UConn Football

Jim L. Mora has officially been named the next head football coach at the University of Connecticut following the departure of Randy Edsall in September.

Pete Thamel of Yahoo Sports was the first to report Mora was the target of UConn's coaching search.

Mora would take over a program that has struggled mightily in recent years. The Huskies are just 1-8 this season and are on track to win three or fewer games for the fifth consecutive season.

Mora, 59, last coached at UCLA in 2017 before going on to serve as a color analyst for ESPN's college football coverage in 2019 and 2020.

After multiple stints as an assistant coach in the NFL, Mora was hired as head coach of the Atlanta Falcons in 2004. He led Atlanta to an 11-5 record, NFC South title and NFC Championship berth in his first season, but he was fired after going 8-8 and 7-9 in his next two seasons.

Mora was then hired as the Seahawks' head coach in 2009, but he lasted just one season after going 5-11. Overall, Mora went 31-33 as an NFL head coach and 1-1 in the playoffs.

Eleven months after his firing in Seattle, Mora was hired as the head coach at UCLA in 2012. During his six-year stint with the Bruins, Mora went 46-30 with four bowl appearances and three seasons with nine or more wins.

UCLA went 4-8 and 5-6 in his final two seasons at the helm, but parting ways with him has not led to better days for the Bruins, as they went just 3-9 in 2018 and 4-8 in 2019 and 3-4 last season.

Mora consistently had solid offenses at UCLA, especially from 2012-14 when the Bruins ranked 36th or better nationally in scoring each season.

He did an especially good job of developing quarterback Brett Hundley at UCLA, as Hundley threw for 75 touchdowns and rushed for 30 more in his three seasons under center before getting selected in the fifth round of the 2015 NFL draft by the Green Bay Packers.

Mora has a defensive background, though, as he was a defensive backs coach and defensive coordinator in the NFL, so he was among the most well-rounded coaches available.

While it can be argued that his head coaching stints have ended in disappointment thus far, he has a history of success, taking the Falcons within one win of the Super Bowl and helping the Bruins contend in the Pac-12.

The bar for improvement at UConn has been set low since the Huskies have a total of 10 wins over their past five seasons.

UConn has just one bowl appearance since 2010 as well, and the Huskies have not had a winning season since the 2010 campaign either.

The Huskies went to four straight bowl games from 2007-10 under Edsall, and if Mora can get them anywhere near that level again, his hiring will be considered a massive success.

UConn head football coach Randy Edsall is stepping down effective immediately as the team's head coach. 

Edsall had previously announced on Sunday that the 2021 season would be his final one with the program after 17 years in Storrs.

But UConn opened the season with a 45-0 loss at Fresno State and is 0-2 overall following Saturday's 38-28 defeat to Holy Cross.  

Edsall, 63, spent the first 11 years (1980-90) of his coaching career holding various roles at Syracuse before stints as a defensive backs coach at Boston College (1991-93) and the NFL's Jacksonville Jaguars (1994-97). In 1998, he served as Georgia Tech's defensive coordinator and defensive backs coach.  

He became UConn's head coach in 1999, when the school was still in the FCS (it joined the FBS in 2002), spending 12 years with the program and leading the Huskies to five bowl games, including a berth in the Fiesta Bowl in the 2010 season. 

But he left the school in 2011 to become the head coach at Maryland, where he spent five seasons, leading the Terrapins to a 22-34 record and two bowl appearances. He was fired midseason in October 2015. 

UConn rehired him in 2017, though the school has struggled in his second tenure, going 6-32. UConn has an 80-102 mark overall with Edsall at the helm. 

His departure was looming, given the team's blowout loss versus Fresno State and a shocking 38-28 upset at the hands of Holy Cross, an FCS school, on Saturday. 

"I'm disappointed, because I thought we would be able to do a little bit more than what we're doing," Edsall told reporters after the loss. "It's up to me to figure it out and get ourselves to play better. But the one thing I know is you've got to be able to run the ball and create new lines of scrimmage and to stop the run, you've got to do those things, too."

Instead, UConn will turn to defensive coordinator Lou Spanos as it tries to turn its season around. 

The University of Connecticut athletic department announced Wednesday it won't take part in the 2020 college football season because of the coronavirus pandemic.

"After receiving guidance from state and public health officials and consulting with football student-athletes, we've decided that we will not compete on the gridiron this season," athletic director David Benedict said. "The safety challenges created by COVID-19 place our football student-athletes at an unacceptable level of risk."

The Huskies were scheduled to compete as an independent in 2020 after leaving the American Athletic Conference and joining the Big East in all sports except football. UConn is the first FBS program to cancel its football season amid the pandemic.

"We engaged and listened to the concerns of our football student-athletes and feel this is the best decision for their health, safety and well-being," head coach Randy Edsall said. "Our team is united in this approach and we will use this time to further player development within the program and gear ourselves to the 2021 season."

The athletic department confirmed Huskies football players registered zero positive tests for COVID-19 since returning to campus in early July.

