College Football Players Bully Massachusetts Into Honoring Graduates After Dumbfounding Cancellation

UMass will play its final home game of the 2024 college football season against UConn next Saturday. The Minutemen will hold a Senior Day ceremony for its graduating players after an initial cancellation of the event was met with widespread backlash from players, fans and everybody with a heart.

It is still a mind-boggling decision by a prominent institute of higher learning.

First and foremost, UMass fired head coach Don Brown earlier this month after a 2-8 start to his second stint with the program. Players are already forced to finish out their season without the leader to which they initially committed in the first place.

To make matters worse, UMass decided to cancel Senior Night. Seriously. Players received the following message from the university on Thursday afternoon to break the unfortunate news:

UConn is our Senior Day. The athletic department has decided they will not be individually recognizing players or holding a traditional ceremony due to the number of players who are completing their eligibility and graduating from school. In lieu of the ceremony the athletic department is offering your families the opportunity to be on the field for pre-game warmups and will have a photographer available to take pictures with you. If you plan to have family members attempt please text/email/teamworks message me who will be attending so we can get them passes for pre-game warmups. Please pass this information along to your family members.

UMass basically said, “sorry we fired your coach, but the good news is that Senior Day is cancelled!” And it announced the disappointing news just two days prior to a road game against… Georgia. Have fun!

What was UMass thinking?!

As could be expected, the players who were supposed to be honored on the field with their families prior to the final game of their college football careers — like everyone who came before them — were not happy. The cancellation was met with widespread frustration.

I know that I’ve only been here a year so maybe I don’t deserve a senior day here. But for the department to take away honoring individuals who have given their all to this great university, is asinine. Guys have been here for years and they deserve to be recognized before UConn.

For more context, they decided that there are too many people graduating so they just cancelled the pre game celebration of each individual. No announcement of players will be done before the game against UConn.

— Tight end Dominick Mazotti

With all the hard work I’ve put in being apart of this program and not having a honoring on senior day is not sitting right with me, and I’m sure it’s not for the rest of the seniors this is not right point blank period.

— Safety Tyler Rudolph

I believe one of the biggest honors of being a college football player, is to be able to celebrate your college career and taking pride in becoming an alumni. Not having a senior day is just not right🤦🏽‍♂️

— Wide receiver Jakobie Keeney-James

A coach at Holy Cross, one of UMass’ local rivals (kind of), even took a shot at the heinous decision to cancel Senior Day.