Good morning, I’m Dan Gartland. I’m still reeling from the fact that there are 82 players currently on NBA rosters who were not yet born when LeBron James played his first professional game.
In today’s SI:AM:
🤯 LeBron’s 23rd season debut
🌴 Links between two Hawaiian QBs
1️⃣ New CFP rankings
A total UMess
Here’s the good news about UMass’s performance against Ohio last night: The Minutemen scored multiple touchdowns against an FBS opponent for just the second time this season. The bad news? They still lost, 42–14, to fall to 0–11 on the season.
It’s hard to imagine a more demoralizing loss than the one UMass suffered on Tuesday in Athens, Ohio. The game was played in pouring rain and delayed twice by lightning. It was close late enough in the game (UMass cut the deficit to 21–14 midway through the third quarter) to give the Minutemen a glimmer of hope before the Bobcats seized control. Every single yard Ohio gained on its final three touchdown drives came on the ground. UMass just got its teeth kicked in throughout the second half, repeatedly getting bullied at the line of scrimmage as the Ohio offensive line opened up gaping holes for its running backs.
Ohio was able to put up 42 points while only completing three passes. The Bobcats racked up a whopping 363 yards rushing on 54 attempts, an average of 6.4 yards per carry. UMass managed just 215 total yards, its fourth fewest in a game this season.
UMass is used to getting thoroughly embarrassed on the football field, at least. Tuesday’s loss marked yet another low point in what’s been a nightmare of a season for the guys from Amherst. At 0–11, UMass is the only winless team in FBS. That includes a heartbreaking loss to FCS Bryant on Sept. 6. (Bryant isn’t even a good FCS team, either. The Bulldogs are 3–8 on the season, with one of those wins coming against a Division II team.)
But even that 0–11 record might undersell just how dismal UMass has been. Seven of those 11 losses have come by at least four touchdowns. The Minutemen rank dead last in FBS with a paltry 10.8 points per game. (Wisconsin, which is averaging 12.0 points, is the only other team scoring less than two touchdowns per game.) They also rank last in total yards per game. Their defense is just as pitiful, ranking third worst with 37.6 points allowed per game and ninth worst in yards allowed (440.9). The SP+ formula developed by ESPN’s Bill Connelly ranks UMass as the 239th-best team in college football this season, just below FCS Bucknell and just above Division II Colorado State-Pueblo. This is a thoroughly awful team that has hardly come close to winning a game this season. When UMass scored first in Tuesday night’s game, it marked the first time since the third quarter of the Oct. 18 contest against Buffalo that the team had led at any point in a game. The Minutemen have one change left to avoid a winless season: a home game next Tuesday against Bowling Green.
The man tasked with pulling UMass out of this abyss is first-year head coach Joe Harasymiak. He was most recently the defensive coordinator at Rutgers and had previously been the head coach at Maine, where he led the Black Bears to a conference championship and an appearance in the semifinals of the FCS playoffs in his final season in 2018. He faces an impossible situation at UMass, though.
It’s hard to understate just how dreadful of a program UMass football has been since it made the jump to the FBS in 2012. It has never won more than four games in a season and has eight wins over the past seven years combined. The Minutemen’s cumulative record since joining the FBS is 26–133, the worst in the nation over that span. UMass has just two wins over FBS-level competition since the start of the 2022 season and hasn’t beaten an FBS opponent by more than two touchdowns since 2018.
It’s a shame that UMass football is such a joke. This is a program that enjoyed decent success at the FCS level before making the misguided decision to move up. The Minutemen even won a Division I-AA national championship in 1998. Maybe it’s time for them to follow in Idaho’s footsteps and drop back down.
The best of Sports Illustrated
- LeBron James opened his 23rd season with a smooth double-double—proof that even after rehabbing a nerve issue, the King moves at his own pace, reports Chris Mannix.
- A winter day in Hawai‘i back in 2014 set Tua Tagovailoa and Marcus Mariota on a path that now converges in Spain. Greg Bishop traces every twist along the way.
- Miami’s win over Notre Dame isn’t moving the needle for a CFP committee fixated on who you lost to—not who you beat—and the Hurricanes are feeling it, writes Bryan Fischer.
- Tennessee has fully embraced Kim Caldwell’s fast, unconventional system, and Emma Baccellieri shows how the coach turned a bold idea into a winning identity.
- Kevin Sweeney describes how Kentucky’s $22 million roster, looking shaky and out of sync after a rough Champions Classic loss to Michigan State, already finds itself in an identity crisis.
- In SI’s first 2026 NBA draft big board, Sweeney also breaks down how Kansas freshman Darryn Peterson has become the early favorite to go No. 1 in a loaded class.
The top five…
… goals from yesterday’s World Cup qualifying matches:
5. A one-touch beauty from a tough angle by Panama’s Cesar Blackman.
4. An amazing run by Haiti’s Louicius Deedson.
3. A stunning bicycle kick by Uruguay’s Giorgian de Arrascaeta. (The match against the USMNT was just a friendly, because the U.S. will qualify for the World Cup automatically as co-hosts. The U.S. won, 5–1.)
2. Kieran Tierney’s long-range missile to win it for Scotland against Denmark in stoppage time. The goal sends Scotland to its first World Cup since 1998.
1. Scott McTominay’s outrageous overhead kick for Scotland earlier in the game.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as SI:AM | The Saddest Team in College Football.
