You lazy, backstabbing man, Travis Ford
As is profoundly clear in my bio, I'm painfully loyal to my alma mater, the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. No matter how much red tape, irritating TAs and random (and usually unfounded) bills I received from that place, I will bleed maroon and white until I'm dead in the ground.
The lack of student support for the sports program has always been a proverbial thorn in my backside. They have a stellar 1-AA football program, a lacrosse team that was the Division 1 runner up last year and a hockey team that has been a force for the last decade. You'd think students would be stoked to have successful teams to root for. Well, guess what? UMass has a heck of a time getting the Mullins Center half full for a post season basketball game, as was apparent during their second round NIT game. The student section wasn't even full, which made me puke in my mouth a bit.
It's being reported on espn.com right now that UMass men's basketball head coach, Travis Ford, is headed to OSU. Ford is responsible for turning the Minuteman basketball program into something resembling what it once was in the mid-1990s over the last few years, and based on the amount of UMass students who turned out for the NIT final four/championshop game at Madision Square Garden a few weeks back, finally putting some bodies back in the seats. It took work. But alumni, such as myself, were so grateful to see a coach there who really cared.
Maybe it wasn't enough. Maybe Ford was frustrated with the lack of interest and cooperation from the UMass community. Maybe he was sick of the sucktastic Amherst winters, or Rao's once put too much soy milk in his latte. But whatever the reason was, he's leaving behind a program that was just starting to put the pieces back together, to go to a conference where there won't be any work involved. OSU games sell out, even when the teams leave something to be desired. The Big 12 is a better conference than the Atlantic 10. There's no need to work to sell out a game, or to recruit talent. The name does it for you. Thanks Travis, for stabbing UMass community square between the shoulder blades, and on the heels of your public denial of reports you were planning to coach at LSU. That was a fantastic and heartwarming load of total BS. Enjoy OSU, where you can just sit back and let the program do the work for you. Don't let the door hit you on the way out.
--Lizzy
