I agree with all of these comments, but I don't think we should be patting ourselves on the back for nothing more than another close loss to a mediocre Michigan team. The folks that will make the decisions regarding whether or not UCONN belongs in a major league conference might take notice, but the title message in this thread is still and will always be correct: moral victories are for losers.
I'm not entirely sure that last night's game will change the perception of the Florida State's and Clemson's of the college FB world, who already voted that UCONN doesn't belong with them. I hope and pray that it did help.
I respect your point of view, but I just wanted to comment on some of your statements as I see them:
1)
Michigan isn't mediocre. They're not great, and they certainly aren't in the same class as Alabama. But they aren't mediocre. Mediocre is losing this type of game to a team like Syracuse or USF. Michigan is absolutely better than those teams, as they can boast players that are national All-Americans (i.e., OL - Lewan) and highly talented skill players (Toussaint, Gallon, etc.).
2)
Florida State and Clemson will not change their view of us until we win a national championship. The same goes for many of the other "old-guard" southern football schools. To that point, I don't really give a $#it. At the end of the day, conferences make membership decisions based on money, and if we can excite crowds like we did last night (
both in the stadium and on national tv), then we are worth a heck of a lot more money.
What we demonstrated last night is that we have a lot of young talent that we should be really excited about. Foxx, McQuillan, Davis, Williams, Melifonwu, etc. We also saw that some of the upperclassmen are finally playing as well as advertised (Smallwood, Stephen, Pruitt, etc.). So it's not so much a "moral victory" that I'm celebrating here as it is a hope for future development and growth of both this team and this program.
And THAT'S worth celebrating...