UConn football: Commemorating 10 years since Big East title

A conference-less football team

After the Fiesta Bowl loss to Big 12 champ Oklahoma, Edsall’s departure led to the hire of former Syracuse boss Paul Pasqualoni, fresh off a couple of position coaching stints in the NFL. He had compiled a 107-59-1 record with the Orangemen (that was their nickname back then), but success never materialized with UConn: two 5-7 seasons were followed by an 0-4 start, which showed Pasqualoni the door into his third season.

The Big East Conference’s football component dissolved during this time, completing its last season together in 2012. Its members departed for different power conferences during the great realignment shift of that year, with teams like Pittsburgh, Boston College, Louisville, and Syracuse headed to the ACC, West Virginia heading to the Big 12, and Cincinnati and South Florida heading to the Group of Five’s AAC.

UConn’s run with the American Athletic Conference ended poorly. The basketball program belongs with the hoops-centric Big East, which has retained some of its rivalries and national standing, but its football team has struggled mightily. There’s a lack of identity, a disappearance on the regional recruiting stage, and there’s not much going for the school as a sudden Independent program.

In August, in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, the football program announced that it would cancel its season. It seemed almost prescient at the time, but now it looks as though the university wanted to spare its football program the shame of trying to put together a schedule this season — many schools are competing with only one or no out-of-conference games, a near-death sentence for a newly Independent school like UConn.

It might have been better for UConn, who owns only one FBS win in the past three seasons (against UMass).

Will 2021 bring anything different for the Huskies football team? 10 games are already lined up, including dates with Holy Cross and UMass.

So, in other words, there’s room for improvement from 2019 and 2020. Just don’t expect any conference titles or New Years Six bowl appearances anytime soon.