Sports

Horrendous College Football Team Makes Awful Excuse For Botched Rivalry Trophy Presentation

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UMass Football Rivalry Trophy UConn
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UMass refused to award UConn head coach Jim Mora with the university’s brand-new college football rivalry trophy after the Huskies beat the Minutemen on their home field on Saturday. It was a fitting end to a poorly-executed sequence of events that stemmed directly from a horrendous program’s incompetence.

The excuse provided for the withholding somehow managed to make the administration in Amherst look even worse than they already did.

For those who did not closely follow along with all of the trophy drama in New England over Thanksgiving weekend, lets quickly recap. 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 and fired head coach Don Brown in the middle of November. His wife proceeded to blast the university for being poor.

The Midnight Ride served as the Minutemen’s official NIL arm at the time of Brown’s ouster. However, the athletic department decided to formally cut ties with the collective right before The Colonial Clash. While that decision in itself was subject to criticism, what happened next was the real problem.

The Midnight Ride created a brand-new rivalry trophy just two days prior to its demise. UConn did not get to celebrate with the trophy after its win over UMass on Saturday because the two sides supposedly agreed not to acknowledge it— but Mora put the Minutemen on blast for lying. He wants the trophy!

In response to the backlash, UMass released the following statement:

The excuse doesn’t make any sense. Wanting to secure a sponsor for a trophy is weird, but sure. Fine. Wanting to put the series results on the trophy is completely fair.

Neither of those two things prevented the trophy from making its debut on Saturday. The Huskies could’ve celebrated the win with an incomplete trophy on the field and in the locker room. They could’ve enjoyed its presence on the bus ride home back to Storrs.

Upon arrival back to campus, the football team could’ve then relinquished the trophy back to the university while it adds series history and finds a sponsor. The trophy didn’t need to be complete to exist in the temporary. UMass completely bungled this entire process.