EAST HARTFORD – Jason Candle saw a foundation in place within the UConn football program and an opportunity to build on the momentum that was built over the last four years under Jim Mora.
The new head coach was officially introduced with more than 200 spectators in attendance at a press conference at Rentschler Field on Monday after he was sold on the pitch from UConn Director of Athletics David Benedict and took a ride around the state late last week. He was joined by his wife Nicole, daughter, Avery, and sons, Cameron and Colton – his young children like dogs, “a good start,” Benedict noted, and eventually left the building with their own plush versions of the Huskies’ mascot.
Candle left the building with an urge to get started.
“You look for these opportunities, you have different positions or different job opportunities that may pop up and it’s not often that you get an opportunity to be at one that had a winning season, that has the foundation to grow,” he said. “You ask yourself, can you make an impact, can you enhance it and can you make it better? I think if the starting point is further down the line, it makes for an easier transition.
“This is never gonna be easy, let’s not get that confused, but I think a good foundation, what Coach Mora and his staff have been able to do to this point in time, the players in that locker room and then obviously the alignment from the administration and how they see this thing going, I think it really aligned with how I see it and what our goals will be.”
Five things to know about Jason Candle, the new UConn football head coach
Candle, who never had a losing season in his 10 years as head coach at Toledo, will spend the next several weeks putting together his staff, getting to know the players on the current roster and beginning to build his first UConn team. The Huskies, meanwhile, will continue their preparation for the Fenway Bowl under the leadership of interim head coach Gordon Sammis, who would like to finish the team’s historic 2025 season with 10 wins for the first time in the program’s FBS era.
“I think this is a tremendous opportunity, a place that has accomplished so much in the last couple of years, but to a certain extent, to have the opportunity to maybe wake up the echoes of the past too and maybe what this looks like and take this into a different era of college football,” Candle said. “It’s a proud day to be a Husky and I’m super excited to be your football coach. I can’t wait to get this thing kicked off.”
What stood out from Candle’s introduction:
On building his staff
Many of Candle’s assistants at Toledo have been with him for several years. He said he anticipates some of them joining him in Storrs.
“I think that you want structure and continuity around you,” he said. “We were one of the few places in the country the last couple years that retained all our players and retained our staff. And I think that, if that part of it – I always go back to the other 353 days, if those days are smooth, then those 12 game day opportunities are smooth, too, and then usually that allows you to create another one. I also do believe though that it has to fit the place and it has to mesh and merge with what you’re walking yourself into. It’s not about me, it’s about this place and getting this place right.”
Retention from current roster ‘critically important’
Candle will spend the next few days getting to know UConn’s current roster and working on keeping however many players he can.
“As I mentioned, we’re not walking into a situation here where the program’s on life support. The key is to keeping it off of that, because your rosters get raided, there’s tampering all over college football and the minute a coaching change happens, that seems to be like a green light for everybody to jump,” he said. “You’ve got to work hard on building those relationships, we’ve got to earn those players’ trust. This is not my program, this is their program.
“They’ve put a lot of time and energy and sweat equity into building that and we want to be able to provide a vision that would want them to stay. Some will, some won’t, and then from there we’ve got to fill the holes that we lose with our own guys. That’s the world of college football today, and that’s more of an art than a science.”
Approach to recruiting, development
Just last week, Candle and his staff signed the highest-rated recruiting class in Mid-American Conference history for the third year in a row. He expects at UConn to continue his focus on developing high school athletes while filling holes to create a competitive team through the transfer portal.
“Recruiting’s recruiting. You’ve got to go work at it. You can still outwork people in recruiting, in my opinion. And I think even more important than recruiting is development. You have to have a good development plan, you have to be able to provide an opportunity and a vision,” he said. “We’ve got a tremendous track record of that, we’ve had a lot of guys that developed through our program that weren’t very highly-recruited players, really from all over the country.
“I’d love to build it inside out (with in-state recruiting), I’d love to work that way. Obviously we’ll tap back into the roots of the relationships that we currently have with current players.”
Surrounding himself with winners
Candle, whose recruitment included efforts from basketball coaches Geno Auriemma and Dan Hurley, seems to be embracing the school’s championship tradition and the brand recognition that has come from the other side of Jim Calhoun Way.
“I want to surround myself with winners and I think I found a perfect place to do that, so I’m really excited to be part of that. … I’m going to lean on them guys, I’m gonna do a good job of making sure I’m a fly on the wall as much as they’ll have me around to see what the secret sauce is here that keeps hanging banners in those arenas. I look forward to locking arms with them and making this department as strong as it could be,” he said.
“During our season we’re gonna put energy into our team and do a really good job of that, and then when our season’s done, we’re gonna go support those programs and every sport across the department. They’ve paved the way and shown it can be done at a high level here. Indiana’s a great example of (a ‘basketball school’) flipping the script from a program that maybe was on life support and Coach Cignetti has done a good job of reviving that and they’re playing at a really high level right now. So you’d be foolish not to pay attention to that blueprint and watch it and see what you can add to your own program.”