A Jersey Guy: UConn FB RIP?
Randy Edsall has always followed his own compass in making major career decisions.
Forty one years ago he came out of Syracuse as a quarterback good enough to play at the collegiate level, but not good enough to succeed in the National Football League.
Edsall knew that immediately and spent the next 10 years honing his skills as an assistant coach..
Edsall had mentors--such as potential Hall of Fame coach Tom Coughlin--who guided his career as he meandered from college football, into the NFL and back into college football...
Finally, in 1999, Edsall was ready to take the next step when he was hired by UConn in 1999 with a task that seemed daunting..
""He was the right person, at the right time, in the right place,'' said Lew Perkins, who was then the athletic director at the University of Connecticut, whose prime task was to take the Huskies from the FCS (then 1-AA) to the FBS (1A) level.
Perkins, now retired and living in Lawrence, Kansas, felt that UConn, which was a major power in men's and women's basketball, felt that the overall success of the entire athletic program depended on football being a major factor at the FBS level.
'"It scared me a little,'' said Perkins, who left UConn to become the AD at Kansas, ""that we were doing so well in the other sports, but ne needed football to be part of that success as well.
Moving up in divisions wasn't easy then, nor is it now, but it takes both commitment and vision to see beyond next month or next year.
Perkins had it and so did Edsall as a program was built piece by piece, culminating in 2010 with a bid to the Fiesta Bowl, one of CFB's major bowl bids.
It had taken 11 years, but UConn and Edsall had accomplished something that programs in the Big East such as Pitt, Rutgers, and Syracuse had not done in the BCS playoff era of college football..
The program was thriving.
The Huskies were ,playing in a stadium which had been built in 40,000 off campus stadium (Rentschler Field) , owned by the state but committed to UConn in a 20 year lease.
I remember, as a reporter at the Boston Globe, visiting UConn early in Edsall's first stay at UConn. The football offices consisted of a trailer in the parking lot of the school's ,modern basketball arena, Gampel Pavillion..
""It's going to be really good,'' said Edsall on a rainy afternoon. "We can get this done. We have the commitment from the school and the state.''
But by 2011 some things had changed.
Perkins was gone and there seemed to be other priorities.
The sense of urgency in getting things done the right way had diminished.
Edsall trusted his compass again, feeling perhaps that a ceiling at UConn had been reached and prompted by interest from a few other schools in the ACC and Big Ten.
Edsall chose to leave a program that was at the top of its games, rather than one that was struggling and he left--for the University of Maryland--on his own terms, although the way that he handled his departure irritated some people and surprised others..
Since that moment 10 years ago, nothing at UConn football has been as good and both UConn football and Edsall's coaching career have spun in the wrong direction.
The latest episode occurred earlier when Huskie football sank into the abyss of losing a home game to a ;middle of the road FCS team in Holy Cross.
That was soon followed by Esdall's announcement that he was retiring at the end of the season, which quickly morphed into his resignation, effective immediately.
With a nomadic life as an independent in football and a lack of leadership or vision internally as well as little help elsewhere, UConn football appears to be on life support, with almost no chance of recovery.
Edsall's departure is the second time he has left UConn.
He came back in 2017 after five largely mediocre years at Maryland ad a one year stint back in the NFL with the Detroit Lions as an assistant (a job he basically took to get vested in the NFL pension fund) .
What he found was chaos.
Big East football had been replaced by a patch quill league called the American Athletic Conference, which formed after the ACC gobbled up Pittsburgh and Syracuse, but not UConn,
UConn was part of that discussion, but there was enough opposition from Boston College, not wanting to share part of the New England revenue pie with UConn, which proved to be the first of a series of moves which seems likely to be fatal to UConn football..
It got worse.
The campus sports scene was torn by many people longing for the days when natural rivals in the Big East such as Syracuse, Boston College and Providence had been replaced by schools such as East Carolina, UCF, and Tulsa..
It was bad enough in football, but worse in basketball.
A last hurrah flirtation with the Big 12 never developed.
When Edsall returned he saw a state of the program which was worse or as bad as when he had arrived for the first time 18 years earlier.
There was little vision and then there was a rupture when the school administrators voted to rejoin the Big East in all other sports than football.
Edsall saw it coming and couldn't do anything about it.
The AAC not wanting UConn as a partial member, without the glitter of basketball, gave the Huskies their exit papers.
Unless you are a school with a national reputation such as Army, BYU, or Notre Dame, life as an independent in football is a mission impossible.
Scheduling is a challenge, without a league affiliation there are no bowl game tie ins as safety nets.
Two years ago, playing a combination of schools from the Big Ten and the AAC , UConn finished 2-10 overall and 0-8 in their final year in the AAC.
Last year was a wipe out since Edsall, again following his own compass decided life as an independent and COVID-19 issues was too much
The Huskies shut the program down in August..
This season quickly turned from partly cloudy to a monsoon with a one-sided shut out loss at Fresno State and then on Sunday, the loss to Holy Cross.
Edsall, who had privately decided that once his five year contract expired on Dec. 1 he would retire, had had enough.
He was sobered by watching coaching colleague Mack Brown, attempting a second stint coaching job at North Carolina, seemingly age along the sidelines as they were upset by Virginia Tech in their opener.
Brown had a Top 10 pre-season team, while Huskies had a bottom 125-130 squad..
How much fun could another year of this be.
There were some potential wins against teams such as Yale and UMass but the regular season had an ending which included back to back games on the road at Clemson and UCF.
Enough was enough and Edsall had enough, which begs the ultimate question.
What's next for UConn football, which is a 33 point home underdog to a so so Purdue team on Saturday?.
Dropping the sport is the most financially feasible move, but UConn is committed to play some kind of football at Rentschler Field through the 2022 season.
Dropping back to the FCS level is another money loser with even less interest to the campus base.
UConn FB RIP 2023 sounds about right.
Edsall leaves for his home in Florida with mixed feelings
He spent 16 years of his life and career in Storrs chasing a dream that he had in his grasp for an instant and then disappeared.
" I spent 41 years of my life in this business,'' he said earlier this week. ""It's time to do something else.''
His compass was pointing south.