The stands at Warren McGuirk Alumni Stadium were sparse on a November night. Who could blame Massachusetts football fans for not braving the cold to support a team that had gone more than a year without a win?
Little was on the line in the Minutemen’s season finale against Bowling Green. Both teams were nowhere near bowl eligibility. But UMass was desperate to avoid the first 0-12 season in program history.
The Minutemen lost, 45-14.
UMass coach Joe Harasymiak is still dealing with the fallout from a disastrous debut. Speaking engagements have been a challenge for the 40-year-old head coach after his first season in charge. It's tough to sell supporters on why things will be better when they’ve never been worse.
“Let's just be real: We've never, ever been good at the FBS level,” Harasymiak told Athlon Sports. “It just never has happened. A lot of things go into that.”
A lack of investment, an ill-fated run as an independent and a slow adaptation to the modern demands of college football have all held the Minutemen back in a decade-plus at this level. UMass is an FBS-worst 26-134 since it transitioned in 2012 from the FCS, where wins were not nearly as novel. The Minutemen last won a game in October 2024. Their last victory against a fellow FBS team was in October 2023. And they have never had a winning season at this level.
After several seasons with a handful of victories, UMass finally hit rock bottom. Now, there’s nowhere to go but up. Right?
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Harasymiak sure hopes so. He’s onto Year 2 of remaking the program in his image. That means building the team from the trenches out, prioritizing offensive and defensive linemen — and a lot of them. And in trying to reset the foundation, Harasymiak is putting a greater emphasis on high school recruiting, preferring to pick his spots in the transfer portal rather than relying on it.
“We were a portal operation with ultimately no investment to be able to go out and compete in the new era,” Harasymiak said.
Turnover has been a hallmark of the Minutemen. The 36 players they took in the 2025 transfer portal was more than any other team in the MAC ahead of Harasymiak’s first season in charge and UMass’ first back in the conference since 2015. That many newcomers was more a necessity than a want.
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Just 11 scholarship players remain from the roster Harasymiak inherited. He said most of those defectors now play college football at a lower level — or not at all. The talent in place was not befitting of an FBS program, and the results bore that out. But that’s starting to change.
The Minutemen signed a program-record 15 three-star recruits in the 2026 high school class. And 10 of the top 20 ranked recruits in program history have signed in the last two cycles.
"I think that they'll have a chance at some point because of their investment, but their roster was just so bad," an anonymous MAC assistant coach said in Athlon Sports’ 2026 College Football Preview magazine.
Harasymiak also brought in a potentially transformative portal class, including wide receiver Joseph Griffin Jr. (Wisconsin) and offensive lineman Aitor Urionabarrenechea (Colorado State). But quarterback William “Pop” Watson III (Virginia Tech) might be the most anticipated addition.
Watson started a handful of games across three seasons with the Hokies, flashing the arm and athleticism that saw him win Massachusetts Gatorade Player of the Year in 2022. Now back in his home state, Watson is expected to breathe life into an offense that scored the fewest points in the country last season.
“I think the fastest way you make a transition to doing what you want to do is certainly up front,” Harasymiak said. “But ultimately, quarterback play in football is the most important thing.”
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UMass hired Max Warner as offensive coordinator in February to tap into the newfound talent in the quarterback room. Warner’s track record at Toledo and Bowling Green appealed to Harasymiak, but he has another qualification that made him well-suited for this particular job.
Warner was on the coaching staff when Bowling Green went winless in 2020 (0-5 in the shortened season). He stuck with the Falcons as their record improved to 4-8, then 6-7 before back-to-back 7-6 seasons. That’s the kind of improvement Harasymiak is hoping for at UMass, which also went winless in 2020 (0-4).
“He's been through it,” Harasymiak said of Warner. “And I had never been through something like that as a coach.”
There have been 30 other winless seasons by FBS teams this century. Six of those campaigns occurred under coaches in their first year on the job. Some corrected course the following season. Most did not.
Harasymiak is used to coaching at places where it’s hard to win. He came to the Minutemen after a three-year stint as defensive coordinator at Rutgers, a historic have-not that has struggled to adjust to life in the Big Ten. Before that, he coached safeties at Minnesota, which has a decorated past but much less success this century. Harasymiak’s only previous head coaching experience was at Maine, an FCS program that he led to its deepest postseason appearance.
UMass presents a different challenge considering the program’s unparalleled struggles over the last 14 years.
“We were an independent school, not investing,” Harasymiak said. “The people that we had here — good people, not bad players, not bad staff — just didn't have a lot of things falling in our laps to move into the new wave of college football.”
The Minutemen went from bad to worse after NIL was introduced in the summer of 2021. They were 19-81 in the nine years prior and are 7-53 since. That includes the 0-12 mark in 2025, the first season with revenue sharing, which permits schools to pay players directly.
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Harasymiak prefers to look at the 2026 team as a separate entity from the group that just went winless, despite some of the holdovers. But he said the respect — or lack thereof — that the Minutemen will get this season carries over from the product they put on the field last fall.
Losing all of your games will do that, especially when one of them is against an FCS team. Bryant won in Amherst, Massachusetts, as a two-touchdown underdog last September. That was one of the Bulldogs’ three wins all season and its first against an FBS team.
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There are legitimate questions about UMass’ place in the FBS. Schools that transitioned from the FCS more recently have already experienced much more success. And even ones that have struggled have not done so as consistently.
“I think we certainly belong,” Harasymiak said, “because I know what we're doing as of the last year to compete.”
Sportico reported earlier this year that the Minutemen remain the most subsidized public athletic department in the country, relying on more institutional support at a time when the cost to field a roster — or even just retain a talented player — is skyrocketing.
“Candidly, we’re going to have to overinvest to win,” athletic director Ryan Bamford said in September. “We’ve had sort of deferred maintenance of this program for more than a decade, and it means that you have to invest more maybe than some others do to get out of it. And, the only way out is up. So, we’re focused on making sure we put the key investments in the right places.”
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UMass continues to up its investment in athletics, including a $25 million renovation to Warren McGuirk Alumni Stadium and the hire of Harasymiak. He’s the highest-paid coach in the MAC at $1.3 million, according to USA TODAY’s coaching salary database.
Harasymiak said the administration agreed when he was hired that a turnaround would take time. But that doesn’t absolve him of expectations, either.
“The pressure's always gonna be there,” Harasymiak said. “I mean, it should be. We get paid a lot of money. A lot of us work at state universities, that’s taxpayer dollars. I get all that, but I also know the beauty of that when you get it done.”
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There’s an acknowledgement from Harasymiak that UMass took a chance on him. And he’s aware that this might be his only shot at being an FBS coach.
“If I don't get it done here, then everything else after here is, ‘You know, he was a good FBS coordinator, he was a good FCS head coach, but this might be a little bit too much for him,’” he said. “So we’re all in it together.”
The road back from 0-12 begins with a doozy at Rutgers, Harasymiak’s old team. Sacred Heart and Stonehill — both FCS teams — come to town next, two early opportunities to prove that this offseason really was different. The Minutemen might even build up some momentum heading into the MAC opener against Sacramento State, one of two FBS newcomers this season.
Harasymiak is confident that the coaches and players he brought together will avoid a repeat of 2025. And long-term, he thinks UMass is on the right track. But moral victories will only go so far at a place so starved for wins.