UConn would have likely struggled to fill out its schedule without a conference designation as the focus in major college football has mostly shifted toward conference-only opponents. Games against Illinois, Indiana, Maine and Mississippi had already removed from the Huskies' slate as a result.

The players released a joint statement as part of the school's announcement:

"As a team we are in full support of the decision to not compete in 2020. We have many health concerns and not enough is known about the potential long term effects of contracting COVID-19. Additionally, we have not had the optimal time to train mentally and physically to be properly prepared to compete this season. We love this game and love competing. We came to campus in the beginning of July knowing there would be challenges presented by the pandemic but it is apparent to us now that these challenges are impossible to overcome."

The Huskies struggled since they joined the AAC in 2013. They failed to register a winning record over the past seven seasons, including a 6-30 mark since Edsall returned in 2017 for a second stint leading the program.

UConn's announcement noted players will remain full-time students at the school and retain access to team facilities to "remain on track academically and developmentally."

The athletic department said it will "continue to work" with the Big East to determine the fate of its other fall sports.

University of Connecticut President Thomas Katsouleas issued a statement clarifying he has no "inside knowledge" that fall sports will be canceled.

The statement, which Yahoo Sports shared, begins with Katsouleas explaining he was speaking to a journalism class at the school and suggested fall sports will likely be canceled amid the coronavirus pandemic.

However, he clarified "This was not based on any inside knowledge or discussions of the subject, and was nothing more than speculation. No decisions have been made about fall sports and when they are made, we will look to the NCAA and our conference to take the lead on those choices."

Katsouleas also said the "hope" is games will be played.

The sports world has largely been on hold for more than a month amid COVID-19 concerns, but one of the most jarring developments in March was when the NCAA canceled all remaining winter and spring championships.

In addition to spring regular seasons, headlining events such as the NCAA men's and women's basketball tournaments and the College World Series were canceled.

There have been no official announcements regarding plans to cancel or postpone football, which is the marquee fall sport across much of the country. College Football Playoff director Bill Hancock told ESPN's Heather Dinich earlier this month, "We're planning on a CFP. That's what our staff is doing as we speak. Planning for it on time."

He also said it was "premature" to speculate about the fate of the season since it starts in the fall and it is only April.

ESPN's Adam Schefter reported April 9 that there is "strong conviction" among people "in and around college football" that there will be a 2020 season. However, there is "uncertainty" regarding when that season would happen with "multiple scenarios being debated."

That could mean shortening the season, changing the timeline or perhaps even pushing it back until the beginning of the 2021 calendar year and playing more of a spring season.

College football's immediate future, like much of sports, is still up in the air, but Katsouleas made sure to clarify he does not have any inside information at this time.

Connecticut head coach Randy Edsall doesn't sound like he will spend a lot of time recruiting players in the NCAA transfer portal. 

Per Alex Putterman of the Hartford Courant, Edsall called players who use the transfer portal "enabled and entitled."

"I'd rather go with high school kids or junior college guys," he said. "Guys going into the portal, they've got issues. That's why they're going into the portal." 

The NCAA established the transfer portal in Oct. 2018 as a way of organizing the list of student-athletes who were considering changing schools. 

Student-athletes are required to tell their current school's compliance department about their desire to transfer, which gives the school 48 hours to put their name into the portal. 

The process has drawn scrutiny from a number of coaches across the country. Penn State's James Franklin criticized it for enabling student-athletes to make decisions "driven by football" because "the college athletics that I grew up with was driven based on academics."

Former Washington head coach Chris Petersen told reporters last summer the transfer portal was bad for student-athletes because it “allows them to tap out” at one school and go to another. 

Use of the transfer portal has become common across the country in all sports, especially football. Last year, for instance, Heisman finalists Jalen Hurts (Oklahoma) and Justin Fields (Ohio State) were among the student-athletes who switched schools. 

Edsall did note Connecticut would consider players in the transfer portal if his staff had a pre-established relationship recruiting them out of high school or junior college.

Since returning to UConn in 2017, Edsall has a 6-30 record with no bowl appearances. The 61-year-old has a 98-127 career record as a head coach at Connecticut and Maryland. 

The UConn football team set an unfortunate record on Saturday in a 57-7 loss to Temple, as the Huskies officially broke Division I-FBS records for the most points and yards allowed over the course of one season.

For the year, UConn allowed 605 points, which beat East Carolina's previous record of 572, per Adam Rittenberg of ESPN.com. That mark was set in 2010.

The Huskies also broke Kansas' 2015 FBS record for yards allowed per game. The Jayhawks' mark was 560.8, and UConn topped that by over 50 with 617.4 yards given up per contest.

UConn also allowed 49 or more points in 10 of 12 matchups. The team's lone win was a 56-49 victory over Division I-FCS Rhode Island, a 6-5 team that finished its regular season unranked.

