UMass athletic director says Charley Molnar will return in 2014

Friday’s game at Ohio University will be the last of the season for the University of Massachusetts football team. It will not be the last game of the Charley Molnar era.

UMass athletic director John McCutcheon confirmed that Molnar will be back for a third season next year.

“Charley is our coach,” McCutcheon said. “We’re making progress in the program. Obviously it hasn’t translated much in the wins and loss record, but we’ve been much more competitive this year in several games.

“The transition is a very challenging thing. How that translates to wins and losses is difficult to perceive from the outside. I think Charley is doing a good job,” McCutcheon continued. “All of us have things we could do better than we’ve done. There are things he’s done very well. Charley is our coach and we’re moving forward. I’m looking forward to the future.”

Molnar, the former offensive coordinator at Notre Dame, was hired after the 2012 season to lead the program from the Championship Subdivision to the Bowl Subdivision. UMass is 2-21 in his two seasons at the helm. The Minutemen went 1-11 last year and enter today’s finale at 1-10. UMass’ two wins have come against teams — Akron last year, Miami (Ohio) this year — that went winless against Bowl Subdivision opponents in the season UMass beat them.

After his team’s practice Tuesday, Molnar remained optimistic about the direction of the program.

“We have to be able to put teams away. Can we make that progress in a hurry next year? Sure we can,” he said. “Our team is going to be more mature. There will be less talk from me about our youth. We’ll still have depth issues. We know we’re still going to have to fight that fight. We’re going to have lots of experience. We’re going to have guys going into their third year together. It’s all trending in the right direction. Unfortunately I can’t demonstrate that to the outside world with wins and losses. But internally I think it’s pretty evident.

“We’re not ready to win yet. We don’t have enough pieces to win yet,” he continued. “We’ll have more pieces next year. From the very first day of summer camp next year we’ll have more pieces than we have this year. That’s the reality of the transition and the reality of our sport.”

Matt Vautour can be reached at mvautour@gazettenet.com. Get UMass coverage delivered in your Facebook news feed at www.facebook.com/GazetteUMassCoverage