http://footballscoop.com/news/and-now-um...ut-of-fbs/
"And now UMass faculty leaders are calling for the school to drop out of FBS
ByZach BarnettPosted on April 27, 2016
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UMass
Credit: Boston Globe
Oh boy, here we go again.
Just a day after Eastern Michigan fought off rumors the school could drop from FBS to Division II, the UMass faculty senate plans to call for its school to do the same. As reported by MassLive, tomorrow’s meeting will include an effort to “urge Chancellor Subbaswamy, President Meehan, and the Board of Trustees of the University to end Division I football (Football Bowl Subdivision) at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and either move to a different division or discontinue NCAA football altogether.”
The university’s Ad Hoc committee previously urged the Minutemen to drop out of major college football, an effort that (obviously) failed. In fact, this effort has been ongoing in some form or fashion for three-and-a-half years now.
Like Eastern Michigan, UMass has never truly caught on at the FBS level. The Minutemen are 8-40 since moving from FCS, bounced back and forth from the on-campus McGuirk Stadium and the cavernous, far-away Gillette Stadium and, unlike Eastern Michigan, do not have MAC membership on which to rely. UMass will play an independent schedule this fall — which, to be fair, includes Boston College and Mississippi State coming to Gillette Stadium. But independence is hard enough for an established program like BYU, much less a struggling start-up.
It’s highly doubtful a faculty senate request amounts to anything other than bad press, but expect a swift dismissal of this story from UMass brass shortly."