By "Signman" 

By "Signman" 

By "Signman" 

By "Signman" 

By "Signman" 

By "Signman" 

Oh, I'm blogging my life away

Lookin' for a better Daaayy.

An interesting read is this account of the blog universe. According to Technorati, there are over 14.2 million blogs. The problem is that only about 13% are updated at least once a week.

Outside of the UMass Fanzone, the only I-AA bogs that I'm aware of are:

• The 13 Yard Line
• The Lehigh Football Nation
• TSPN Daily ( with links to the interesting non-blogs: SWAC Page , MEAC Fan Page and Onnidan Black Colleges Online)
  

Not that there might not be more. A Google search on "UMass Football Blog" produces no hits. You have to search on UMass Football Fanzone to get any references to this blog. I'm working on registering with more search engines, but it's slow.

If anyone is aware of any more active I-AA blogs let me know.

UMass Press Guide Part II

Got an copy of the 2005 Press Guide at the UMass Friends of Football dinner last night. I've have one on order with my season tickets, but it has not arrived yet. I thought I'd publish a higher rez set of images in case anyone wants to use them as a screen saver.

Click on the image to enlarge.

Information about ordering a copy is in my previous Blog.

The guide is written and edited by Jason Yellin, Assist. Athletic Director of Media Relations.

Back Cover of 2005 UMass Press Guide 

Front Cover of 2005 UMass Press Guide 

The 2005 UMass Football Media Guide out

The UMass 2005 Media Guide is out. Follow this link for a preview and order form.

The Fanzone gets one every year and it’s great for UMass Football browsing (especially during the football deprived seasons of spring and summer).

The 2004 edition was 200 pages of UMass information. It is well worth the $15 publication cost.

The UMass Football Media Guide is well produced. The guide has won awards in the past for its production even against the mammoth guides issued by I-A teams. Check out this amusing story how the NCAA has put an end to escalating I-A media guides (Missouri’s last year was 614 pages and weighed 2.2 pds)

New UMass Assistant Coach Tim Dwyer

Since I did a blog about the return of Matt Dawson (scroll down), it’s only fair to mention Tim Dwyer, the other new graduate assistant coach. Tim comes to us from Northeastern where he played for Coach Brown.

Dwyer won Northeastern’s team dedication award as well as the Iron Man award two years in a row.

The UMass Football Fanzone would like to welcome Tim aboard and wish him well on starting his coaching career.

2005 Footbal Season outlook is out

The UMass Preseason Outlook is out. See it here . It's not very different from my blogs of 07/24 and 07/25.

Technical note on this blog. The longest thread in the support area is how to make blogger point to a previous post. Most bloggers cannot get that feature to work. I’m one of them. I’ve changed the archiving to a weekly period, which is probably more inline with football anyway. But to get to an earlier blog, the only thing I can do at this time is to link to a specific week and then the reader will have to scroll to find what he or she is looking for.

But I digress…

On the Outlook the big subplot is who’s going to be quarterback... The press release leaves the question open. Tim Day was the starter last year. He had good stats, throwing for the 5^th best totals in UMass history. However, the Offense went through a dry period during the middle of the season where we only scored 21 points over three games (Delaware, B.C. and James Madison). Day was effectively a red-shirt freshman. He started two games in 2003 when starter Jeff Krohn suffered a concussion. UMass lost both games.

The Fanzone Blog still believes he’ll start over redshirt freshman Liam Coen. Day had mono in the spring and played only sparingly in the Spring Game . Coen, on the other hand looked really sharp throwing 13-18 for 185 yards. Taylor Humphrey had a stellar prep career at Miramonte High School in CA (check his high school stats in the UMass bio). However, he injured a shoulder in the spring and was ineffective in the Spring Game.

This Blog opines that Day will start under the lights against Richmond. However, if the Offense hits a dry spell like last year, I think Coen will be given his chance quickly.

Unless Humphrey catches fire when practice opens on 08/07/05, I think he’ll have to wait a year to be in the mix.

The only other new tidbit in the Outlook is that RJ. Cobbs (former A10 Rookie-of-the-Year), Steve Costello and UConn transfer Matt Lawrence will be handling the PR and KR duties. UMass lost B.C. transfer Nathanael Hasselbeck, who is not with the team this year. So UMass will have all new punt and kickoff return men.

Atlantic 10 Football Media Day

The Atlantic 10 website has an article stating that the Football Media Day will be broadcast live from the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Warwick RI. UMass All-American Shannon James and Head Coach Don Brown will be interviewed.

The head coach from each team will be interviewed as well as student-athletes. It will be held 9:00 am to 12:00 pm on Aug. 3, 2005.

New Englanders can listen live on WSKO 99.7 FM and 790 AM.

The Hofstra Student station WRHU (88.7 FM) will have a live internet feed here

Matt Dawson returns

Former UMass player and assistant coach Matt Dawson has returned to UMass as assistant defensive line and outside linebackers coach. I-AA.org has the story here .

The UMass press release does a good job of reviewing Dawson's career, so I won't recap most of the information.

His playing career at UMass as a 6-0 210 LB overlapped the period of time when Don Brown was Defensive Coordinator under Whipple. Several other current assistant coachs including Brian Picucci , Sidney Powell and Keith Dudzinski were on the staff at that time.

Dawson is the younger brother of former UMass Defensive End Mike Dawson (1994-1997).

Welcome home Matt.

The Image above is a scan from the UMass 1998 Football Media Guide.

More UMass History from November 12,1983

In a prior blog (scroll down, I still have not been able to figure out how to point to an individual post), I published some images from the UMass-UNH game of November 12, 1983.

These images should be appended to the original post, but I haven't found an efficient way to do that with out re-publishing the entire blog.

The images below are from the official game program at Cowell Stadium. Click on the image to enlarge. All seem to be readable except for the UMass roster. If you can't view it by transferring the image to an image processing program, e-mail me and I'll send you a full-rez jpg. The text is viewable when I open it with Photoshop Elements 2.0

Official Game Program from UMass-UNH 11/12/83 

From the 11/12/83 Official Game Program 

UMass-UNH starters 11/12/83 

UMass roster November 12, 1983