MAC commissioner Dr. Jon Steinbrecher joins UMass AD Ryan Bamford and others to welcome the Minutemen to the league.
Thursday morning at University of Massachusetts called for a celebration.
The band was brought out and fans flocked in to watch an initiation transpire. Umass officially joined the Mid-American Conference as a full-time member on Thursday, Feb. 29, effective for the 2025-26 academic year. One Thursday later, the university hosted an introductory press conference to publicly announce the decision.
Speakers at the press conference included UMass chancellor Javier Reyes, director of athletics Ryan Bamford, head football coach Don Brown, head men’s basketball coach Frank Martin, and MAC commissioner Dr. Jon Steinbrecher.
“It’s an exciting day for this university. It’s an exciting day for the MAC,” Reyes said. “This is the outcome and result of work that happened over the years. Ryan, thank you. The amount of work you put into this university does not go unnoticed, how you have transformed our athletics programs across the board. This is one more step in the direction and the vision you have set for UMass.”
Reyes, the first speaker of the press conference, added an academic twist to the UMass’ decision to join the conference, citing its similarities to other research universities in the MAC.
“The MAC is not only an athletics conference that we can join,” Reyes said. “We are joining a set of universities that are likeminded like UMass. Land-grant research universities, public universities like UMass that face the same realities, that face the same challenges, and address the same opportunities across the nation from an academic perspective and research perspective. It’s not only about athletics, but about our academic excellence.”
Why UMass wanted the MAC
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UMass’ athletic director Ryan Bamford cited two particular objectives for pursuing conference affiliation with the MAC — alignment and access.
“We want to be in a place where we thought we can grow and thrive as an athletics department to meet the next moment, to meet what’s ahead of us, and to think about the next 50 years for UMass athletics,” Bamford said.
“Our decision to go into the Mid-American Conference meets those two objectives,” Bamford said. “Chancellor referenced it — the alignment of institutions, the public research nature of those institutions, but also the strategic priorities that those institutions and athletic departments have to use athletics as the front porch of the institution to drive excellence is also really unique, but also extremely aligned with where we are as an institution ourselves.”
Bamford later expanded upon the “access” objective, referencing UMass’ newfound access to compete for a conference championship in college football, a luxury the Minutemen haven’t enjoyed since 2015.
“Being an independent was really not a great long-term strategy,” Bamford said. “We’ve had young men in the locker room downstairs who haven’t had a chance to fight for a conference championship in eight years. That’s a hard thing to be with your student-athletes and not have that ability. I really felt like with the changes in the FBS model, the structure and what’s happening to the NCAA, this was a chance for us to bring a relatively young FBS football program, allow us to nurture it, grow it, invest further in it, and also bring along a portfolio of sports that have had a tremendous amount of success in the Atlantic 10 that I think will have transferrable success in the MAC.”
One other appeal the MAC offered UMass was the comfort of stability. The addition of UMass was a rare one for the league. Of the 12 athletic programs in the MAC, 10 were apart of the conference in 1975 and all 12 were members in 1998 — a level of stability the Atlantic 10 didn’t quite offer the Minutemen in the non-football sports.
“The stability of knowing this league has not changed membership in the last 20 years and has not added a member in the last 25-plus years,” Bamford cited as a reason the MAC stood out over other realignment options. “This day and age, we’re watching all this change happen around us. Even in the Atlantic 10, since 2007, we’ve had nine members come or go, and that’s really challenging when you’re trying to build an identity and a brand, and I think this affords us that opportunity in spades.”
UMass previously saw a trial run in the MAC from 2012 to 2015 as a football-only member, but the Minutemen never metaphorically purchased the full subscription to the conference. During this brief period, UMass remained a member of the Atlantic 10 Conference in other sports and the athletic department’s unwillingness to become a full-time member caused the university and conference to sever ties in 2016.
While UMass retained its Atlantic 10 membership from 2016 to present-day for all other spots, the Minutemen became independent in football. Through eight years as an independent, UMass never qualified for a bowl game and peaked at a 4-8 record in 2017 and 2018. Part of the decision to join the MAC involves elevating the prestige of the football program, which can have a ripple effect through other athletic programs.
