Expectations can be a funny thing if you’re a UMass football fan.

Maybe funny is not the right word. Frustrating is another. Expectations can be impossible. They can be a source of unrest, or misery. You just don’t know what to do with them.

Maybe that’s just life as a UMass fan in the FBS era of the program. You learn that optimism can come around and bite you. All the fan of this program has known since 2012 is disappointment.

So when the start of the season comes around, what are those expectations? Can you reasonably expect six or seven wins, the bare minimum for a bowl game, which is usually the least a college football fan expect?

Well, since moving to the FBS, UMass has never won that many games in a season. The win totals have been: 1, 1, 3, 3, 2, 4, 4, 1, 0, 1, 1, 3. With four wins as the ceiling, UMass fans hope for a bowl game, but know that has not ben a totally realistic option lately.

So if that’s what passes for high expectations, what are UMass fans going to really wish for? Does any fan really go in to the season hoping for three wins?

Of course not. So what exactly do UMass fans have the room to wish for? They are left in a kind of strange area where the team has not given them a lot of hope, but they can’t exactly go into the season rooting for three wins, either.

In some ways, UMass fans can’t enjoy a college football season with the type of normal expectations that every other fan has.

It is a unique place, and one that UMass fans don’t want to be in.

But it must get old. Every year, you can expect UMass to be in that list of bottom teams in the FBS. Even if the Minutemen get a few wins, there never seems to be that basic respect level for them.

So this is where UMass fans find themselves in 2024. While it is true that the fans don’t exactly pack McGuirk every Saturday, can you blame them? Still, UMass fans are pretty hardcore to come back every season. It has just been hard to sustain big crowds year in and year out.

In these last two seasons under coach Don Brown, UMass has gone 1-11 in 2022 and 3-9 in 2023. That has been about the average for UMass football in the FBS era.

What is progress, then? Is four wins enough? It has to be, right? Brown has had success before at UMass, when the Minutemen were at the FCS level. He knows what it takes to win at Amherst as well as anyone in college football. If the Minutemen are going to have a successful season, one would think Brown would be the guy to do it.

So UMass fans wait, and hope. Against all odds, they wish for that bare minimum success story of  a bowl game.

Maybe that is too much to ask. Yet there UMass fans are, asking for it, and hoping that this season is the one that has never come before.

After all, it’s all the can do.