Breaking News--UMASS Going d-1 in football.

By Mark Blaudschun, Globe Staff

After several months of negotiations, the University of Massachusetts will officially move from the Football Championship Subdivision to the Football Bowl Subdivision level in college football. The official announcement will come Wednesday afternoon in a press conference at Gillette Stadium.

According to sources at UMass, the Minutemen will join the Mid-American Conference in football beginning in 2012 and will play a majority of their home games at Gillette Stadium. The Minutemen will remain as a member of the Atlantic 10 in college basketball.

-Boston.com

Well that sucks. Until UCONN joined the division 1 ranks, BC straight ran the show for premier New England football, it was simply no contest where the best players in the region went year in and year out. Now with UCONN developing quite a program, and UMASS going D1 as well, you have to wonder what this mean for BC and it's quest to burst onto the national scene. In my opinion this most definitely hurts BC. Let's think about this, UMASS is a school that is state funded, parties hard, and has lower admission standards than BC. Thus, UMASS, like UCONN has done, will work harder to get the solid athletes in the region that are either over looked by BC or simply not qualified to get in. I'm talking about local guys like Jordan Toddman at UCONN, who are simply football guys, that want a great atmosphere to play in, and want to go to the NFL, isn't it obvious UMASS or UCONN is going to snag them? What hurts BC the most is that UMASS will be playing their games at Gillette. For years BC has been trying to work with the Patriots to get a game at Gillette, some big time national televised game that would have regained some of the New England fan base that has been lost over the years. Now, the only time they will be playing there is as away foes to UMASS. And that brings me to my next point, BC better play UMASS. It's such bullcrap that we don't play UCONN already, if they don't play UMASS again after next years cupcake game, it will be a big mistake. All a UMASS recruiter has to do is walk into a local kids home and say that BC is too afraid to play them because they are scared of UMASS's up and coming program and boom the kid is swayed. That is the main problem with the Boston College football strategy now of days (and perhaps the school wide strategy) is the fact that the local kids have been disrespected. I do not mean the move to the ACC, but rather that after the move, we made false assumptions of our recruiting abilities in the south. Although we have had some good players from Florida, and other southern states, we have focused less on the good players in the area and let some of the gems slip by.

Even just in the school population itself BC has accepted many more kids from New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, and all over, rather than New England. This isn't to say I disagree with trying to diversify the community, but the Boston, and New England area, has lost a lot of pride with the school. You no longer see many kids growing up BC fans, especially when they can root for schools like UCONN and UMASS that take predominantly New England kids. I also get that these are large state schools, but still there is a distaste growing among the generally local public for the snobs over here on the heights. It's the same reason why our students section suck at all of our sporting events (sans hockey); there aren't any kids who grew up bleeding maroon and gold anymore.

This year Spaz and his staff did a better job of getting local kids, but there needs to be more effort put into finding the best players in our region that want to come to BC and have some local pride. If we don't, with UMASS going D1, just as when UCONN did, we will continue to lose any local affiliation.

Posted by Mucc.