. Corporate interest is at the heart of the changes football’s landscape underwent; changes that in many ways made the 2023 offseason the most dismal yet.
A corporation cannot manufacture the authenticity of people’s passion for college football. But it also can’t crush people’s passion, either.
As a child of the ‘90s, it’s my duty to turn to the great philosopher Lisa Simpson who illustrated this phenomenon best.
This year’s moment that reinforced the game’s spirit didn’t come three months into the slate like Coastal Carolina and BYU, but it was an equally unusual matchup.
UMass beat New Mexico State in Week 0, 41-30, in a matchup essentially born of realignment’s machinations. Each was jettisoned from its former conference and sent into independent purgatory.
A series of necessity spawned as a result, hence UMass traveling 2,300 miles to Las Cruces for its season opener. New Mexico State found a home in Conference USA but kept the Minutemen on the docket.
Their shared stints as independents make these kindred programs of sorts; the respective journeys of head coaches Jerry Kill and Don Brown add another layer.
Brown and Kill are two quintessentially college football personalities. Brown was, to me, the most compelling figure of the Amazon All or Nothing series that followed Michigan in the 2017 season.
When it comes to passion, no one can match Don Brown. And it takes an especially unique kind of energy to leave a coordinator gig at a power-conference program for what most experts would agree is the most difficult head-coaching job in the Bowl Subdivision.
So for Brown to coach the Minutemen to their first season-opening win over an FBS opponent since 1984 is a measure of vindication for his decision, and a triumph validating passion in an era when cynicism so often seems to prevail.
A smiling Don Brown jumping around a mob of players in celebration is college football.
Terry Funk, who died this week, was a standout linebacker at West Texas State University in the 1960s.