Wednesday News-- 06/03/09

More on Boston College's QB Dominique Davis' decision to transfer. His BC Bio here .

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CSN has photo galleries of FCS football. They've started the 2009 series.

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Over the last couple of years one of the best backs in FCS/I-AA football was North Dakota State's Tyler Roehl. He tore his ACL in a non-contact drill at the Seahawk's training camp.

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This article about Conference USA's efforts to reduce costs also has a lot of info about other Leagues as well. Note that C-USA may trim the number of players taken to away games and abandon staying in a hotel prior to home games.

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A summer gridiron report on our next opponent Kansas State.

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UMass' returning offensive linemen starts in 2008:

• Vladimir Ducasse 12 starts
• Josh Samuda 11 starts
• Rob Getek 7 starts
• John Ihne 6 starts
• Brian Ostaszewski 3 starts.

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2008 Images come down tomorrow

Last year I took almost 900 MB of images of UMass football events. To free up space for the coming season, I'm taking them down tomorrow.

I have not backed up most of this stuff to CDROM, so entropy will claim the 2008 season when I delete the images from my Picasa account.

If anyone wants to review any the images they should visit the Blog sidebar now.

Wednesday Wonders 01/07/09

The Arena Football league may have folded, but the the Manchester Wolves are having tryouts on Jan 31st.

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Boston College Head coach Jeff Jagodzinski interviewed with the Jets. Blogger "Eagle in Atlanta" is all over it.

Be sure to check out his "prospective replacements" post. Key quote :Mark Whipple; Philadelphia Eagles, Offensive Assistant -- he didn't kiss Gene's ring enough last time."

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UMass Punter Brett Arnold made First-Team All-American by The Sports Network. Two other UMass players made the team: Jeromy Miles and Courtney Robinson.

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New CAA Team Old Dominion has just signed their 8th JUCO player.

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Satueday sound offs 01/03/2009

UMass' 2008 FCS team Texas Tech was handled by Ole Miss in the Cotton bowl. The Rebels rang up over 500 yard of offense and the second highest point total in Cotton Bowl history.

UMass' 2009 FCs opponent Kansas State is losing its starting QB to the NFL draft.

This has been your Big 12 update.

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Matty Vautour has a "2008 Superlatives" article, which includes several quotes about UMass football. One of the best:

"Derek Kellogg Award/Graduating senior most likely to be heard from again: Liam Coen - I'll put the over/under at 15 years before Coen is the head coach of the UMass football team."

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UMass was 15th in total football attendance in 2008 out of 117 FCS teams (pdf). We were 5th among the cold weather teams (not counting UNI and North Dakota State; they both have domes).

Friday facts 01/02/2009

Courtney Robinson made the CSN "Fabulous Fifty" first team. Brett Arnold and Victor Cruz were on the positional Honorable Mention list.

JMU's Mickey Matthews was named the Liberty Mutual "FCS Coach-of-the-Year".

The Boston College lost to Vanderbilt in VU Music City Bowl. The game featured some weird statistics. BC lost despite holding the Commodores to a grand total of eight first downs. Vandy also had zero penalties and zero turnovers.

Texas Tech plays in the Cotton Bowl today at 1:00 PM (CST 2:00 Eastern time) Set your VCR.

If you spend any time on football message boards, you'll meet the psycho fan. You know, the guy who's team has to win every game by 50 points or he goes ballistic. Southern Pigskin has a generic fan rant that's hilarious.

Last Day of 2008 blog post

UMass ended ranked #15 in the Massey Rankings, which is a computer rating based on wins and quality of the schedule. The CAA was first of the FCS leagues and has seven teams in the top 20.

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We lose a couple in the recruiting wars:

• QB Brian Hudson verbaled to Liberty. I blogged about him back here .
• OG Keith Bourne verbaled to Boston College . I did a blog post on him here .

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Former UMass Captain (1977) Peter McCarty is defensive line coach for the Western Michigan Broncos. I first saw this on the UMass Athletic Dept's "Just a minute' column.


More scans from the 1977 team are in the "UMass Football History" link in the Blog side bar.

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This blog post happens to be the 500th post for 2008 and the 2,326th post since the start of the UMass football Blog back on June 5th, 2005. The very first blog post is here .

