It only took the first game of Week 1 on the college football schedule to deliver one of the biggest upsets in the sport over the past decade.
Rutgers entered Thursday as 29.5-point favorites at home against a UMass team coming off a winless 0-12 season and riding a 16-game losing streak. However, what was expected to be a comfortable season-opening contest for the Scarlet Knights ended with a result that won't be forgotten for a long time in either Amherst or Piscataway.
Here are the most stunning numbers from the Minutemen's incredible 37-21 victory.
29.5: The 29.5-point spread favoring Rutgers makes Thursday's stunner the biggest point-spread upset at the FBS level since Kansas shocked Texas as 31-point underdogs in 2021.
1,550,000: What's the only thing worse than losing at home as a 29.5-point favorite to a team that hadn't won a game in two years? Having to also pay that opponent $1.55 million for the privilege. According to Brett McMurphy of On3, that's how much Rutgers shelled out to get UMass to play them at home in New Jersey. That particularly stings for an athletic department that has piled up a deficit of over $500 million since joining the Big Ten in 2014.
677: That's how many days it's been since UMass last celebrated a victory on the football field. Before Thursday, the Minutemen hadn't won a game since Oct. 26, 2024, when it beat FCS Wagner.
23: UMass' losing streak is even worse when you exclude FCS opponents, with the Minutemen falling in 23 straight games to FBS competition entering Thursday. They had also held the nation's longest active losing streak at 16 contests.
48: UMass jumped to the FBS level in 2012, making its winless streak against current power-conference opponents an eye-popping 48 years. The Minutemen beat BYU in 2017, but the Cougars were an independent program back then and not in the Big 12 yet. Congratulations, Rutgers: you helped end a 48-year streak Thursday.
