EAST HARTFORD — With kickoff still three hours away, the lines were long down Silver Lane. Thousands of cars already in the parking lots, tailgaters outside Rentschler Field were sprawled as far as the eyes could see.
This is what a Saturday college football morning should look and feel like. The weather ideal, the UConn season opener, against nearby Central Connecticut, was meant to be an event, even if the game, itself, was expected to be, well, uneventful. (Spoiler: It was.)
In this part of the country, where college football doesn’t bring out the religious fervor it does elsewhere, this is where it gets a little murky. There are places where the mere staging of a college football game is enough for 100,000 people to show up, grill their meat, then extinguish the coals and get into their seats for the kickoff. Doesn’t matter if the opponent is a level lower, or what the record is, it’s college football season, that’s what it is.
Skyler Bell sparks UConn football to dominant 59-13 win over Central Connecticut in opener
Northeasterners, New Englanders, Nutmeggers have to be continually sold, convinced, with so many other options for the sports-and-entertainment dollar. With this is mind, UConn did all it could Saturday. They distributed 37,594 tickets, the fifth highest total in program history, the largest number at Rentschler Field since 2013.
Good right?
But the stadium holds about 40,000, and never looked 90-95 percent full and frenzied, like it does for some international soccer matches, and the one-sided nature of the game naturally drained the energy out of the building. By the eyeball test, there were probably about 25,000, not insignificant, but not like 38,000 in the seats screaming would have been.
The Huskies, after a stumbling start, won in a romp, 59-13. The program is not so far removed from the seasons of one or two wins, when not even games like this were givens, to take such a day for granted. Though it seems like something out of a misty nightmare deep in the past, it was only four years ago, the second game of the 2021 season, when the program hit rock bottom with a loss here to Holy Cross that prompted Randy Edsall to retire.
Under Jim Mora, the former NFL coach, UConn football has been resurgent, despite the jokes, the calls for its elimination and the fashionable notion that there is no future as an independent in the world of big time football. Without a conference affiliation, UConn misses out on tens of millions of dollars in football-specific TV revenue. This is all considered by many to be “unsustainable;” one hears that a lot, but UConn continues to sustain itself, thriving in men’s and women’s basketball and playing competitively at high levels in nearly all other sports, and that now includes football.
The Huskies, who won only 10 games between 2016-21, most against teams on CCSU’s level, won nine games in 2024, including the Fenway Bowl, beating North Carolina.
All this would generate buzz for the dawn of a new season in other parts of the country, but Connecticut is still a Show-Me State when it comes to college football, and old habits and perceptions die hard here.
Under Mora, the Huskies live in the moment, control what they can. In front of them Saturday was an in-state opponent, a competitive FCS program that was overmatched in size, speed and skill by the athletes UConn is able to recruit and retain with name-image-likeness revenue opportunities and direct payments. Skyler Bell, who had five catches for 135 yards and two scores, a receiver the Huskies landed in the transfer portal from Wisconsin, and held despite overtures and inducements from the likes of Michigan, was the best player on the field.
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Bell, running backs Cam Edwards and Mel Brown, among others, were shedding tacklers at the line of scrimmage and outracing Central defenders to the end zone, or close to it, throughout the game and the crowd, those that made it into the stadium proper, ate it up.
The first step for UConn is to fill its student section behind the end zone, get the students to board busses and ride the 23 miles from campus to East Hartford. On Saturday, that box was checked, the section behind the end zone was full and loud and when quarterback Joe Fagnano scored on their end, he was able to gesture and celebrate with them. By the third quarter, many had drifted off and apparently headed back to campus, or home for the Labor Day weekend.
“It’s always nice to see the student section filled up, they bring the energy,” Fagnano said. “Going into the end zone and seeing that, it was pretty exciting. They bring the juice every week. I hope it stays like that.”
The rest of the stadium was not packed, not shoulder-to-shoulder, fanny-to-fanny packed. The tickets were sold, but many fans either did not come, came in late, left early, stayed out by their cars or wandered the concourse. This UConn can change with a string of victories against teams that represent some stature to fans in Connecticut, like Syracuse next week on the road.
“Syracuse is a little bit different level of football than CCSU,” Mora said, “and as they proved last year (a 31-24 UConn loss) at that point, a different level than us. So we have to narrow the gap. It presents a great challenge we embrace, we want that challenge. That’s what’s exciting, to have an opportunity to play a team like that.”
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There was not much to be learned, not much to say about this game. UConn, three touchdown favorites, simply looked and played the way it was supposed to look and play against Central Connecticut. The Blue Devils go back to New Britain with a paycheck, their pride intact, hopefully healthy, to play the teams in their league the rest of the season. The Huskies worked out the kinks, the opening-game jitters, and get ready for a much tougher opponent and more meaningful game, at 0-1 Syracuse, next week. Win there, and there’ll be more excitement when UConn next plays at Rentschler Field Sept. 20.
As an independent, UConn has some control over who it plays, but just cannot offer fans a schedule full off opponents that make one circle the Saturdays. Ball State, Florida International, Alabama-Birmingham, Duke and Air Force come to East Hartford, but only Duke on Nov. 8 is that circle-the-date game, if the Huskies play well the next two months. Only winning, as in winning just about every week, could move the needle with this slate of games.
So on balance, the current state of UConn football shows it has come a long, long way in four years, and this was another good day. But the work of getting a prominent place on the Connecticut’s cultural calendar, getting folks in their seats — and on the edge of them — is ongoing.
