BL, it was great seeing you yesterday.
I've avoided posting for quite a while (got tired of every post turning into an argument). I also wrote most of this post this morning, before the news of RE's imminent retirement and.
Yes, the football program's trajectory over the past decade is a massive problem. Sadly, until things change at a level far higher than the athletic department, there will never be much to look forward to in terms of sustained success, or even success at all.
For reasons that I've never been able to comprehend, any time that UConn has had aspirations (in any field), it has been met with resistance by people within the school, elected officials, people who had some access to media (before the information age and subsequent social media) and private citizens who didn't mind getting loud while voicing their complaints. The idea of the school having ambitions makes a lot of people uncomfortable. This is what needs to change and until it does change we will be climbing a greased rope when trying to build a football program.
I'd wager heavily that when Jim Calhoun said "
it's doable" in response to being questioned about the possibility winning a national championship here, if people actually believed it could be done, they would have sabotaged his career here before it began. Hell, we had to lie about the size of (then yet to be named) Gampel prior to approval.
Yes, we need a change in leadership in the football program but if all we do is hire a new head coach every few years, hoping he can accomplish something we'll never get anywhere. Diaco had to go, he had to go weeks, months before DB pulled the trigger. I'm not sure that anyone who is still allowed unsupervised in public is as detached from reality as Diaco was back then. Benedict unfortunately also has his hands tied at the time he brought RE in. He had extremely limited resources, he needed someone who understood the unique challenges of building a program in the northeast (yes, all programs face challenges, they don't necessarily face the same challenges) and he felt finding someone who had been through it before and had some level of success (something nobody else did here) was at worst a way to stabilize the program. He also placed two young coordinators on the staff (contrary to popular boneyard belief, Crocker was DB's decision, not RE's) to be potential replacements for RE somewhere down the road (for different reasons, neither lasted).
A few things that DB didn't realize:
- How truly depleted (in terms of athleticism) the roster was due to Diaco's recruiting. This played a major role in losing Lashlee (I will address later).
- The manner (almost identical to his first run here) that RE would manage the rebuild (which I had initially hoped he would accomplish a year or so quicker than the original, but unfortunately appears to be running a couple years longer than that one).
- The incompatibility of the talent/athleticism of our defensive personnel with the defense Crocker attempted to install.
- The incompatibility of Lashlee's offense with a defense that couldn't get off the field (Lashlee grudgingly agreed to slowing it down for the sake of the team).
Temple (and Memphis) were able to endure decades of inept football, land a
great hire, reach heights they never could have imagined, lose that
great hire and then slog, along hoping to one day find their next
great hire. We've floundered for a decade (with a minor bowl appearance in that decade) and have been hearing the "we need to drop to FCS" talk for a few years. If our
great hire doesn't come soon, those who want football to fail here (and there are far too many that should want success who would greatly prefer failure) will get their wish.
There are things that I really don't get about the current state of the football program. I realize that resources for the football program currently aren't what we'd like (and until the KO settlement happens this won't change) so the idea that we could have landed Joe Moorhead (currently with Oregon) is ridiculous. I do not however understand why we couldn't have landed his protege (Andrew Breiner, arrived at UConn before Moorehead) who currently works for Butch Davis at FIU.
I don't get that we weren't even able to outplay an FCS school in the trenches. Yes, they had a 300lb guard and a 290lb tackle, rarities for their level but even including them, we faced a team who's linemen (offensive and defensive) were 20-30lbs lighter per man and less athletic than what we will normally face. What happened on both lines of scrimmage yesterday baffles me (and it will be much worse against nearly everyone left on our schedule).
I am amazed at how difficult it is for us to find a QB. The kid HC played at QB (true soph from NY State) is better than anyone we've had here in years and bigger than all but Leon on our roster. When he had to come off the field (his helmet came off), the kid they brought in (also a true soph) had more poise than our starting QB.
I don't get how, with two starting LBs who are really 210lb safeties, we didn't have sufficient speed at LB to stop an FCS school.
After what we've seen the past two weeks it would be insane to continue with Jack Zergiotis at QB. One sad reality is (contrary to boneyard opinion), going into this season there was zero reason to believe that he wasn't clearly the best option. Shy some miracle, our answer at QB is/will be during Tyler Phommachanh's redshirt sophomore season (it would be unreasonable to believe he'd be ready earlier) and with what we currently have on the offensive line, he'd get killed before the middle of next year at the earliest.
Our roster is flush with what appears to be a lot of very young talent. Our next head coach should have a good amount to work with. It will be far easier to increase excitement, enthusiasm towards the program thinking the new regime needs year two to be truly competitive than being told the current regime will get there in two more years. I don't believe that this would be anywhere near as impactful on the players as most believe and it will be entirely for those outside of the roster, but the kids who will be returning next season won't be carrying the baggage of RE's first run with the program, his departure after the Fiesta Bowl, the P years, the Diaco years or the first couple of years of RE II.
We need to make a change but it can't merely be change for the sake of change. Hopefully DB has already been working on a list. While I'm sure that he will be able to communicate the 'difficulties' inherent with the job (having experienced them himself), hopefully the hire will understand them well enough prior to facing them that they won't undermine his ability to succeed. I believe DB can also communicate the positives that success here can bring, hopefully the best candidate will have sufficient vision to see this as this is where we will or will not sell the position.
If you want to be angry about the position we are in, be angry with those who were running the school decades ago that felt competing in the Yankee conference offering fewer football scholarships than many schools offered in basketball was acceptable. Be angry with those who were completely dismissive of the idea of moving up to play 'big boy football' for more than a decade after the D1-D1A split and spent the following half decade ignoring the idea. Be angry with those who responded with enmity when the idea of modeling UConn after the University of Michigan was presented (I saw this first hand in the late 1980's). Be angry with the fact that we were basically rudderless for a decade when we were achieving our greatest success (had either a lame duck, interim or looking for greener pastures president), allowing Hathaway to squander a massive amount of
perception capital built by head coaches who despised his lack of support and his efforts to claim credit for what was accomplished in spite of him, not because of him.
We can't go part-way, thinking we can try something, if it doesn't work, try something new, ending up on a treadmill similar to the past ten years. We can't do a lazy search (Hathaway hiring P). We can't do a cost-effective retread (RE II) no matter how logical it may appear and we absolutely cannot afford someone with a lot of style but little substance (Diaco), even if he doesn't become completely detached to avoid realizing he is in over his head. Contrary to what the naysayers are preaching, there is enough here for us to be competitive in the not too distant future and, at some point become highly competitive. We will however need more than merely a new coach, we will need to fight (and defeat) those who are against the idea of our competing at this level in football.
