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Fans of UConn’s football team haven’t really had a ton to cheer for since the first Randy Edsall Era, and while the program really had nowhere to go but up after hiring Jim Mora prior to the 2022 campaign, it has taken quite a step back after making it to a bowl last year.
UConn has firmly been a Basketball School since the 1990s, and while it’s hard to imagine Jim Mora thought he was going to challenge that sport for the crown when he arrived in Storrs, he’s only cemented that reality thanks to what’s transpired this season.
While a 6-7 record usually isn’t a cause for celebration, 2022 was still a step in the right direction for a Huskies squad that had gone 1-11 in 2021 with its lone win coming over Yale. Unfortunately, UConn was unable to keep that momentum going, as the team is currently 2-9 and a slight favorite to come away with a win over UMass in its final game of the season (a contest you’d need to be a true College Football Sicko to go out of your way to watch).
The dozens of diehard UConn football fans out there are understandably frustrated with how the team has fared this season, but Mora made it clear he doesn’t want to hear any complaints unless they start forking over more money to help them gain a competitive edge.
According to On3, Mora addressed the current state of the program while chatting with the media prior to Saturday’s showdown with the Minutemen, and he became the latest college football coach to say the quiet part out loud while discussing the realities of the NIL Era:
“We’re a better football team with a worse record and that’s extremely frustrating, you know, because you see where the world is going. And we play like I said, go look at the top Group of Five teams in the country and look at their schedule and compare it to our schedule.
So if we’re going to play those teams and people want us to beat Duke and North Carolina State and Syracuse and Maryland next year and Wake Forest next year, then there needs to be a commitment monetarily to helping us get the players that can beat them.
Because if you’re not going to help us get the players to beat them, then you are not entitled to b—- when we don’t beat them.”
UConn is far from the first program to have to grapple with the catch-22 Mora has found himself dealing with, as it’s kind of hard to convince boosters to pour money into a struggling program that’s probably not going to be able to turn things around unless it’s treated to a sizeable influx of cash.
There’s no easy solution, and it seems more than likely UConn will continue to fall on hard times as a result.