Brett McMurphy of Stadium Network posted an unfortunate stat regarding UConn's points allowed:

Alex Putterman of the Hartford Courant did as well:

The offense wasn't much better, as the team failed to score more than 21 points in nine of its 11 games against FBS opponents. Overall, UConn was outscored by 28.25 points.

UConn football has not finished with a winning record since 2010, when the team went 8-5, won the Big East and lost the Fiesta Bowl to Oklahoma. Since then, the Huskies have gone 28-69 in eight seasons under four head coaches.

Edsall, who was the team's coach for UConn's 33-19 stretch from 2007 to 2010 before leaving for Maryland, returned to his old team's sideline in 2017. While he's just two seasons into his second tenure at UConn, the Huskies' football program has hit rock bottom at this point.

The silver lining is that Edsall has found success before in Storrs, so perhaps the team will improve in time.

The University of Connecticut and the family of Eli Thomas announced Monday the 22-year-old junior linebacker suffered a stroke last Wednesday.

"Thank you all for your love and well wishes for Eli," his mother, Mary Beth Turner, said in a statement, per Alex Putterman of the Hartford Courant. "To say we are stunned by this turn of events is an understatement! A strong, healthy, 22-year old man having a stroke is not anything we anticipated. However, Eli will fight back as he has with every challenge that has come his way with 'Eli Style.'"

Thomas was serving as a starting linebacker and defensive end for the Huskies, making a triumphant comeback to the field after a third ACL tear cost him the entire 2017 campaign. Prior to UConn, he spent three years at Lackawanna College, though his first two ACL tears meant he didn't see much playing time before his transfer.

This year, he notched 11 tackles, a sack and a forced fumble in the team's first four games before a neck injury against Syracuse on Sept. 22 sidelined him for UConn's next two games. 

"I've never had a 'poor me,' 'why me?' attitude," Thomas said in August when discussing his history of injuries, per Putterman. "I don't really complain about it. You can't control it anyway, it's already happened. You've just got to work your way out of it."

Thomas will need that perspective again as he recovers from his unexpected stroke.

"Every day, you just never know what can happen," UConn head coach Randy Edsall said. "Things like this are just very unfortunate. It's one of those things where [you take it] one day at a time and do the very best you can every day because you just never know what can happen."  

Former University of Connecticut quarterback Johnny McEntee was reportedly removed from his role as a personal aide to United States President Donald Trump on Monday.

Michael C. Bender of the Wall Street Journal broke the news Tuesday. CNN's Kaitlan Collins noted the staff change came with McEntee under investigation by the Department of Homeland Security for alleged "serious financial crimes."

The 27-year-old California native is set to remain in Trump's circle, however, with the president's 2020 re-election operation confirming his new job as senior adviser, per Matthew Nussbaum of Politico.

"John McEntee, who was a personal aide to President Trump in the 2016 campaign and the White House, will also re-join the Trump campaign as a senior adviser for campaign operations," it said in a statement.

McEntee was the starting quarterback at UConn as a junior during the 2011 season. He completed 51.3 percent of his passes for 2,110 yards with 12 touchdowns and eight interceptions across 12 appearances. He was supplanted atop the depth chart by Chandler Whitmer in 2012.

McEntee also gained notoriety for a trick-shot video posted on YouTube in February 2011 that has received more than 7.2 million views.

Connecticut head football coach Randy Edsall said coaches are likely "nervous" about the FBI probe into college basketball and called on the NCAA to pay players in a series of tweets Friday. 

Pat Forde and Pete Thamel of Yahoo Sports obtained FBI documents that named numerous national powerhouse schools, including Duke, North Carolina and Kentucky, as having players who received money from agent Andy Miller's sports agency. The dollar figures varied, but the investigation could have a major impact on past and present accomplishments in the eyes of the NCAA.

Miller is a basketball agent, so it's unknown if there will be much—if any—impact on college football. However, it will undoubtedly raise similar questions about the most lucrative amateur sport in the world.

Edsall's "pay the players" position is notable because it's so rare among collegiate coaches, most of whom do not publicly take such a stance given the current structure. Edsall's deal with UConn calls for a $1 million annual salary but is heavily incentive-laden, allowing him to make more based on team achievements.

"It shouldn't be a situation where it's not based on achievement," Edsall said last year, per Mike Anthony of the Hartford Courant. "I think contracts have gotten out of hand, and I just thought it was fair. I'm very satisfied with the way it worked out. I understood the situation and agreed 100 percent. It should be based on achievement. It was probably the easiest negotiation that I've ever been a part of."

NCAA rules prohibit players from making money for their performance or use of their likeness.

The Connecticut Huskies won only three football games last season, so they weren't taking any chances Thursday evening. 

UConn held a 27-20 lead over Holy Cross with 1:21 to play at Pratt & Whitney Stadium at Rentschler Field when television cameras captured some humorous video. 

Senior quarterback Bryant Shirreffs was seen practicing taking a knee on the sideline ahead of his team's final possession of the contest. 

Shirreffs and the Huskies were eventually able to run out the clock for real and hold on to the seven-point victory to start the campaign 1-0. 

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