UMass Minutemen (1972)

Last week, we discussed the 1972 Delaware team that declined a bowl game against UMass, making the Blue Hens the football version the 1904 New York Giants team that refused to play Boston in the World Series. Now, we take a look at the team Delaware should have played.

In Dick MacPherson's second year as coach, UMass went 9-2, outscoring its opponents 369-185. After going 6-0 in Yankee Conference play, the Minutemen dismantled Boston College 28-7 -- the teams played every year from 1965-82 and UMass won only twice -- then topped Delaware's replacement, UC Davis, in the Boardwalk Bowl 35-14, in front of a regional TV audience on ABC, long before every team in existence had its own streaming online webcast.

UMass runs away from UNH. These pix are all from
the 1972 Index yearbook. 

UMass hauls one in at Rhode Island in 1972.

Eight Minutemen -- QB Peil Pennington, WR Steve Schubert, T Thomas Mullen, G Clarence Brooks, FB Richard Cummings, DE Ed McAleney and CB Robert Parrott -- were named all-Yankee Conference. Pennington and McAleney were later NFL draft picks, and Schubert played six NFL seasons for the Patriots and Bears, mostly as a return man. McAleney, a Maine native, was later a member of the winless 1976 Tampa Bay Buccaneers, who would have had a hard time winning the Yankee Conference in any year.

Peil Pennington fires away at the Boardwalk Bowl.
This looks like one wacky venue for a football game -- Arena Football on PEDs.

The uniforms from this time period are interesting: The road jerseys are radically different, with sleeve numbers, gold trim and a different number font. The socks are different, too. 

This was the last year for a while of the "UM" helmet logo, which returned in 1988. ... but it was also the first year UMass went by the "Minutemen" moniker, although a glance through the 1973 Index yearbook shows "REDMEN" on the shorts of the basketball players and a Chicago Blackhawks-style logo on the hockey shirts. 

Take that, Delaware!

Want more UMass unis? Of course you do: 2014, 2013, 1986-87, 1978-84, 1974, 1966-68, 1938-39.