The Huskies play NC State at Rentschler Field. More than 31,000 tickets had been distributed as of Tuesday afternoon. A 7:30 p.m. kickoff will send the ball into the air and pull UConn from an offseason of chaos, another conference realignment tap dance that ultimately left the Huskies’ athletic platform in the same place.
Outside the ever-changing Power Five world, that is. As a Big East member in most sports. With an independent football program, still the anchor, because across the country people of influence have seen its struggles and doubt its potential.
UConn as a whole, athletic director David Benedict said this summer, needs to do a better job telling its story. Starting Thursday, for 12 games, 13 with another bowl appearance, the Huskies have an opportunity to inch a little further away from their well-documented football free fall. UConn can go out and win games, draw fans, stir up interest and work toward changing a narrative through performances instead of sales pitches.
“There's no need to put a bunch of pressure on these young men,” Benedict said of players. “They're going out and they've put the time and effort in. We want them to be successful, obviously. But it's not their job to change the perception of this program. Their job is to try to effectuate the game plan and whatever their role is on each play. Hopefully that puts us in a position to have success. But, generally speaking, to build off last year and take another step forward and make another bowl game, I don't think there's any question that would continue to reshape the perception of a program that was in a good position not that long ago.”
UConn went to five bowl games under Randy Edsall, including the Fiesta Bowl following the 2010 season (the program's last winning season). The Huskies were mediocre for two-plus seasons under Paul Pasqualoni and returned to a bowl in 2015 under Bob Diaco (finishing 6-7 with a loss to Marshall in the St. Petersburg Bowl).
The next five seasons — over six years because UConn skipped play in 2020 due to COVID and scheduling impossibilities without a conference affiliation — were a total mess. UConn was 10-50 in that stretch, attendance dwindled, interest waned. Diaco’s departure became Edsall’s 2018 return and everything only got worse, the damaging cycle culminating with a 1-11 season in 2021.
Having left the American Athletic Conference for the Big East in 2020, UConn focused on fixing men’s basketball under Dan Hurley and hit a bullseye there, winning the program’s fifth national championship in April. But as that celebration raged on, conferences across the country were crumbling and rebuilding with football brands in mind.
UConn, rejuvenated to some degree during Jim Mora’s first season as coach, was taken seriously by some but couldn’t wedge itself into the P5 picture. No invitation came from the Big 12 despite commissioner Brett Yormark’s interest. The ACC is seemingly on the brink of a makeover and the Huskies haven’t been mentioned as a logical candidate, even with its basketball success and so much shared history in that sport with programs like Syracuse, Pittsburgh and Boston College.
Because football drives everything. UConn returned to a bowl last season under Mora, finishing 6-7 (after another loss to Marshall, this time in the Myrtle Beach Bowl). But there is much work to do. Six victories felt like resounding success, locally, for those with an up close view of the recent struggles. It was only a little slice of what’s needed to convince the appropriate audience that UConn football is a functional product and set to remain so.
“Trust your eyes,” Benedict said. “If you’ve been watching and paying attention and if you're a college football aficionado, watch us play. Make a determination on this program based on what you see, not what you read or what you hear from people that really aren't involved or engaged.”
The Mora-UConn partnership has been a hit so far, a coach looking to resurrect his career, a program needing an injection of energy and positivity. UConn football eventually has to be taken seriously in Power Five board rooms or the entire experience, just a quarter century old, might start to feel untenable. Calls for UConn to settle on a basketball-centric identity, like the models at Villanova and Gonzaga, will amplify. If the ACC doesn’t at one point split and/or look to include UConn, maybe the Big East as a whole, it’s easy to see the football gas tank inching toward empty sometime in the coming years.
But there’s a game Thursday. A season is upon the Huskies. No more talk is needed. Good performances certainly are. It’s not fair, as Benedict said, for players to considering anything other than their practice and gameday jobs. Still, there is a massive amount of pressure to build another season worth showing off proudly. Every fourth-quarter drive or defensive stand in a close game is a potential building block for what UConn, as a whole, is trying to become.
“Coach Mora brought credibility as soon as he accepted the job and we announced him as our head coach,” Benedict said. “And what he's accomplished in 18 months brings additional credibility to our program. I'm very confident that we're in a very good position entering this season. It think it's a more reasonable schedule, and I think we're probably much further ahead with a coach going in his second year and these kids having tasted success. The challenge of getting the kids to believe they can win, when they hadn't, is probably the most difficult thing you can do. And we've done that. We have kids that believe and that's an exciting proposition.”
UConn faced a front-loaded gauntlet last season and was 1-4 after blowout losses to Syracuse, Michigan and NC State. The Huskies won five of their next six games to become bowl eligible. This year, NC State is followed by a road game at Georgia State, a home game against FIU and a home game against Duke, one of three ACC teams on the schedule.
It is manageable. It is interesting. There’s more conversation about football on campus. The 5,000 or so student seats have been claimed and UConn has allotted some in other sections for student overflow. That hasn’t happened in years, if ever. Of course, it’s not ideal to have open seats to reallocated, and 31,000 tickets out doesn’t mean 31,000 fans will actually show up.
But interest is at least on the upswing, it seems, where for years it was only evaporating.
Now football, the weekly performances, will do the talking, leaving fans to decide whether to return, and giving Power Five conferences more of a body of work to consider.
“Rock ‘n roll time,” Benedict said. “Coach Mora continues to say every time I talk to him just how much he enjoys being around this group of student-athletes, how business-like they are with their approach. And I think the way I interpret that is you've got a very, very hungry group of young men that tasted a little bit of success last year, and they're just really focused and locked in to try to prepare themselves to have another positive, successful season.”
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