I'd like to wish all the Blog readers and everone associated with UMass Football a Happy New year. May 2009 bring everyone health, happyness and success ----and a return to the playoffs for the UMass Footbal team :)

Tuesday telex 12/30/08

Bruce Dowd has a long article about the Richmond-Montana Championship game with many pictures.

Josh Buchanan has released his 2008 FCS All-American teams. Several UMass players made the third team.

For the first time ever, UNH was able to red-shirt their entire 2008 recruiting class. Brought to my attention over on the excellent New Hampshire Football Report.

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!

The UMass Football Blog and Mrs Blog would like to wish all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

One of the best presents I've had in the last three years is the opportunity to meet, in person, and on line, UMass fans, players, parents and staff.

Hope the New Year brings everybody, health, happiness and prosperity.

Brent Arnold named AP first-team Punter

Click on the image and Blogger displays a much larger view.

Brent Arnold was named to Associated Press All-FCS first team. UMass story here .

Congrats to Brent!

National Championship Friday 2008

More articles on the Brown-Yale affair:

• Yale Daily News "Two candidates withdraw their names"
• Springfield Republican "Brown no longer in running for Yale Job"
• WWLP "Don Brown Staying"
• Matty Vautour has the latest "Boola Boola, UMass coach staying put"
  

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Richmond"s Head coach London is the first black coach to go the the National Championship game.

The Montana coach is familiar with the London family (mentions UMass and Brandon London).

Two pages of links to stories concerning the National Championship game via Google News here .

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Lawrence Sidbury, DE for Richmond is also a computer science major. He's working on software to predict predict offensive plays.

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Armati Edwards of Appalachian State won the 2008 Walter payton Award.

Mickey Matthews won the Eddie Robinson Award for the top coach in FCS.

Greg Peach of Eastern Washington won the Buck Buchanan Award for top defensive player in FCS.

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News 12/18/08

For news about Coach Brown see the post before this one.

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CSN is at the National Championship game and has a audio link to interviews with various personalities including UMass AD John McCutcheon .

David Coulson has an article about the Montana Grizzlies warming up in Chattanooga.

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On recruiting news, can someone from UMass football call this guy?

Also on recruiting, I've updated the Blog post on Mike Goad.

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News about Coach Brown

Matty Vautour has an article on the possibility of Coach Brown leaving.

Hopefully he will stay and hopefully the current recession and associated budget cuts will not last long. UMass football and UMass football fans will have to hunker down and wait it out.

Another article (unsigned) by the Springfield Republican says the Athletic Dept is not happy with the news.

UPDATE: Holy Cross coach Tom Gilmore has withdrawn his name for the Yale coaching job.

UPDATE II : Matty Vautour reports that Coach Brown is staying.

Tuesday News 1216/08

Bruce Dowd in his weekly CAA column Eats Crow .

Dave Coulson says JMU ran out of miracles .

He has another column saying one point separated UNI and Richmond .

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This report says Coach Brown is a finalist for the open head coach job at Yale.

Brown's salary would probably double at Yale. If he wants to retire in New England, it probably would be a good move for him financially.

Let's hope he stays and leads UMass to another shot at the national title. If I hear anything more about this, I'll post it quickly.

Tuesday Telegram 12/09/08

We loose one in the recruiting wars. Lametrius Davis a 6-0 193 pd JUCO DB has committed to Hawaii.

Also in the running were Utah, Brigham Young, Oregon State, Washington, Washington and Boise State. That's pretty good company we were competing with.

UPDATE:

We loose another. Blaze Camponegro a 6-1, 205 pd FB committed to Temple.

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CSN continues their "Top Thirty" players in FCS history (all are in pdf)

• Top Thirty FCS kickers (mentions Sandro Vitello from UMass)
• Top Thirty FCS running backs (does not include Marcel Shipp)
• Top Thirty FCS linebackers

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Keepers Football Ratings has JMU by 8 over Montana and Richmond by three over Northern Iowa.

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David Coulson has his weekly "Around FCS" column up---entitled "Turnovers, turnovers, turnovers"

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Monday Musings 12/08/08

Did you know Mark Whipple interviewed for the Syracuse job? The excellent college blog "The Orange Report" (run by a UMass grad incidentally), has some info (scroll down the Dec. 4th post).

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I spotted this over on Mike's UMass message board site. The athletic dept is working on a new scoreboard for McGuirk (pdf). The UMass football Blog is somewhat disappointed to find that it will not include a video screen.

