TMG Newsmaker of Week: Jim Mora
He came out of exile last winter, looking for a new and perhaps last chance. He talked the talk that all new coaches talk. Things would get better, everyone would work harder and anything was possible.
But this was not just another bottom feeding FBS team. This was a team without a coach, without a league, without much support and minimal funding.,
This was the University of Connecticut Huskies, who had compiled a 4-32 record over the past three years, including a 1-11 wipeout last season in which then coach Randy Edsall pulled the plug on his own dream of reviving a program he had originally built into a Fiesta Bowl participant a decade earlier.
But there it was on Saturday in a result lost in the glitter of the Top 10. No. 19 Liberty, fresh off an upset victory over Arkansas, LOSING a 36-33 decision to UCONN, coached by Jim Mora.
More startling was UConn's record, a somewhat gaudy 6-5, which made the Huskies, who are competing as an independent, which means no guaranteed post season slot, bowl eligible.
Up next is a game vs. 3-6 Army and then a bowl invitation if a spot opens up.
It is a story worth noting, worth getting Mora, whose last stop was at UCLA a tenure which ended with defeat and some controversy, serious Coach Of The Year consideration.
It also earned him TMG's Newsmaker of the Week honors.