Tuesday News---- August 24th, 2010

Good Morning from Santa Fe. Today is our last full day of vacation. We will be flying back to Manchester Airport tomorrow morning. The next flight after that will be to Ann Arbor to see the Michigan game. Hopefully, both my UMass season and Michigan tickets will be in my mail when I get home.

UMass has formed a partnership with CBS3 to broadcast 100 UMass athletic contests (including home football games with Holy Cross, Richmond and Delaware). The availability of Minutemen sports should increase UMass' presence in Massachusetts. I wonder if the cable channels mentioned are available in Boston?

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Former UMass QB Octavious Hawkins has been named starting QB for the Winston-Salem Rams. The Rams went 1-10 playing a FCS/I-AA schedule last year. They will drop to a DII schedule in 2010.

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The CAA is counting up from the bottom in its preseason previews according to the team rank in Media Day voting covers UMass.

The CAA had four teams ranked and four in the top ten in the first 2010 FCS Coaches Poll. The Minutemen received 24 votes to rank 34th from the top. William & Mary, the Minutemen's opening opponent was ranked 4th.

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The Leigh Football Nation Blog looks at football blogs in the Northeast including this one. The Patriot and Ivy leagues each have four fan generated and one commercial football blogs. Several CAA teams have message board sites, but AFAIK, the UMass Football Blog is the only active CAA fan blog.

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Kyle Harrington and Sean Smalls are in training camp for the Hartford Colonials.

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