“Can A Conference Be Considered the Nation’s Best?”: Insider Takes Jab at Big Ten as UMass Upset Rutgers in Major Beatdown
· Yahoo Sports
In one of the first days of the 2026-27 college football season, chaos ensued at the SHI Stadium in Piscataway, New Jersey. On Thursday, Sept. 3, coach Greg Schiano’s Rutgers Scarlet Knights hosted coach Joe Harasymiak’s Massachusetts Minutemen for their first game of the campaign. Unfortunately for the Scarlet Knights, the Minutemen defeated them by 16 points, 37-21.
It was an embarrassing defeat, to say the least, for the Scarlet Knights, as they were the overwhelming favorites to beat the Minutemen. As the rest of the college football world reacts in shock to the game, insider Brett McMurphy called out the Big Ten Conference, where the Scarlet Knights play, following the Minutemen victory with a post on X/Twitter.
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“Can a conference be considered the nation’s best conference if one of its teams loses to UMass? Asking for a friend,” McMurphy wrote.
– Brett McMurphy, September 3, 2026
McMurphy later reported on On3 that the Scarlet Knights paid the Minutemen $1.5 million for the fixture, which ended up backfiring for the Big Ten program.
The UMass Minutemen were 29.5-point underdogs against the Rutgers Scarlet Knights
After the game, ESPN reported several key points to ponder following the UMass Minutemen’s defeat of the Rutgers Scarlet Knights. The post on X/Twitter headlines that the Minutemen were actually 29.5-point underdogs leading up to the game. With the win over Rutgers, this was their first victory against an FBS school since 2023 and their first win over a power conference program since 1978.
The Minutemen’s win over Rutgers also snapped a couple of losing streaks. This included their 12-game losing streak dating back to 2025, when they went winless that season, and their 16-game losing streak in FBS, which was the longest active one.
This was UMass’ first triumph in around 677 days. Their last win came on Oct. 27, 2024, when they beat the Wagner Seahawks by 28 points, 35-7.
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