We've got a long, long way to go in the 2026 college football season, but we may get all the way to late January and not find a more surprising result than the one we got on Night 1: UMass 37, Rutgers 21.
The Minutemen didn't just beat their Big Ten hosts, they dominated them. The 30-point underdogs never trailed in the game's final 50 minutes, putting together a 30-0 scoring run from the 5:26 mark of the first quarter to the 7:54 mark of the fourth. In a battle of journeymen quarterbacks, former 3-star recruit William "Pop" Watson far outplayed 4-star Dylan Lonergan; the UMass signal caller threw as many touchdowns as incompletions (three) and averaged nearly 10 yards per attempt on 22 passes, while Rutgers's quarterback fired three interceptions and was ultimately replaced in the fourth quarter. UMass out-rushed Rutgers 200-30.
The win didn't just snap UMass's overall 16-game losing streak and a 23-game losing skid against FBS competition, it was the program's first win against a current Power 4 team in nearly 50 years (the program was in FCS until 2012).
It was all of those things, but also more: UMass head coach Joe Harasmyiak got the job he has now in large part because of his work as Rutgers's defensive coordinator from 2022-24. Prior to that, he worked for Greg Schiano disciple PJ Fleck at Minnesota. Apprentice beat Master with the tools he learned from the Master himself.
"Just being around Coach (Schiano), who's turned this place around now twice. Working for him, seeing the day-to-day operation, you don't fall too far from the tree," Harasmyiak said after the game. "Coach Schiano, Coach Fleck, Coach (Jack Cosgrove, former Maine head coach), they're kind of all the same guy a little bit in terms of how they run it. It just kind of prepares you to run a program and ultimately turn one around."
Of course, the win wasn't just all of those things, it was also a homecoming for the Ridgewood, N.J., native. Harasmyiak beat Rutgers in front of his parents and two brothers.
"I'm just really happy for us -- our school, our fan base, everybody that's rooting for UMass. That's what I'm really the most proud of," he said. "This is what this is for. It's going to change around here."