Awful College Football Team Ends NIL Collective Just Days After It Created A Fake Rivalry Trophy

UMass will finish the 2024 college football season as one of the worst teams in the country, again, unless it can beat its biggest rival, UConn, during the Colonial Clash on Saturday. Things have gone so poorly over the last few years that the Minutemen are looking to completely overhaul their entire NIL strategy after being called poor by their former head coach’s wife.

To make this sudden development even more awkward, the collective that will soon cease to exist created a brand-new rivalry trophy for this weekend’s game just two days prior to its abolishment.

UMass is a combined 7-40 over the last four years. It has not recorded a win over an FBS program since August 26, 2023. It has not finished above .500 on the Division-I A level in more than a century.

As the Minutemen look ahead to a more successful future, they decided to cut ties with head coach Don Brown in the middle of November. His wife, Deborah, decided to ridicule the university’s decision on a public platform because her husband was set up to fail in the NIL era. She revealed that UMass is operating with a total NIL budget of $36,000— which is not even enough money to pay a backup linebacker in the SEC.

The Midnight Ride was in charge of fundraising as the university’s top NIL arm at the time. That is no longer the case. It was announced earlier this week that the collective will soon shut down operations.