Perhaps the most significant imprint UMass athletics has made was on the hardwood, qualifying for the NCAA Tournament in seven consecutive years from 1992-98, complete with a Final Four appearance in 1996. Yet Frank Martin cited his time at Kansas State and how head coach Bill Snyder transforming the football program positively influenced the success of the Wildcats’ basketball team.
“Elevating football is gonna make it better for everybody,” Martin said. “That’s the vision. I’m not into the, ‘It’s a basketball school’ or ‘It’s a football school.’ We’re UMass, man. We’re gonna go out there and play whoever’s in front of us. Our job is to represent this university and represent the winning ways and culture that’s created by the leadership of this university to make sure that we do what we’re supposed to do.”
Besides the opportunity to compete for a conference championship on the gridiron, football head coach Don Brown explained how playing a consistent slate of conference opponents each year is beneficial to building a program, as opposed to stacking an independent schedule with 12 unrelated opponents.
“Scheme is a big part of college football,” Brown said. “It’s nice when you have some continuity and you’re playing eight, nine opponents a year, and you’re playing them virtually every year,” Brown said. “Then your preparation can take hold and it’s not like you’re starting from scratch… It’s just nice when you have eight opponents now. And we’re no stranger to the MAC. We’ve played two, three, four teams, and next year we’re playing five MAC opponents. It’s almost like we’re getting a transition year.”
Why the MAC wanted UMass
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Conference realignment has seismically shifted the landscape of college athletics in the 2020s. But until last week, the MAC was one conference largely unaffected by this tectonic plate action. Although several football-only members including UCF and Temple enjoyed brief stays in the league in the 21st century, all 12 current full-time members have been apart of the MAC since 1998 — the year Buffalo was added.
UMass is the first full-time member added in over a quarter of century, becoming the 13th institution in the conference.
“Given this is the first invitation we have provided since the late 1990s, it should be evident we don’t open our doors to just anyone,” Steinbrecher said. “Among our strengths is the homogeneity of our membership. The Mid-American Conference is an association of public national research institutions. The opportunity to add Massachusetts was simply too great to pass up. It is rare to be able to add a flagship university that is among the finest institutions in the country, along with an athletics program that is broad in its sports offerings and deep in tradition.”
Of the nine full FBS conferences, the MAC is undeniably the most geographically convenient. The 12 current members each border one of the Great Lakes, and 75 percent of the conference is located in either Ohio or Michigan. Yet, UMass challenges the conference’s tight geography, separated by its closest neighbor Buffalo by roughly 380 miles — a drive spanning between 5.5 and 6 hours. Steinbrecher addressed UMass’ geographical influence on the league.
“The addition of Massachusetts offered the unique chance to stretch our geography in a sensible manner and to a contiguous state, allowing the conference to maintain the tightest geographic footprint among the FBS conferences, while establishing a presence in the northeast,” Steinbrecher said.
Although the MAC to UMass news didn’t publicly pick up steam until late February, the talks began in late September. Bamford took over as the Minutemen’s athletic director in March 2015, prior to the program’s last football season in the MAC. Thus, there was already familiarity between Bamford and Dr. Steinbrecher before UMass reunited with its old football conference.
“We’ve communicated over the years and communicated frequently,” Bamford said. “To have the ability to be in this league under his leadership, I want to thank him and I want to thank his staff and the MAC presidents and MAC athletic directors for their belief in us and the value that this institution brings to the Mid-American Conference.”
After the initial chatter, Steinbrecher discretely attended UMass’ 2023 homecoming football game on Nov. 4, wandering around campus and witnessing the Minutemen’s 31-21 victory over FCS program Merrimack.
True action was finally implemented two weeks ago when Steinbrecher convened with a council of MAC presidents to vote on UMass’ membership in the conference. The presidents voted unanimously in favor UMass, granting the New England based university membership as the conference’s 13th full-time athletic program.
“There are intangible benefits,” Reyes said. “Being able to play on a Wednesday night nationally, being able to have consistent business with specific areas of the country — that will allow us to fly the UMass flag in many places in ways that it will result in increasing our stature and reputation, increasing recruitment and enrollment. There are a lot of intangibles of having such a strong brand and growing such a strong brand nationally that elevates the stature of the university. Those are not measured in revenue. There’s a return on investment that happens because you’re seeing the UMass flag out there consistently in places that you didn’t see it before.”