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FILE PHOTO

New University of Massachusetts football coach Charley Molnar, seen here in December, spoke at the school’s weekly sports luncheon Wednesday and covered topics ranging from recruiting to scheduling.

AMHERST - It sounded almost like a stump speech, a politician's plea for votes. As new University of Massachusetts football coach Charley Molnar spoke at the school's weekly sports luncheon Wednesday at the Campus Center, Molnar worked the room like a candidate.

He's already got the job, but he's chasing support nonetheless and he seems to be picking up some every time he gets a hold of a microphone.

In addition to encouraging fans to buy tickets and donate to the program, he laid out his plans and philosophies, tweaked Boston College and Connecticut, two schools he hopes will be future rivals, and even criticized the previous administration.

ON RECRUITING - The pursuit of future Minutemen was a key topic in both the coach's speech and the question and answer session that followed it.

He ranked the key regions for his recruiting as: 1. Massachusetts, 2. New England, 3. the Northeast, and 4. the East Coast.

"As some of the rosters of schools across America are getting more and more guys from Florida, I'm going to do the opposite," Molnar said. "I'm going to recruit some Florida kids, because they're the best players I can get at their position. But here's what I want: When it's November - and championships are won in November - our guys are going to go out there with bare arms. They're not going to have all that gear on. When it's 11 and 12 degrees and the wind is whistling at Gillette Stadium and we're playing for a MAC Championship, that cold is not going to bother our football team.

"I've been around lots of tough guys and most of them, in my opinion, are from the Northeast," he continued. "I've been around a lot of guys from the South. They're great in September. They're pretty good in October, but when it's championship time, they're more worried about how cold it is than making that big catch of making that tackle. That's not 100 percent true, but that's my experience."

UMass had a handful of commitments from players before Kevin Morris was fired, but Molnar said the staff is starting over.

"That's not going to be the foundation of our recruiting class," he said. "We're really going with a clean slate. There wasn't much left behind. There were some committed players. Some can play for a lot of schools, some can't play for any school. We're trying to massage that as best we can."

Molnar said 20 potential recruits will be on campus next weekend for a recruiting visit and that "five or six" have been scheduled for the following weekend as the Feb. 1 National Signing Day approaches.

"If they were leaning just a little bit toward someone else, we've got them leaning more toward UMass. I'm not saying all 20 are going to commit," Molnar said. "But we'll have a shot at all 20 of those guys that come in. We're expecting an avalanche of commitments coming in the next 10 days."

Molnar said he and his hired but yet-to-be-announced coaching staff are trying to convince some kids to back out of their commitments to other schools and consider UMass.

"We're starting late. By the time I got hired, most of the best Mid-American Conference football players were already committed," he said. "Now we're going to fight to get the uncommitted ones. We're going to try to get some of the ones who have already committed and try to turn them and get them to come to UMass even if they've already committed somewhere else."

He expected his 2012 roster to have at least 80 scholarship players before reaching the maximum of 85 in 2013.

ON HIS CURRENT ROSTER - Molnar said every current member of the Minuteman roster will be welcomed back, but doesn't expect everyone to stay.

"I hope to keep every single player. I hope everyone wants to be part of what we're building and developing. It may not be for every guy. I hope it is. If it's not, those guys will find another place to go where it will be a little bit easier where the demands aren't so great," said Molnar, who criticized the Minutemen's recent results under Morris, without mentioning his predecessor by name.

"They're going to work harder than they've ever worked before in their life. How do I know that? I don't know what they did before I got here, but I know this, I looked at their immediate past and their track record of success and I'm telling you they could have worked harder," he said. "What they were wasn't good enough. If it was good enough, I wouldn't be standing here today. Somebody else would standing here. He's not, so I can tell you this, we are going to work very very hard as a football team."

ON SCHEDULING - Molnar reaffirmed athletic director John McCutcheon's assertion that the Minutemen won't schedule Championship Subdivision teams any more.

"We're not talking about the CAA teams. The days of playing New Hampshire and Maine are over. We've moved onto bigger and better," Molnar said. "I want to play the biggest football teams in the Northeast. I want to play Boston College and UConn. I want to play both of those schools on an annual basis. I would like to play Rutgers, Pittsburgh, Penn State and I would like to play Maryland. These are all schools where I want to recruit."

He said UMass' upgrade has Connecticut's attention.

"UConn is very, very aware of us moving up to I-A. That's always been one of their biggest fears that the sleeping giant at UMass would decide to wake up one day and I think that time is here," he said. "We're ready to wake up and ready to take on our neighbors to the south."

Matt Vautour can be reached at mvautour@gazettenet.com. Follow UMass coverage on Twitter at twitter.com/GazetteUMass. Get UMass coverage delivered in your Facebook news feed at http://www.facebook.com/GazetteUMassCoverage.