I'm not trolling. And honestly - it's my fault, I quasi-brought it up, and apologies for dragging this onto this board...
But. Look. I'm 90% of the time a 'hope floats' guy. But I just can't be given an extended run of results and looking at the big picture as to where the program is.
We're legitimately one of - if not THE worst program in Division-1 football right now. That's where we're at - almost 20 years into this - and that's where the program was. Had a nice rise, couldn't sustain it for reasons anyone who follows college football for five minutes could understand and we're honestly right where we should be - for a variety of reasons.
The optimistic take is:
You're looking at a minimum 4-5 year rebuild just to get to the point where MAYBE, we're .500. That's at least 4-5 years of trying to sell a terrible product to a lot of people who've clearly checked out already, running up huge deficits in the process... and that's assuming of course - that you can actually find talent in a region where there's no cultural affinity for college football on a meaningful level, a low talent base and in spite of that - there's still four or five other schools you can go to so you can collect concussions against better opposition. And that's not even getting into the walking, talking PR hit the program is for the school every week. From the big losses, to the empty stadiums to the absolutely delusional, silly and flat out stupid things their latest and not so greatest hires are saying on a given day.
That's IF you can get talent, IF you can overcome being branded not only a loser - but a super loser, IF you can sell tickets to games absolutely no one wants to see and have students (future alumni) be OK with the increases in their student fees every year so that football can continue its self-immolation. IF all that happens - then maybe you get not terrible enough to get consideration.
And I don't want to hear a single, stupid thing about throwing more money into it. Randy Edsall got like $28k last week in incentives for losing to UMass and not throwing the ball once. Swear to god. They have a gorgeous new practice facility that hasn't paid dividends, a new stadium that's consistently empty is will be staying that way for a while, an increasingly perturbed 'fan base' and students who don't care. We actually might be worse now than we were when we started.
Even the flipping tailgating scene sucks. Because of rules and guidelines these dorks put in place. They can't even get drunk the right way. This is where we're at. At least at UMass, the tailgating scene is decent. Nothing UConn brings to the table from a football standpoint creates any value for anyone. Full stop. It's a worthless liability that is part of the package you hope you can deal with if you're a P5 conference.
UConn's biggest problem is that it's a victim of its own success. Success in Hoops came easily because we lucked into two generational coaches only a few years apart. Other programs certainly benefitted from that as well. But football isn't basketball. Whatever gate keepers there are in hoops - they're nothing compared to the gate keepers in football. Hoops, soccer and the like - they had a fertile recruiting ground to dig up recruits, a conference that was motivated and growing, organic, cultural rivalries rooted in regional communities..... All the ingredients were there for someone to succeed and we nailed it with both Calhoun and Gino. But the down side of that is that it's dumb people's views of how easy this stuff is to do. We did it inexplicably easily and to our credit - with two+ programs. But football ain't basketball and the conditions on the ground for football are almost the exact opposite of what they were for basketball.
And to boot - I'm an 100% confident that no one that's presently at UConn, from the AD on down - to their coaching staff - has the creativity or capability to pull it off and turn the program around. Football's best hope is that Danny Hurley turns around the basketball program to the point where it buys people patience. That'll keep noses barely above water and keep the longshot at the longshot still alive. It'll also create an escape hatch for when the school is finally at the point the rest of the country's at - and pulls the plug on football and goes to the new Big East.
That's football's only shot. The basketball coach.
