A good article but really, the power brokers at UCONN looking to revive football seem to have unrealistic goals. Obviously the investments made in infrastructure are hard to walk away from and maybe that is driving this effort. But what is the recruiting base? Where is the talent coming from. New England is low on D1 talent and the little bit there is go to BC or Syracuse and neither if those schools have seen recent success and are trending further down.
Even UCONNs limited football success was against a watered down BE football league that was so bad that the other power football conferences tossed the BE out.
UCONN made the right decision though. Focus on hoops in the BE and hope for a miracle in football.
Lol, I will take our "limited success" of two conference championships and a BCS bowl... the win over Baylor, the win at Notre Dame, the bowl win over "the old ball coach's" South Carolina team, etc. all in our first 10 years of FBS ball. For what it is worth, I always smile a bit when people try to minimize the 2011 or 2014 basketball national championships as well. It smacks of sour grapes to me.
Keep in mind that UConn didn't decide to to emphasize football to save to hoops. The American TV deal sucked and on a net basis it is about the same as the Big East deal (after facility and production costs, etc.) They also weren't going allow the WBB team to telecast games on SNY, which is important to that program. Flying across the country to play teams that no one cared about for virtually no money made no sense. That is what prompted the move back to the Big East. It turned out to be a great move for men's basketball but that wasn't the only thing driving it.
I do agree that northeast is a tough place to recruit. New Jersey is the big recruiting ground and we are in the same shoes you guys are in for basketball there. The big boys come in and cherry pick. So the approach was to pick up the kids who needed to develop and keep them for 5 years. That's how UConn got so many guys in the NFL. It was Edsall's trademark move, but he struggled to replicate in his second tenure. UConn is getting better talent, but it is forced to play them right away. Take a look at the two deep for this week's game:
The yellow highlighting is the underclassmen. That is just stunning. Hopefully the next coach can develop these guys. I also think that the transfer portal may allow a good coach to get us back up to playing decent football faster than the four years it traditionally takes. Of course, the rub is actually getting a good coach but the scuttlebutt is that the position is generating surprising interest among good candidates and that BoT is willing to pay for right guy.
So hope springs eternal, but as I've said previously, we've got maybe five years to get it done. After that, I suspect the board will take a long hard look at whether they will continue to chase the football dream. If we haven't improved by then, I doubt even the diehard fans will care.