Carl I am a young guy, 21 year old junior from NC so I don't really know the history of uconn. I just know part of the reason that there's these crazy rabid fanbases for colleges where i'm from is because they play local teams.
South Carolina opened against UNC this year and plays Clemson every year (which would be considered a regional rivalry game, that as of late has garnered some attention nationally), UF plays FSU, ECU regularly plays UNC, Duke, and State, etc. It's good to play these local OOC games because it helps grow the sport in your area. And to those that say we should be playing games in recruiting areas, how many players from MA do we have on the roster? Wasn't our best linebacker from MA this past season?
I think it's actually a good thing in the long run if we can help keep Umass alive in D1 and have them eventually join our conference again. I guess that's how I'm looking at it. Just imagine the scene it would be having us play a Hockey East game against Umass on Thanksgiving night at XL, bball game there the next day, and after splitting the first two events beating Umass in football in East Hartford and UConn running across the field to grab the trophy and celebrate while the band plays the fight song and the crowd erupts in cheers. After doing it for 5 years maybe BC and RU see how big of a success it is and they decide to make it an even bigger event by joining in.
Doing this athletics series is more than just playing Umass. It makes UConn football, and more importantly, college sports, an event for a whole weekend where people are usually with family and they can make a tradition out of going to these games. People are right when they say we don't have traditions at this level, but why be afraid to make them?
I figured. Here's the hard truth and quick history lesson.
Without the complete dysfunction of the Big East conference from about 1990-2010, UCONN football, and most likely it's entire athletic department, and by extension the university itself, is not where it's at, and we are most likely still on par with our long time new england state instutions like UMass, URI, Maine, UNH, Vermont. WHo knows - maybe hockey would be the dominant sport at UCONN had the Big East conference disbanded in 1991 and not started playign football. No other BCS conference (BCS begain in 1998 - out of a few iterations of similar concepts) would have given UCONN the opportunity we got to upgrade, and that offer came in 1997, and went into effect past point of no return in 2000.
So - without a doubt, we owe the vast majority of the credit as to why the institution has become the place it has, over the past 23 years, to the existence of the Big EAst conference, and our relationship with that conference. THat's the good. THe bad, is that by doing what we did, and playing the hands we were dealt the way we were dealt, we essentially gave up and then lost the concept of having rivalry in football. We gave up our long time rivalries to move. We navigated through different conferences and independance to joining the Big EAst a year early in 2004. THe programs we though we'd be playing all left. New programs came in.
Football scheduling and developing rivalry is a long term commitment. YOu only get 12 games a year, and 8 of those minimum need to be conference games. I bet that if you were to go back and look, that since 1997, we have not played one single program more than 6 or 7 times total. With the constant change in conference membership, we have different schedules every year, for 16 years, which means there has been no chance at all to build rivalry, let alone the kind of specific weekend each year rivalrly you are talking about.
Would I like to have it? What you describe? Yes. Absolutley, but UMass doesn't fit the bill, and the others that would, regionally, are in different conferences and don't have scheduling windows.
Therefore, for people your age, and even older, I would say - to about 30-35 or so, that have followed UCONN football, the concept of having a yearly rivalry game with anyone, is completely foreign. We reached for concepts like a rivalry with University of New Jersey, but they are now gone too.
So - that's the trade-off for making the upgrade, and joining the big boys, although we are conference affiliated, and have been, we are essentially very much like the independants remaining in 1A football, when it comes to being able to schedule a late November rivalry game in 2014-2015 and moving forward.
All of your ideas make perfect sense, and that's why it's kind of heartbreaking for me to read. BUt it's been laid out clearly, we do not have a conference affiliation, that would allow for regularl scheduling of such an opponent that you would like to see. If we do want to build such a late season scheduling arrangement with someone, it's either going to be a new conference member from scratch, or we need to pursue the indpendants that are always looking for late season scheduling, and the only two that make any sense would be Army or BYU, as I noted.
If UMass were to be such an opponent, they would have to rise up to our level, because we are not going back to theirs. To their credit, they're trying...but they are way behind, and it's not looking good.
