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Provo • The Big 12 Conference's decision last month not to expand understandably sent shock waves through Provo, because BYU sees membership in a Power-5 league as the best and only route out of football independence.

It didn't go over well at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, either, but for a slightly different reason. The UMass football team, which is also independent, sees membership in the American Athletic Conference as its best course for survival in the long term. UMass was hoping that the Big 12 would snatch up an AAC team, or two, and create an opening in that league for the Minutemen.

"We are looking toward conference alignment and affiliation — that's certainly a goal for our football program, and we are going to continue to work toward that end," UMass athletic director Ryan Bamford told The Salt Lake Tribune on Wednesday.

So there is a kinship, of sorts, between these college football programs with very little else in common as they play the first game of a contracted four-game series on Saturday at LaVell Edwards Stadium (noon MT, BYUtv). The Cougars (6-4) and Minutemen (2-8) will play again in 2017 in Provo, then meet twice at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Mass., in 2018 and 2019.

The 2017 game is scheduled for Nov. 18, but may be moved to Dec. 2 "in order to accommodate scheduling requirements for one or both parties," according to the series contract obtained by The Tribune.

The agreement, signed in September 2014 before Bamford took over UMass athletics in the spring of 2015, calls for a payment of $250,000 to the visiting team in each game. The visiting team will also assign and pay for the game officials.

"I think it will be a good series for us," Bamford said. "Competitively, I hope we can hang in there with them. BYU's brand is big and they have a good following in the Northeast. Hopefully, we will be able to see some of their folks come to our games here. And I know our fans are excited about playing them as well."

From afar, Bamford said it appears BYU is making independence work.

"BYU has posited themselves well," he said. "I really have a lot of respect for the things they've been able to do. I think they've carved out a niche that, right now, suits them pretty well."

But while BYU chose independence in 2010 after rival Utah received a golden ticket into the Pac-12 and its television arrangements through the MWC became unbearable, UMass didn't have a choice to go it alone. UMass was basically tossed out of the Mid-American Conference, the league in which its football team had played since making the move up to the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) level in 2012.

The MAC invoked a clause it had with UMass that gave it two years to either join the conference in all its sports, or leave.

A member of the Atlantic 10 in most other sports, the Minutemen left.

It was just the latest blow to a program that has struggled since making the jump to the FBS. UMass went 2-22 in its first two seasons at the Division I level, and attendance at the two venues it plays its home games at — Gillette Stadium (home of the NFL's Patriots) and McGuirk Stadium on campus — was poor.

The transition to FBS has been so rocky that, last spring, the UMass Faculty Senate urged the school to return to the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) or drop football altogether. Bamford hoped a beefed-up home schedule that included Boston College, Mississippi State, Tulane and Louisiana Tech in their first year of independence would help it reach the 15,000 minimum attendance needed to remain in Division I, but it fell just short.

Average attendance was 14,509, as the MSU game drew a disappointing crowd of 13,074 and FCS Wagner drew only 8,468. UMass averaged just 11,124 in 2015. The timeline used for enforcing the minimum-attendance rule is somewhat arbitrary, though, and usually includes an additional probationary period before a move back down is imposed.

But the Minutemen are surviving, somehow, and after 18 months on the job the energetic, optimistic Bamford says UMass has "found independent football to be a comfortable place for us right now, a place where we have been able to build a good schedule over the next three or four years."

A schedule that includes four games against a school that can relate, in a way. The fellow football independent known as BYU.

Twitter: @drewjay —

Packing them in

The NCAA requires FBS programs average a minimum of 15,000 fans per home game. UMass averaged14,509 in 2014 and 11,124 last year. This season, they've been short again:

Date Opponent Site Attendance

Sept. 10 Boston College Gillette Stadium 25,112

Sept. 17 Florida International McGuirk Stadium 12,202

Sept. 24 Mississippi State Gillette Stadium 13,074

Oct. 1 Tulane McGuirk Stadium 14,892

Oct. 15 Louisiana Tech Gillette Stadium 13,311

Oct. 29 Wagner McGuirk Stadium 8,468

Six-game average • 14,509

Note: Gillette Stadium is in Foxborough, Mass. McGuirk Stadium is on the UMass Amherst campus.