Michigan and UConn to Play Home and Home Football Starting 2010

ESPN and the Hartford Courant have announced that the Michigan Wolverines and Connecticut Huskies have agreed to a home and home football series beginning in 2010.

UConn will make the trip to Michigan Stadium on Sept. 4 of next year and Michigan will travel to Rentschler Field in Hartford in 2013.

The Huskies were scheduled to play Northeastern on Sept. 2, 2010 but in light of this announcement, that game will be moved.

The 2010 game will mark the opening of the $225 million renovation to Michigan Stadium. This may not be the "big-splash game" that some of the Wolverine faithful had been hoping for but Connecticut is an up start program and will be a good test for Michigan.

This past season the Huskies finished 8-5 and in 2007 they won a share of the Big East title and finished the season 9-4.

It's somewhat unexpected that Michigan, the team that plays in the largest football stadium in the country, has agreed to play in 40,000 seat Rentschler Field when they visit the Huskies in 2013.

It could be that Connecticut's coach Randy Edsall has relied on his old Big East ties with Michigan's Rich Rodriguez, the former West Virginia coach, to pull this off.

Michigan and Connecticut are presently in the middle of a home and home men's basketball series and that might have had something to do with the football arrangement announced last night.

UConn has already announced a home and home football series with the Tennessee Volunteers that begins in Hartford in 2015 and concludes the following year in Tennessee's 105,000 seat Neyland Stadium.

These two schools will also meet on the basketball court and have announced a two year series where The Volunteer men will travel to Connecticut in the 2010-11 season and in the 2011-12 season the Connecticut men will play at Tennessee.

What's particularly interesting about yesterday's announcement is how it will affect the proposed long-term football series the Huskies have been planning with Notre Dame.

As of now, UConn and Notre Dame are tentatively scheduled to play at least six games, three of which are Notre Dame home games scheduled for Notre Dame Stadium.  Connecticut has agreed to play their home games off campus in Foxboro's Gillete Stadium and the New Jersey Meadowlands.

Now that Michigan and Tennessee, along with Maryland, Iowa State and North Carolina State have all agreed to play in Rentschler in the coming years it might be time for Connecticut to renegotiate with the Irish and insist that they do also.

Notre Dame had been negotiating a similar contract with Rutgers, another Big East school whereby they wanted the Scarlet Knights to play their home games off campus but Rutgers' Coach Greg Schiano called off the deal.

If anything, it might be time to, as one UConn fan states, "Refine the Notre Dame series."

Michigan's Rich Rodriguez was 4-0 against Connecticut's Randy Edsall while at West Virginia.