National Signing Day Offers Some Light For UMass

The Minutemen landed 21 prospects on National Signing Day who head coach Joe Harasymiak believes represent the future of the program

In a season where there was none, Wednesday provided a bright spot for UMass Football.

How bright?

That’s to be determined and for now, is up to each UMass fan to decide for themselves, but National Signing Day was undeniably bright for the Minutemen.

“Certainly an exciting day to breathe new life into the program with some young guys,” UMass head coach Joe Harasymiak said during Wednesday’s signing day press conference.

Harasymiak credited UMass General Manager Jared Osumah and Director of High School Recruiting Caleb Holfoth along with the rest of the staff.

“With the way the season went and not getting the results we wanted, to stick with this and to sign 21 guys, the quality of player we get, is an incredible feat for our staff,” Harasymiak said.

“Credit to Zoom (Osumah) and Caleb, who run our recruiting department. They’ve done an unbelievable job with connections to parents, connections to players and the evaluations.”

UMass inked 21 players on Wednesday, equal to the number of players the program signed early combined in 2022, 2023 and 2024.

“I’ve talked about building this thing the right way - which, everybody has a different philosophy on building - I believe it’s built from the ground up,” Harasymiak continued. “Anything you start with, you’ve got to build it from the foundation up.”

Of the 21 signees, 15 are three-star prospects, the most three-stars the Minutemen have ever signed during their FBS era, according to Harasymiak.

Harasymiak also noted that since his arrival, exactly one year ago today, UMass has landed 10 of its Top 20 highest-ranked recruits ever.

“We’re investing, we’re changing this place from the ground up and I’m really excited about that,” he said.

Those numbers are all impressive, but probably the most impressive number isn’t the additions, but the subtractions, or lack thereof.

I’ve mentioned it repeatedly, but I see College Football - and College Football recruiting, specifically - through the lens of Notre Dame. Obviously, Notre Dame and UMass couldn’t be much further apart on the FBS spectrum, but covering Irish recruiting as a full-time job, it’s impossible for me to fully separate the two.

Notre Dame signed its best recruiting class in over 40 years yesterday. The Irish landed 27 highly-ranked recruits; three five-stars and 16 four-stars. Like UMass, Notre Dame had plenty of numbers it could have used to illustrate how impressive the haul was, but Irish GM Mike Martin chose the stat that was zero.

“The thing I’m most proud of about this class is that we had zero decommitments,” Martin told Rivals.com. “There’s all these awesome stats, but the one we’re most proud of is zero decommitments. We might be the only school of all the Power Four teams with zero decommitments.”

Indeed, virtually every program suffers decommitments throughout a recruiting cycle. It’s almost unheard of to pull off what Notre Dame did this year.

UMass, despite suffering an 0-12 season in Year One under Harasymiak, lost a total of four. Two of those were to Power 4 programs - which is understandable - and they lost two to Delaware, which was disappointing.

But so many fans understandably anticipated several commits would decide to go elsewhere and for the class to essentially crumble. That did not happen…at all.

Still, losing just four pledges throughout the cycle only tells part of the story. It’s easy to only lose four if you don’t have many to begin with.

But UMass came into the season with 19 verbal commitments, so they hung onto 15 and went out and added six more down the stretch.

The other aspect of the calendar is that those 15 prospects they landed prior to the start of the season essentially represent Plan A targets. Those are the players UMass wanted when the staff believed it was going to be able to sell tangible progress during and after the season. These aren’t guys they had to settle for after it became obvious things weren’t going well.

And, that’s probably the most impressive thing of all.

I’ve made no secret of the fact that I believe in Harasymiak as a coach and that his hiring was the sole reason I came up with the idea of Minuteman Command in the first place. His character and leadership style are almost perfectly aligned with what I personally believe in.

The lack of results on the field this year shocked me more than most. But as I continue to get further away from the day-to-day, game-to-game aspect of the season, I realize that as concerning as those results were, I became even more impressed with Harasymiak’s values through watching how he handled the season.

Every emotion he displayed during the Fall felt genuine to me and while some of it may have been repetitive, it was obvious he was searching for different ways to spark something. There were times early in the season when he tried to set an optimistic tone. Eventually, he couldn’t hide his frustration and attempted to motivate that way. In the end, he pointed the finger squarely at himself, embodying the Ownership credo he demands from those around him.

For many fans - and even those who like Harasymiak - the sound bytes weren’t nearly enough to make up for the lack of wins, which is understandable.

And, as somebody who believes in Harasymiak, there were times when I wondered if my bias was preventing me from seeing the picture objectively. Shoot, even Harasymiak admitted he had to ask himself if he had forgotten how to coach at one point.

But regardless of whether I think Harasymiak is the right guy for the job or whether the fans do or don’t, the only thing that matters is whether players believe in what he’s building.

And the answer to that question came back a resounding Yes on Wednesday.

When he was hired, Harasymiak encouraged everybody within and around UMass Football to “be the light.”

Fireworks aside, there wasn’t any light around the Minutemen this Fall, but Harasymiak and his staff provided some on Wednesday.

Now, it’s up to them to turn that spark into a flame.

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