The Massachusetts football team’s NIL (name, image and likeness) collective, The Midnight Ride Collective, released information about its termination to its members Tuesday night via email. The collective will cease operations by the end of December.
The email highlights a litany of topics, including the future of NIL within UMass football along with the main reasons why Midnight Ride won’t be working with the school’s athletic department in the future.
The future
Moving forward, the football program’s NIL collective will be absorbed by The Massachusetts Collective, which is currently the exclusive collective for the UMass men’s and women’s basketball programs.
“UMass will soon allocate $1-2 [million] for NIL funding to football and basketball,” an email written by Midnight Ride obtained by the Daily Collegian read.
The football team’s NIL being absorbed by The Massachusetts Collective is just the first part of an alteration in leadership. Midnight Ride claims an “Internal NIL Person” will be hired in its place, but they will lack the same resources the previous collective held.
The falling out
This change came from a multitude of reasons according to Midnight Ride, beginning with UMass’ leadership’s distaste for the collective’s (more specifically head of the collective Corey Schneider’s) “damaging” social media posts.
According to Midnight Ride, the athletic department only wanted to support those who “sing and dance” to the university’s tune. This was evident with athletic director Ryan Bamford’s dismissal of the “Junkyard” nickname given to McGuirk Alumni Stadium by fans on social media, which Midnight Ride openly embraced.
UMass had a preferred business partner for the collective, Learfield, and Midnight Ride refused to do business with it. This added to the strain between the two groups, who couldn’t come to terms with where the collective’s money should be invested.
“Our inability to secure consistent investment stems from UMass’s refusal to truly embrace us until we paid [its] preferred business partner, Learfield,” the email said. “We weren’t willing to pay an organization $17 [thousand per] year when [its] entire pitch is built around urinal advertisements and a few spots on mediums where nobody is.”
The money within the collective also had a tie within the athletic department, as for the last ten months, Midnight Ride received financial commitments that were “critical to our entire operation,” according to the email.
“This includes repeatedly being told we’ll never have to worry about running out of cash; ‘don’t worry about it, not going to let you fail. (X amount) will be heading our way to get us through the season, and then a much larger commitment of (X amount) in the offseason.’”
Midnight Ride also claims to have had difficulty finding investors, attributing that to the contempt that many alumni feel toward UMass’ athletic department. They claim potential investors have shared a fondness of how Midnight Ride has conducted its business, but don’t want to give money to a collective tied to what investors call “a [UMass] program that doesn’t care about its future.”
The feud
Both Schneider and his business partner Tim McDermond feel their reputations are being tarnished by the handling of UMass’ decision to move on from them. They claim that there is still a financial commitment from the university that hasn’t been fulfilled as of yet.
“If this narrative continues, the mountain of receipts will begin to be shared,” the email said. “Those who made those financial commitments should do the right thing so we can wrap everything up as we agreed to do. We’ve kept our word, and now they should keep theirs. That’s the right thing to do.”
Recent controversy surrounding the “Southwick Jug”–a trophy created by Midnight Ride for the winner of the rivalry game between the Minutemen and the University of Connecticut–could stem from this quarrel between the athletic department and its football program’s collective.
There’s been a large falling out between both parties, who didn’t seem to see eye to eye on many topics. This adds another offseason change to UMass’ football program, with a new collective joining a new head coach in a new conference in 2025.
Mike Maynard can be reached at [email protected] and followed on X @mikecmaynard.
