Seven years can be a long time in college football.
On this week in 2014, UMass was fairly new to their FBS experience and getting set to host Boston College at Gillette Stadium. They sponsored an omnipresent ad campaign around the Boston area boosting the “battle for the Bay State.” If you were in town at that time, it was impossible to escape the 6-8 weeks of promotion.
UMass had a pep rally in downtown Boston, had rented out the side of seemingly every bus and trash can in the city, and while it feels like a distant memory now, there was plenty of suggestion that UMass would use this as a launching pad to a run of 30K+ crowds at Gillette, becoming “Massachusetts’ team,” and eventually competing with BC for wins.