BOSTON — Last year, UConn celebrated the victory at the Fenway Bowl in the moment. During the jubilant postgame, senior Durante Jones repeated over and over, “Why not us?”
“We’re just like everybody else,’” Jones said after the 27-14 victory over North Carolina. “We might not be in a conference, but we got the fans. We play the same type of football; good, smash-mouth football. We’re just like everybody else.”
As the Huskies return to the Fenway Bowl, it could be said the UConn football program is closer than ever to being “just like everybody else.” They’ve followed up with another successful season, and have the issues that go with such upstart success: Coaches being poached, players opting out. It’s no longer about making a bowl game, but asking which one?
For UConn, Boston and Fenway Park, is a pretty natural fit, even if it was 12 degrees when they walked out onto the balcony overlooking the historic ballpark on Friday.
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“We couldn’t be happier,” AD David Benedict said. “If you asked four years ago, we were just hoping to get to a bowl game. Now we’re worried about what the weather is?”
What the Huskies are experiencing this month are first-world college football problems, the ones that come with being taken seriously. UConn football is no longer a national punchline, no longer a program for incremental wins to be exulted in the moment, but rather, a program playing the long game. It’s not about arriving at this point, it’s about where the Huskies are headed.
In the tumult of the last month, with Jim Mora leaving and Jason Candle hired, the program’s forward progress has not been stalled, it’s just shifting gears.
“This is a big-time bowl game,” Benedict said. “The folks at the Wasabi Fenway Bowl do a fantastic job. It’s an elevated bowl game. We’re actually playing in place of an ACC opponent this year, not to be confused with an AAC opponent. When you’re playing in a Power 4 slot, that means something, to have this bowl pursue having UConn come back a second time, means something to me.
“I would expect and hope it means something to our team.”
How much it means we will learn Saturday, when the Huskies and Black Knights of Army kick off in the shadow of the Green Monster. But however it plays out with a UConn team weakened by various defections, particularly quarterback Joe Fagnano, it won’t have much bearing on what is to come.
Candle is out recruiting, has been flipping players from his highly regarded recruiting haul at Toledo over to UConn, notably quarterback Bo Polston, and bringing in assistants. Nunzio Campanile, coming from Syracuse as offensive coordinator, as ESPN reported Friday, could be an impactful get for Candle and the Huskies.
Campanile, of the New Jersey Campaniles, has three brothers coaching there. His father, Mike, coached powerhouse teams at Paramus Catholic; one brother, Anthony, is coaching in the NFL. Nunzio coached at Bergen Catholic, joined the staff at Rutgers, where he rose to be an interim head coach, and then moved to Syracuse, where he has done some impressive work with transfer quarterbacks like Kyle McCord and Kenny Angeli. This could open up New Jersey recruiting and the transfer quarterback market in ways UConn has not found open before.
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UConn will probably be younger next year. Candle will have to work the transfer portal to replenish the experience the program will be losing, but his track record as a recruiter of traditional high school talent could make the program (slightly) less reliant on transfers. Now it’s about building something to last.
With Mora moving on to Colorado State, a job he had wanted since 2019, and offensive coordinator Gordon Sammis moving onto that role to TCU, it is clear UConn, considered a dead-end job as an independent in 2021, can now be seen as a viable career move for talented young coaches. That will make continuity of success possible, if you look at Boise State’s history, even if there is frequent transition in the people running the program.
The most important issue on UConn’s table, though, is the perpetual realignment of conferences. UConn has positioned itself as somewhere between the Group of Six and the lower rung of the Power 4, the ACC. Three competitive losses in 2024 and the Fenway Bowl victory over North Carolina was one step.
Wins over Boston College and Duke this season took it a little further. An invitation may not come tomorrow, but it’s not hard to believe it will come eventually. Why not them? So for those wondering, UConn would have been unwise to ruffle any feathers by opting out of a bowl bid, regardless of the climate, the depth chart or the opponent.
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“There was never any question in my mind as to what our intent was,” Benedict said. “(It is) a very difficult situation. These transitions at this particular moment, not that transitions were ever easy, but when you mix in the transfer portal, windows, revenue (sharing), it just brings in a lot of different elements, you have a lot of things going in, it creates a lot of things people get distracted by.”
Look, it could be a rough day for UConn, depending on who plays and how much they play, but a second straight trip to the Fenway Bowl, replacing an ACC also-ran this time, is another move, if an awkward one, in an upward trajectory.
“You don’t get the call from the Wasabi Fenway Bowl that they’d like to have you back if you haven’t elevated your program and brand,” Benedict said. “Part of that is the kind of support you get. I’m very proud of the progress we’ve made the last four years. When we hired Coach Mora, I don’t think anyone would have been unhappy with what he accomplished. Yes, we’ve made a lot of progress, and (Saturday) is another opportunity to put an exclamation point on that progress. The program has been elevated in a way that, nationally, we are a relevant, respected program.”