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Lots of ways you can describe what "rivalry" is. For me, for it to exist, there needs to be two things - consistency in scheduling, and mutual fan interest. Yale Columbia games have been played every year that Yale Harvard games get played, but Yale Columbia isn't drawing 60k into the Yale Bowl of people that are Yale and Columbia fans. It's also a much different thing in the northeast, than something in the South. You can get huge 'rivalry' games in the south, where the entire 65,000+ stadium has fans for only one of the programs in the seats - vast majority. That kind of environment doesn't exist in northern football where things are closer together. Look at Army Navy - Harvard Yale - Michigan Ohio-State -etc. and you get arenas that are packed with fans from both sides.
UConn football had rivals for many, many years. The fan bases were small, northeastern based groups of 10k-15k people at most. We gave that level of football up to upgrade b/w 1997-2000, and we now have a 40,000 seat venue waiting to be expanded and are scheduling whoever we can regionally and nationally that fits what we are.
Because of the way things turned out for UCONN from 1997 through current, with the constantly changing conference membership every 2-3 years at most, come 2014...we simply do not have anything in football scheduling that can be even remotely be called a "rivalry", and what we have here with young student Drew, is a 21 year old kid that has recognized that is something that UCONN football doesn't have, and wants it.
Looking at the 2014 home schedule, off the top of my head, I don't think we've played a single program we have at home in 2014, more than 8 times EVER, I think Cincy and Temple qualify for the most games played, which isn't a lot for either, especially if you only consider post 2000 years, most of them are first or second time. We've had schedules each year since 1997, that are similar in such characteristics - programs with very little history between matchups, and that's 16 years and counting.
It is what it is - trying to manufacture such a thing as a UCONN football rivalry is foolish though. It's ok that we don't have it.
What we need to do, is simply go out and win. THen win more, and win some more after that. It's also been touched on that thanksgiving weekend in CT is a bad idea - I agree. Students aren't around, and for local high school football, whatever you think of it - thanksgiving is the most important time.
Filling our home stadium, and filling arenas on the road, any time, any weekend, is entirely about us- and winning. Embrace it. Love it.
