The UConn football program hit rock bottom when it lost to Holy Cross at home in 2021. It was an embarrassment. Questions swirled about whether the program would be better off giving up its FBS dreams, whether it would win a single game that season – eventually it did, despite its best effort to give up a 21-0 lead against Yale, another FCS opponent, and finished 1-11 with Jim Mora waiting in the wings, daring to start working on what he called the “Husky Revolution.”
Three and a half years later, the program is a win away from clinching its third bowl bid with Mora steering the ship. With two more wins, UConn will have secured consecutive winning seasons for the first time since 2010, the year it made the Fiesta Bowl.
And after Saturday’s win at Boston College, the program’s first while visiting a power conference opponent since 2012, there was no sense of surprise.
“We prepare in a way that we expect to win no matter who we’re playing,” Mora said.
UConn – 10-1 against Group of Five opponents and competitive in five of six high-major games over the last two seasons – has risen from being the laughing stock of the FBS to a place in the college football hierarchy just outside the Power Four. If a major conference is looking to add, the independent Huskies would have to be in that conversation.
How did they get there?
It’s been the perfect combination of inspiring buy-in, adapting to professionally maximize the benefits of NIL and the transfer portal, finding and bringing in the right people to get the results on the field.
Dom Amore: Jim Mora has uplifted UConn football. His players returned the favor after his 100th win
Mora recognized that the Huskies were undersized and overmatched when they lost in Chestnut Hill during a rough 2023 season. He was honest when he said the program would need more money to spend in order to compete. When this year’s team took the same field on Saturday, the Huskies looked the part.
“(Building a team) is just part of my DNA, I don’t really know anything different,” Mora said Tuesday. “I think that’s given us a real advantage here. The fact that I was successful in the NFL, and I was around Bill Walsh, and I was around Bobby Beathard, and I was around Mike Holmgren, and I was around Jim Finks – guys that are in the Hall of Fame – and I was around Dick Vermeil and Carl Peterson and I got to see how they set up a franchise. This is a franchise now with the portal and NIL, it’s very much like an NFL franchise so I’m pretty well-versed in doing what we’re doing at this time in college football.”
According to On3’s transfer portal database, more than 3,300 players entered the transfer portal in 2024 and more than 4,100 went looking for a new team in 2025.
UConn’s personnel staff has scoured the lists and has seen its bets pay off on players like Skyler Bell, Wes Hoeh, Durrell Robinson, Jordan Wright, Jayden McDonald and more last offseason. Replacing almost its entire starting defense and loading at the skill positions this year, players like Bryun Parham (No. 4 nationally in sacks), Tyquan King, Juice Vereen and Raymello Murphy have all made a significant impact.
And the Huskies have done it without the power conference tag or the revenue that comes with it. They’ve done it without a conference at all.
“It’s just finding guys that maybe are overlooked, that are looking for an opportunity to level-up or maybe an opportunity to get more playing time. They’re brought to the table and we evaluate with the staff. You have to work rather quickly in the portal because it just happens so fast,” Mora said. “We have position parameters and character traits that we lean heavily on and don’t really stray from, and we go try to find guys that fit the profile of the type of player and person that we want. And then we attack with aggression.
“And certainly in this day and age, if you don’t have money, it doesn’t matter. You have to have money because they’re all getting paid, and fortunately there have been people here at UConn over the last couple of years that have made a difference for us and will continue to do so. We have to go out during the season and we have to prove our worth by winning games, which, over the last three and a half year we’ve been able to do. Just try to find the hidden gem. Find somebody that is looking for an opportunity to be coached by a head coach that spent 28 years in the NFL and coached 56 Hall of Famers and knows what greatness looks like. That’s what you do.”
