Robbed.

There is just no other way to describe what was done to the Massachusetts football team yesterday afternoon, unless the word “joke” is somehow involved.

A day after setting school records for most regular season wins and most conference wins in a single season, as well as securing their Atlantic 10 – record 19th conference championship, Mark Whipple’s Minutemen were told they would not be returning to Warren P. McGuirk Alumni Stadium for the first round of the Division I-AA playoffs on Saturday.

Yes, you read that correctly. The team that won nine games in the most competitive I-AA league in the country and can count a 38-7 loss to potential Big 12 champion Kansas State and a heartbreaking 51-45 triple overtime setback at No. 2 Delaware as its only two blemishes on the season, was deemed not worthy of a home playoff game.

Give me a break.

Instead, they will be traveling west to Hamilton, N.Y. for a first-round date with Colgate. At 12-0, the Raiders boast the nation’s longest winning streak at 19 games, and are surely deserving of a home game in their own right, but not at the expense of Massachusetts.

“I think it’s a travesty for the kids, I think it’s just ridiculous,” Whipple said. “Our fan base, our band, our people here, we deserve to play at McGuirk Alumni Stadium.

“Eight teams get home playoff berths, how can we not be one of them? We won nine of our last 10, that’s at least what we deserve.”

So now that it’s quite clear that the selection committee in charge of formulating the I-AA bracket believes UMass is not one of the top eight teams in I-AA, despite being in the top seven in every national ranking since Oct. 5, who is?

Among schools hosting first round games, Northern Iowa has one more I-AA loss than UMass, while Bethune-Cookman is currently rated eight spots below the Maroon and White in the polls, and has one more loss at the I-AA level. Western Kentucky has three I-AA losses, and are currently rated three spots behind the Maroon and White in the polls with two Division II schools on their schedule.

That brings us to Montana. The Grizzlies are 9-3, and have not only scheduled a D-II this season, they’ve lost to one (25-24 to North Dakota State). They’re also coming off of a bitter loss to rival Montana State this weekend, with the Big Sky Conference title on the line.

So why, again, are they hosting 8-3 Western Illinois?

Very simply, Wayne Hogan is the chairman of the NCAA I-AA Football Committee, entrusted with selecting the 16 – team field, and he also happens to be the athletic director at Montana. So not only do the Grizzlies have a home game despite boasting more losses than four of the teams that will travel in round one – including UMass – they will most likely host round two as well if they advance and the Minutemen knock off Colgate.

“I think Wayne Hogan, the guy at Montana, set the whole thing up,” Whipple said. “When they get behind closed doors these things happen … they get to do what they want to do. Anything the NCAA has to do has always got some kind of taint on it.”

So how did A-10 selection committee representative Jim Miller let this happen? Did the Richmond athletic director fight for the Minutemen, or did he passively shrug off what was utter disrespect directed towards his own conference?

And where was Linda Bruno? As commissioner of the A-10 itself, does it not bother her to see one of her conference’s premier institutions publicly defamed like this?

“I want to know what Jim Miller has to say, and I want to know what Linda Bruno has to say. I think Jim Miller did a poor job for the Atlantic 10, that’s what I’ve heard all the way along,” Whipple said. “Our league is the toughest league in the country. We win nine games in our league, and we don’t get a chance to play at home? It’s ridiculous.”

Needless to say, nothing can be done. If these Minutemen want to win a National Title, they will have to be road warriors, much like they were in 1998. But that, however, does not change the fact that what a group of stuffy administrators did to this football team was atrocious, and these young men that have persevered for three long months to put together what has truly been an amazing season are the ones left to feel the effects.

Mike Marzelli is a Collegian columnist. He can be reached at [email protected].