Massachusetts walked into Rutgers on Thursday night carrying the kind of recent history that usually gets remembered for all the wrong reasons. The Minutemen were 0-12 a year ago, and their move to FBS in 2012 has mostly been a cautionary tale. Then they went to Piscataway, grabbed the first lead of the game, and kept piling on until the sport had no choice but to look twice.
Rutgers struck first, going up 7-0 midway through the opening quarter. After that, though, it was Massachusetts doing the damage.
The Minutemen scored, then scored again, and held the Scarlet Knights scoreless until midway through the fourth quarter while building a 30-7 cushion. Rutgers tacked on late points, but the night had already gotten away from it in a 37-21 loss that landed like a jolt across college football.
The timing made the whole thing feel even more surreal. Before kickoff, the game was already drawing attention because of its 6 p.m.
ET start, which made it formally the first FBS game of Week 1. It was the sort of opener people noticed mostly because it was there.
By the end, it had become the kind of result nobody could ignore.
For Massachusetts, the win carried a different kind of weight. Last season’s 0-12 record included only two games decided by single digits, and the program has now had seven other 10-loss seasons since its much-criticized `12 move up to the top level. College Football Reference lists the Minutemen’s major-college record for wins in a season at eight, a number that would sound far better if it hadn’t been set in 1901.
That doesn’t mean the program has no real football history. Massachusetts won an FCS national title in 1998 and played for another in 2006, when it lost to Appalachian State.
But the bigger story has become what the Minutemen represent: a warning about making the jump to FBS without a clear plan and paying for it on both sides of the ledger. Even a men’s hockey national title won’t clean that up.
Thursday’s breakthrough made more sense when you looked at who delivered it. William “Pop” Watson III grew up in Springfield and played at Springfield Central, just a 35-minute drive down I-91 from Warren McGuirk Alumni Stadium.
After three years in limited duty at Virginia Tech, he came home and turned in a sharp debut: 197 passing yards, three touchdowns, and a 19-for-22 line. Those are the kind of numbers Massachusetts hadn’t seen from a quarterback since future Jaguars coach Liam Coen was the one slinging it.
Watson had the perfect postgame line for the moment, declaring “ZooMass” back. On a night like this, it was hard to argue.
Rutgers, meanwhile, is left trying to steady itself after a loss that raises more questions than answers. The back-to-back bowl trips under Greg Schiano from 2023 to `24 suddenly look like the outlier.
Now the Scarlet Knights have to go to Boston College for the Eagles’ annual Red Bandanna Game and then come home to face USC. Their place in the Big Ten hasn’t exactly been a smooth one, either; the program’s high-water mark in league wins is eight, and that came in its debut Big Ten season in 2014.
If Rutgers ever does move on from Schiano, there’s already a familiar name nearby. Massachusetts coach Joe Harasymiak is from Waldwick, N.J., and served as Rutgers’s defensive coordinator from 2022 to `24.
And because Thursday wasn’t only about Amherst and Piscataway, a few other results from the day stood out too: Utah was all over the place in coach Morgan Scalley’s regular-season debut, Illinois needed a Hail Mary to get past UAB, Buffalo’s Chance Morrow caught all three of his team’s touchdowns in a win over Albany, and Colorado’s Boo Carter turned away a 45-yard game-winning field goal at the buzzer to beat Georgia Tech 14-13.
In Other News...
Rutgers Just Turned One Ugly Loss Into A Program-Wide Embarrassment
Rutgers loss to UMass was ugly enough on the field, but the timing and circumstances made it sting even more. The Scarlet Knights paid the Minutemen $1.55 million to come to town, only to watch UMass snap a long losing streak with a 37-21 win that immediately turned into a source of embarrassment well beyond the final score. It was the sort of result that lingers because it says as much about perception as performance, and Rutgers found itself getting dragged into that conversation almost as quickly as the game ended.
The reaction on social media was swift, with plenty of criticism directed at the coaching staff and plenty more speculation about where the program goes from here. For new athletic director Keli Zinn, the loss only adds to the pressure around a football program already trying to prove it can move forward with some stability. In a sport where optics matter almost as much as wins and losses, this was the kind of afternoon that can hang around long after the scoreboard has been cleared. [Read more 🡒]
Rutgers Fans Are Facing The Greg Schiano Question Again
Greg Schiano is back in the familiar position of having to steady the Rutgers program while questions swirl around the bigger picture. Now in his seventh season of his second stint in charge, he heads toward 2026 with a 31-41 record in that stretch, and the early tone has hardly helped calm the noise. Rutgers opened with a loss to UMass, a team that arrived with a long active losing streak, and the Knights were already digging out of a 17-point halftime deficit before the night even had a chance to settle.
For a fan base that has seen this movie before, the issue is not simply one bad result in September. Schianos contract puts a real price tag on any change, with a buyout that would cost Rutgers about $17.3 million if he were fired at the end of the season. So the question hanging over the program is the same one that always seems to come back: whether Rutgers is looking at another uphill year under a coach it knows well, or whether the season is already drifting toward a decision point no one wants to reach too soon. [Read more 🡒]
Rutgers Just Opened The Season With A Loss Fans Cant Ignore
UMass arrived in Piscataway as a huge underdog and walked out with a result Rutgers cannot brush aside. The Minutemen snapped a long skid against FBS opponents by beating Rutgers 37-21 in Week 1, doing it with a balanced offense and a disruptive defense that made life miserable for the Scarlet Knights throughout the afternoon.
Pop Watson was at the center of it, throwing for 189 yards and three touchdowns while adding 40 rushing yards. UMass also brought real edge on defense, piling up seven tackles for loss and five sacks while forcing a handful of Rutgers mistakes, the kind of opening-week mess that leaves a coaching staff with plenty to clean up before the schedule gets any deeper. [Read more 🡒]