But even no video screen will continue the run of improvements to McGuirk. Certainly, the old and broken scoreboard we have now deserves replacement.

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The Montana-JMU game will be televised Friday night on ESPN2.

CSN recaps the weekends FCS playoff action here .

BTW, Albany crushed Jacksonville 28-0 in the Gridiron Classic. Albany RB David McCarty ran for 271 yards.....

Texas Tech is in the Cotton Bowl.

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Liam Coen named Outstanding Senior in New England

The UMass athletic site has an article on UMass QB Liam Coen receiving the Harry Agganis/Harold Zimman Award as the Outstanding Senior in New England Football.

Congrats to Liam for a great career with UMass!

Three Minutemen named All-New England

Brett Arnold, Tony Nelson and Courtney Robinson were all named All-New England.

Arnold has 2,080 punting yards for the season and 4,011 for his career.

Robinson had 404 kick-off return yards in 2008. That gave him a total of 1,384 yards to set a UMass record. The previous holder was Stephen Parnell (1967-1969).

Nelson's 1,325 rushing yards was 8th highest single season total in UMass history. However, four of the higher totals included playoff yardage. In non-playoff seasons, only Gary Pearson (1,631-1982), Jerome Bledsoe (1545-1991) and Rene Ingoglia (1,505-1994) had more yards.

Thanksgiving Thursday

Hope all readers are enjoying their Thanksgiving holiday. Truly there is much to be thankful for.

Dave Coulson prognosticates the playoffs .

Bruce Dowd does his weekly CAA Today column here .

Matty Vautour has a link to a video interview with Brandon London.

Tuesday Morning 11/25/08

The UMass Daily Collegian has a Hofstra game article here .

Matty Vautour looks at next year's needs and discusses who will fill the seniors shoes here .

Relavent quote:"He will have plenty of holes to fill as key players depart. Some can be filled from within by redshirts, but Brown and his staff will likely be actively looking at potential junior college and Football Bowl Subdivision transfers."

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Chuck Burton of SCN complains about this year's playoff selections .

CSN continues its series on the best FCS players of the last thirty years (all in pdf):

• Defensive linemen
• Kickers
• Running backs

The Sports Network has its weekly column "Around FCS' here .

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Eleven Minutemen make All-CAA teams

Eleven UMass players made the 2008 All-CAA teams. The UMass website has an article on the honors here .

First Team:

• Tony Nelson RB. In his first year as a starter, Nelson was 3rd in the CAA with243-1,325 5.5 yards/carry 12 TD 110 yards/game. He also added 19 receptions for 120 yards.
• Victor Cruz WR. A couple of years ago Liam Coen said we "didn't have anybody like Victor Cruz". In his first year as a starter Cruz was the top receiver in the CAA in two categories. He led the CAA in total yards with 71-1,064 6TD 5.92 rec/game. He also led the CAA with 88.7 yards/game.
• Vladimir Ducasse OL. Ducasse started practicing with the first team about three days after he arrived in Amherst. This year he sharply reduced his penalties and with his physical gifts became one the CAA's top linemen.
• Josh Jennings LB. Jennings ended up 7th in the CAA in tackles with 90TT and 8.2 tackles/game despite missing the last two games of the season.
• Courtney Robinson CB. Not many QB's threw in Robinson's direction and he added 18-404 22.4 kick return average.
• Jeromy Miles DB. Miles was second in the CAA amoung DB's with 104 TT 8.8 tackles/game and was 5th in tackles amoung all positions.
• Brett Arnold P. Arnold led the CAA and the nation with 46-2,080 yards and 45.2 yards/punt.

Second Team:

• Liam Coen QB. Despite his ailing arm, Coen threw for 206-2,749 61.7% 24 TD and 229 yards/game. That was the 5th highest single-seasonTDs and 5th highest total yards in UMass history.

Third Team:

• Jeremy Horne WR. Horne was 3rd in the CAA with 50-895 8TD's and 2nd in the CAA with a 74.6 yards/game average.
• Sean Calicchio OL. Calicchio as a fifth year player was a force on the UMass OL.
• Kyle Harrington DL. Harrington was 3rd in the CAA amoung DL with 50 TT 4.7 tackles/game.

Congrats to all the UMass players who made the 2008 All-CAA team. And seven of the eleven are underclassmen!