University of Connecticut Athletics
A Bright Future for UConn Football
5/12/2020 11:58:00โฏPM | Football
When UConn made the monumental decision last June to rejoin the Big East conference, it was met with widespread praise. The Huskies would be back in a conference that is more geographically convenient, more competitive for basketball and more appealing to the fanbase. The lone concern was the future of the football program, since the Big East no longer sponsors football. Well, almost a year later those concerns have been mitigated as UConn embarks on its journey as a football independent.
On Monday, athletic director David Benedict and head coach Randy Edsall talked to the media via a video conference after a new TV deal was announced, through which CBS Sports will broadcast UConn football home games through the 2023 season. Both expressed a lot of hope and optimism for the program's future as an independent.
Edsall said that he believes there are two major factors to success in college football without a conference. The first is securing a TV package, which this deal accomplishes.
"To be able to put yourself in the situation โฆ to have this kind of an agreement with CBS Sports Network to have our games televised nationally on linear TV is big," Edsall said. "From a recruiting standpoint, it's something that will aid us as we head into independence in football."
The second factor is scheduling, which is something that Benedict and the athletic department have worked tirelessly to put together over the past several months.
"When you take a look at the scheduling that we've been able to do over the next five years, it's a schedule that will put us at least in position to be able to go out and recruit the student-athletes that we're going to need in order to be able to compete against that schedule," Edsall said.
The Huskies' future schedules contain games against national powerhouses like Clemson and Ohio State, as well as other prominent Power Five programs like Michigan, Tennessee and Ole Miss. Benedict said the flexibility that comes with being independent is what allowed him to put schedules like that together.
"We have 12 games that we can work with as opposed to four," Benedict said. "When you have that, I think one of the things that became very clear is that there's a lot of individual schools around the country that have particular challenges and/or needs with their scheduling โฆ We could identify those situations and provide flexibility enough to basically get things done, which helped us as well as helped them."
Edsall said that Benedict reached out to him last June and asked for his input on who the team should play, and Edsall said he made a list of schools that he thought would be beneficial to playย based on recruiting and building a strong independent program. He said he used UConn's 2002 and 2003 schedules as a reference, since those were seasons that UConn played as an independent as well.
Edsall said these new developments are already paying dividends on the recruiting trail.
"Myself and our coaching staff, we've really sat down quite a bit and talked a lot about what's going to be our message and how are we gonna market what we're doing," Edsall said. "By telling [recruits] that we felt good about the television package, but then you tell them the schedule that we're playing and how we're going to play more Power Five teams now than what we would've if we had stayed where we were previously, that made a big impact with the kids we're talking to."
One of the more underrated parts of the new TV deal is that UConn will know the times of its games well in advance, and they will mostly fall in the noon and 3:30 p.m. windows. Edsall said that benefits not only the team but also the fans so they can plan their schedules ahead of time and know when the games are going to be.
In addition, several games will now be broadcast to far more people via linear TV channels as opposed to a digital-only platform like ESPN 3 or ESPN+. This makes the games significantly more accessible to masses of people, which will benefit the team and program.
This TV deal is huge for UConn football, and it probably wouldn't have been possible without the terrific scheduling UConn has done in a relatively short time. And Benedict said all of it would not have been possible without the UConn brand.
"I really believe in the brand of UConn," Benedict said. "That's been built over a long period of time. But this deal today that we're announcing as well as the schedule we're putting together all links to the brand of our incredible university โฆ It came together and I'm excited about it and I look forward to moving onto the next challenge."
