Common Sense Wins: After Facing Backlash, UMass Will In Fact Hold A Proper Senior Day Ceremony

"Senior Day" is one of the most special events in any sport at the collegiate level. On that day, every senior that has labored for four years on a team gets recognized for their hard work. It doesn’t matter if you’re the starting quarterback or a benchwarmer; you get praised as someone special.

But the UMass Minutemen athletic department almost canceled the upcoming senior day for its football team.

The Minutemen’s last game of the season is on Nov. 30, a home match against the UConn Huskies. Before kickoff, every senior was supposed to be recognized in a traditional ceremony.

But then the athletic department sent this message to players regarding the pregame festivities:

No walk-outs, no name on the jumbotron, no anything. Just a private, small-scale photo shoot that the players were primarily in charge of coordinating all because there were too many seniors (there are 54 on the team). What a joke.

Fortunately, guys like tight end Dominick Mazotti, a graduate student in his first year on the team, brought attention to this atrocity and said UMass needed to honor its seniors.

Countless other people chimed in on the situation as well.

Wouldn’t ya know it, after receiving a ton of (justified) backlash, UMass decided to revert to the original plan. 

That statement is nice and all, but you know what it is? A blatant distortion of the truth.

The school is trying to play the semantics game and say that the Senior Day wasn’t canceled because they offered a cheesy photoshoot for the players and their families. But the whole point of the day is to get your name on the jumbotron, so thousands of fans can see you have your moment in the spotlight. You do photoshoots in middle school, not in college. 

Plus, they didn’t even reflect long enough to apologize! There is no mention of "I’m Sorry" or anything of that nature in this statement. The whole thing is an embarrassment for the school.

Fortunately, the Minutemen seniors will get their deserved moment. UMass as a school needs to learn from this and get their act together so this doesn't happen in the future.