Troy HC Neal Brown is a former UMass player and assistant coach, so they may be OK with moving to 11/24. I'm sure the UMass brain trust would like to preserve 10/13 as an off date. Liberty's announcement has Troy playing the Flames on 10/13, so it would take a three-way swap to force a UMass-Troy game on that date. So that's a good thing.
The UMass Football Blog has always been a fan of Brown and his coaching. The history of Minutemen football would have been considerably different if the previous regime had hired Brown back in 2012...
UPDATE II: Mike Traini has another post (different from that below) on the Liberty game.
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Mike Traini of "Fight Massachusetts" has a post on the report UMass will play Liberty in 2018.
The current 2018 Minutemen schedule is:
09/1/18 @ Boston College
09/08/18 @ Georgia Southern
09/15/18 @ Florida International
09/22/18 Charlotte
09/29/18 @ Ohio
10/06/18 UCF
10/13/16 TBA
10/20/18 Coastal Carolina
10/27/18 @ UConn
11/03/18 Troy
11/10/18 BYU @ Gillette (like Notre Dame, BYU has a national following. UMass is hoping for a decent crowd at Gillette).
11/17/18 @ Georgia
11/24/18 TBA
That's a pretty tough schedule. Three Power Five teams plus potential AAC Champ UCF and potential Sun Belt Champ Troy. The Minutemen need a winnable game. Liberty fits the bill, although that would mean UMass would not have a FCS game in 2018. Note that the Flames are serious about their football, so they could get good quickly.
As mentioned UMass A.D. Ryan Bamford would like to preserve the mid-schedule bye week, but I doubt many of the Sun Belt teams will be enthusiastic about playing in New England in late November. We'll see how persuasive Bamford can be 😁
I'm usually doing the blog between 6:30 and 7:30 am, which is before the daily sports news cycle. If Liberty posts any news, I'll update the blog.
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The next frontier in college football player development: nutrition.
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