UMass football tries to drum up enthusiasm
The spring session completed, University of Massachusetts football coach Charley Molnar can now turn his full attention to recruiting.
But instead of future players, Molnar and the Minutemen are setting their sights on future fans. The school has planned events in the Greater Boston area and Western Mass. through June, hoping to drum up enthusiasm about UMass football at the FBS level headed into Year 2.
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UMass averaged 10,902 fans at its five home games in 2012, down from more than 13,000 in its last FCS season in 2011. Two of the five games at Gillette Stadium drew fewer than 10,000 fans, with a low of 6,385 in the season-closing loss to Central Michigan.
Molnar said people, recruits and fans alike, have been receptive to UMass. And he expects the more than $34 million construction project underway at McGuirk Stadium, upgrading the facility to meet MAC standards and building a new “performance center” to house the football locker room, weight room and coaches offices under one roof, to enhance the Minutemen’s status going forward.
“Right now our facilities would have to rank at the very, very bottom of 1-A football,” he said. “A year from now our facilities will be at the top of mid-major football and better than what many BCS programs have to offer.”
But even with gleaming new digs, there’s no guarantee the product on the field will look a whole lot better in 2013.
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