Freshman Sa’ad Maigari is just beginning his college career here at UMass Amherst. He is majoring in Sports Management, and it seems like one of his first assignments is to whip the UMass Football team, famous losers, back into shape.
It is no secret that the team has been struggling in recent years. Their inaugural home game was on September 6th, where the Bryant Bulldogs narrowly edged out our Minutemen and won 27-26. A close score, to be fair, but our next two games would change that. We then lost 47-7 to Iowa and 42-6 to Missouri on September 13th and 27th. While some students lost hope, some of our bravest still decided to attend our Homecoming game on October 4th, even with our losing streak. The Minutemen faced off against the Western Michigan Broncos at the game in question, and against all odds, they won!
Just kidding. They lost 21-3. In fact, they just wrapped up a winless season, with a 0-12 record. Maigari had predicted the outcome long before. He is known as @whotfisthatguy33 on TikTok, and his videos are gaining traction for criticizing and poking fun at the UMass football team. In one video, he films a fake advertisement, claiming watching UMass Football will help parents discipline their troubled children- “You make your child watch one UMass Football game… they will never, ever disrespect you again”. In multiple videos, he’s simply exclaimed, “You fucking suck”, seemingly towards the entire roster. On September 29th, I sat him down for an interview to discuss both his complaints and his vision for our team. (When asked about homecoming, he audibly scoffed.)
Maigari’s first video, posted on September 10th, seemed to come from out of nowhere. His motivation to make the video was rooted in a conversation he had in a dining hall with his friends, where they shared a laugh over the football team’s recent losses. He called the recent games “hilarious to look at”. He described other “jokes” that can he has found here at UMass (frat culture and hazing rituals were some that came to mind for him) but he emphasized his favorite one- “the fucking football team”. In the second video, he expresses disappointment that he bet a whopping one hundred dollars on the home opener against Temple with an old classmate from high school, confessing that it was the “worst decision I ever made in my life”. In a video from September 28th, just one day before the interview, he told his viewers his frustrations while watching the Missouri game. When asked how much of the game he watched, he responded, “like the first five minutes”. But there was a reason for this- he described how he was sitting and watching, getting “absolutely livid”, before a question came to him: “Why am I torturing myself?”
The grievances he has get specific, too, with specific members of the team also under fire. Kicker Derek Morris was Maigari’s first victim. Morris left a scathing comment under one of Maigari’s videos- “bet you wont come tell me this”. When asked to comment on the interaction, Maigari emphasized that the argument was strictly on social media. “Derek Morris has not seen me in real life”, he stated, and expressed that if Morris ever felt the need to confront him regarding his videos, he would be “more than happy to do that”.
I was surprised to learn that Maigari does not consider himself a big football fan. Besides UMass games, he usually only tunes in for the Superbowl. More surprisingly, he has also never played football, as he unfortunately sustained an injury during his very first time trying the sport. Yet he still manages to give harsh, hard-hitting pointers and advice on a sport he doesn’t have much experience in.
“I’m a comedian,” Maigari said. He maintains that his videos are meant to be lighthearted, and that he has no true ill will towards any of the UMass football players. After all of these videos and controversies, he still stated, “I think UMass Football has a future”. And he doesn’t dislike every player- he spoke highly of cornerback Brennen Bailey and linebacker Donovan Dyson, who he met at the UMass Black Student Union darty on September 20th. They spoke about “the entire [football] program itself”, and there is a clip of the conversation in one of his TikTok videos, where they are smiling and having what seems to be lighthearted banter. “They’re my guys,” Maigari said, “no dissing y’all.” At the end of the interview, I asked him what exactly he thinks UMass Football needs to start winning their games again. Maigari told me it wasn’t more money, nor any endorsements. He stated, “only God can help UMass Football”.
