Got it, thanks for setting me straight.
Your timeline is off. UConn decided to go to Division 1A in October, 1997. That was a year before the Kraft deal was proposed. Here is the info from Wikipedia:
Transition to Division I-A
Connecticut hired
Lew Perkins as its
athletic director in 1990. One of Perkins' first projects was to gather facts for a possible upgrade of the football program to
Division I-A.
[6] Perkins feared that if the university didn't upgrade the football program, that it ran the risk of falling behind other institutions that fielded both football and basketball teams at the highest level. However, UConn was in the middle of a budget deficit and many faculty feared that an upgrade of the football program would result in a loosening of academic standards.
[6]
In 1997, the
Big East Conference gave the University of Connecticut and
Villanova University a December 31 deadline to decide if they were going to upgrade their respective football programs and join the Big East football conference.
[7] Villanova, a private institution, declined the invitation. However, in October 1997, the University of Connecticut Board of Trustees overwhelmingly endorsed, by a vote of sixteen to one, the football team's plan to upgrade the program to Division I-A status.
[8] Part of the plan would be to build a new stadium, as the current stadium,
Memorial Stadium, fell well below the minimum occupancy level of 30,000, as set by the NCAA. Originally, the new stadium was to be built on campus.
UConn would be granted an attendance waiver by the NCAA in order to play its home games at Memorial Stadium in Storrs during the 2000-2002 seasons.
However, the enthusiasm toward the new stadium quickly faded as the estimated expenses rose, the idea of an on-campus stadium was tabled, and the upgrade of the program was put on hold by the
Connecticut state legislature.
[9] A year later, the stadium issue was rehashed during an attempt to bring the
New England Patriots to
Hartford, Connecticut. A proposed 70,000 seat, open-air stadium in downtown Hartford would also serve as the home of the Huskies football team.
[10] The plans for this stadium also fell through and the Patriots announced that they would remain in
Foxboro, Massachusetts. Eventually, a new site emerged across the
Connecticut River in
East Hartford, when
Pratt and Whitney donated their land on the old
Rentschler Airfield to the state for purposes of building a football stadium. UConn officially began the upgrade process in January, 1999 by applying to join the Big East football conference.
[11] They would receive a special waiver from the NCAA in order to play in Memorial Stadium while
Rentschler Field was under construction.
[12]