BOSTON — Bowl games, for so long the goal of every college football player and coach, for so long an impossible dream for UConn, are becoming an awkward, ambivalent rite of the holiday season, at least to the onlooker.
After so many years of struggling to get here, UConn has been preparing for its second straight trip to the Fenway Bowl with, shall we say, a lot going on.
“It’s been honestly pretty easy,” said Gordon Sammis, the Huskies’ interim head coach for the game against Army, Saturday at Fenway Park at 2:15 p.m. “We’ve got a lot of guys who really love football and want to be here. It has been business as usual in terms of how we run practice. Our guys have been doing this long enough to know how to do things the right way.”
The right way to prepare for a postseason game has become hard to define, the way coaches and players move around. A year ago UConn football was still on an innocent climb, its first winning season in 10 years, savoring the chance to play a bowl game at storied Fenway Park, close enough to campus for thousands of their fans to make the trip, against a power conference opponent, North Carolina. It was easy for coach Jim Mora to build excitement for that game, and UConn won 27-14. The other team was the one in a coaching transition, and playing a make-shift lineup.
From the Fiesta to Fenway: A look at UConn football’s bowl history
This season, UConn did even better, going 9-3, all three losses in overtime. But since the last regular-season game Nov. 22, Mora left for Colorado State, Sammis, put in charge, has taken a job at TCU, and defensive coordinator Matt Brock is headed back to Mississippi State. Coaches are preparing to scatter as new coach Jason Candle is out recruiting and hiring his own staff, and a still undisclosed number of players have opted out of playing, including starting quarterback Joe Fagnano.
However, the Fenway Sports Group was anxious to get UConn back in Boston and approach last year’s attendance, 27,900. They found a another spot for their ACC tie-in team and invited UConn back to play Army, now in the AAC.
Now UConn will play a service academy with a storied football history, where the coaching situation is stable and Cadets can’t just “opt out” of anything, and transfers are an exception, hardly a rule as yet. The West Point seniors, like offensive lineman Ned Brady from New Canaan, will be playing their last four quarters of football, committed to years of military service to come. UConn’s best chance to beat Army (6-6), coming off a loss to Navy in its historic rivalry game, would be to outtalent the Black Knights. Army can be expected to play and hit hard, so UConn must block out any “been there, done that” thoughts and be prepared to match in effort and intensity, or it could be a long game.
“We’ve come a long way as a team and as program,” said UConn tight end Louis Hansen, who will have 100 friends and relative from his hometown near Boston in the stands. “The mission all along has been to win a 10th game, this is an opportunity to go out for our last game together and complete the mission. It could do a lot for the program and show how far we’ve come.”
UConn, since moving up to FBS-level football in the late 1990s, has never won 10 games in a season. But while 10 football programs around the country opted out of playing bowl games, UConn never considered it.
UConn-Army at Fenway Bowl: When West Point was a big football stage and a CT star saved a season
“There’s a bunch of kids on this team that love the game of football, that came to UConn to accomplish a lot of big things, which they’ve done,” AD David Benedict said. “And this is another opportunity for them to do something that has never been done at this level.”
Benedict said UConn has sold more tickets than it did last year, in fact. So the game means something to a significant number of people.
Fagnano, who has a chance to be picked in the NFL Draft, and some of the top offensive linemen will not be playing. Running back Cam Edwards from Norwalk, and receiver Skyler Bell, a consensus All-American projected to be a second- or third-round draft pick, have said they are playing, but there’s no indication of how much they will play.
Sammis said he has been able to “compartmentalize” his remaining duties at UConn with his search for a new job and he needs to hit the ground running at TCU. The offensive coordinator under whom those Fagnano, Bell and Edwards flourished, Sammis would not give away his plans in his first interview since taking over for Mora.
“We’ve got a couple of options, if I have to, I’ll go out there and finish the game,” Sammis deadpanned. “I can still hand it off and not pull something. We’ve got a plan, a couple of guys ready to go. The beauty of having this time off, we can have guys with multiple reps ready, we can have multiple plans to be able to do what we have to do to win the game.”
If Nick Evers, the most experienced quarterback, were going to start, UConn would likely have said so. If he is not available, freshman Ksaan Farrar, who played a handful of plays on Oct. 4, would be Plan A. Tucker McDonald, the other QB, has been out with a hand injury. Sammis could run some “wildcat” plays where the ball is snapped directly to a running back.
The NCAA transfer portal opens just after New Year’s, and many UConn players are expected to enter, though some just to gauge their value with hope to come back under the new coaching staff. This is common in college football today, but a position UConn fans, their team reaching only one bowl game between 2010 and 2022, never imagined to find the Huskies. But the upheaval, the cold and possibly snowy weather, along with an Army team that can be counted upon to take this game very seriously are all in front of them to be surmounted.
“We worked so hard during the offseason,” defensive back D’Mon Brinson said. “We practiced hard to get out there and finish the job. Who wants to do all that work and not go out there? That’s what we’re taking into this game as our mind set, finishing the job.”