There is no one to blame for the national perception of UCONN football but the University and it's representatives themselves - and Randy Edsall. It is what it is. Football - the long term perception of a program - is integral to media coverage and exposure. It's like no other sport on the globe. Times have changed where print is no longer what it was importance wise as little as 30 years ago, but exposure, coverage - through modern media - is just as important - if not MORE important - as it's instantaneous these days.
We rode several years of sustained success, albeit mid-level road success, with bowl victories and NFL players galore to the Fiesta Bowl. THe only thing I will never forgive Randy Edsall for, is for not pushing the successes of the program and what had been done day in and day out in interviews for that entire month (he clearly was already elsewhere) but to have let the program be covered the way it was negatively - never forgive him. It started there.
THe second thing was the local media - who follow this website for their storylines and info. Some people, like me, were all over the structure of the BCS and how it sucks, and yapping about ticket sales and trying to get people to buy up tickets,etc. (because the school was doing nothing)....that comes next.....but the local writers picked up on it. Wrote about it. The national press picked up on it....etc.....and even though the school only sold 2800 or something tickets through the school - we had a lot more than that in ARizona.....but the local media.....I've said my piece about their understanding of what football is, and specifically the lack of knowledge of what an adversarial, damaging relationship between media and football programs does...... So - that was #2 - the local media doing absolutely nothing to push all the good things about the program that we all know.
#3, was the complete failure of the athletic director, the athletic marketing department, and the athletic ticket office to have any understanding of football, and try to move 17,000 tickets and hotel rooms with the same model they use for basketball. On top of that, was their complete failure to monitor and influence anythign in #1 and #2.
Lastly - was the hiring of Pasqualoni in the wake of Edsall spooking out in the middle of the night. Edsall's failure to promote the program and then leave on the night of the bowl game - was a terrible public perception hit. Pasqualoni - I supported the hire - very much. He was a head coach, that I, among many others once highly respected, and was expecting him to be able to reproduce similar results to what he had done in the past - successful similar results. Didn't happen, and the guy has lost any respect whatsoever he had as a head coach.
THe losing that followed in the past 3 seasons, has made any sort of public perception recovery, irrelevant and impossible.
What we need to do is win, and I'm more than confident that we have replaced the people that are #1 and #3 in what I laid out. Remains to be seen on the local media handle any sort of UCONN success. The MO historically has been adversarial for men's hoops and football. That needs to change - but the school has no control over that.
We've changed what we can, now we need our program's coaches and players to change it back to winning on the field.
When we get back to the bowl games on the big stages, things will be different, I'm sure.
Until then, all I can do, is ignore the media idiots that don't know what the reality is about UCONN football, b/c unfortunately, perception is reality.
