As UConn Football Seeks Way Forward, Big Time College Football Comes and Goes

The reference to University of Connecticut football was succinct and unflattering.

“They can’t draw anybody to games, they have no natural rivalries and they’re not very good,” said Peter Roby, former Athletic Director at Northeastern University.  “Is that what people want?”

UConn was cited as the poster child for choosing big-time college football to dubious result, at a time when some institutions of higher education are choosing to add football, while others are dropping the sport – with the opposite approaches nevertheless bringing results that add to the bottom line and offer other positive consequences for their schools.

Those circumstances were the subject of a front page feature in the sports section of The New York Times this week, which focused on the divergent paths of Northeastern University in Boston, which dropped the sport in 2009, and Anna Maria College in nearby Paxton, MA, which added football that same year.  Both schools have progressed nicely in the decade since, and are pleased with the decision they made.

Roby, who determined to abandon Division I football at Northeastern a decade ago and subsequently retired last year, pointed to UConn as evidence of the correctness of his university’s decision.  The Times noted that UConn “in recent years invested heavily in football to compete at the highest level in the NCAA.  The program has struggled to attract fans and is 11-45 in the also-ran American Athletic Conference since 2013.”

UConn, in fact, will be leaving the conference next year, forging a new identity as an independent team, aligned with no conference in particular.  While not unprecedented, it is an obstacle-strewn path, and opinion is divided on the likelihood of success. 

The Hartford Courant reported last month that “the school sold or gave away 109,296 total tickets for six Huskies home games, for an average of 18,216 per contest — a 13 percent decline from 2018. Announced attendance (i.e. tickets distributed) peaked at 23,108 for a Week 2 game against Illinois and fell as low as 12,084 for the season finale against East Carolina.” The average number of fans actually attending UConn games this season (as measured in tickets scanned at the gates) was 10,286.

The Times reported that “since 2009, applications to Northeastern have increased to more than 62,000 annually from 34,000.  The average SAT score has risen to 1457 from 1288, and research funding has grown to $178.6 million from $63.9 million.”  At Division III Anna Maria College, male enrollment has increased, as have applications.

The small Massachusetts school was an attraction for at least one former Connecticut high school football player, Kevin Supan of Monroe.  His circumstances were highlighted in the Times article, and Supan explained that Anna Maria’s football program gave him an opportunity he otherwise would not have had.

“I would be back in my hometown mowing lawns right now, if not for Anna Maria football,” he told the Times.

At UConn, the team completed assembling its 2020 football schedule just over a month ago. The Huskies added North Carolina, Middle Tennessee and Old Dominion, rounding out a 12-game slate after having previously announced nine opponents, which included what the university’s blog described as “plenty of winnable games.”

Published reports, reflecting on UConn’s decision to retain Division I football but leave the AAC, noted that the team went 38-84 this decade, posting a losing record in each of the final nine seasons, described as a decade of “cruel, unyielding decline.”  After averaging an announced crowd of 40,000 fans per game (a sellout) in 2005 and at least 30,000 every year through 2013, the Courant reported, UConn saw attendance plummet to 20,334 in 2017 before rebounding slightly in 2018 and dipping again in 2019 to less than half what it was at the start of the decade.

A year ago, it was reported that revenue generated by UConn’s athletic department covered less than half of the department’s expenses during the 2018 fiscal year, according to the school’s annual NCAA financial statement. The biggest individual team culprit of the UConn athletic department’s 2018 deficit, the Courant reported, was the school’s football program, which lost $8.7 million.

“Honestly, I’ve never heard anyone asking to bring back football,” Joseph E. Aoun, the president of Northeastern since 2006, told The Times this week.  “No one.”