UConn vs. USF Football: Huskies Ready for Biggest Game in Program History

When I was a little kid, back in the 1990s, I would regularly travel to Storrs. It is only a short driving distance from my house and worth every trip to support Connecticut basketball and football.

I still remember going to football games behind Gampel Pavilion at Memorial Stadium. Back then, it would be a modest affair with maybe three or four thousand fans maximum, sitting anywhere they pleased like at a high school game.

Back in the days of the FCS football program, coached when I watched by Skip Holtz and then Randy Edsall, the idea of UConn playing for a spot in a BCS game 10 or 12 years down the road was unthinkable.

Eight years after UConn moved up to the FBS and six years after joining the Big East, that is exactly what is at stake.

The Huskies will be on display at Raymond James Stadium on Saturday night when they take on their conference rivals, the South Florida Bulls. A Husky win gives them the Big East Conference crown and a spot in a BCS game, with the Discover Orange Bowl the most likely destination.

The Huskies and Bulls have increasingly heated their rivalry of late; each of the last three games has been decided by a touchdown or less.

History is not on the Huskies' side. Since South Florida joined the Big East in 2005, the home team has won every game in this rivalry.

Last year, the Huskies held on for a two-point win on a snow-covered field in East Hartford.

It will be a difficult task, as the Huskies take on former UConn head coach Skip Holtz, who left in 1998 when his mother got cancer. He moved to South Carolina to be close to his family and joined the staff of his father, former Connecticut assistant coach and college football legend Lou Holtz. He is in his first year at South Florida.

It is senior night for the Bulls and while Holtz says that he will always be a Connecticut fan, his team is only thinking about winning for its seniors.

"I'm excited about the growth that program has made, and to see where it has come is rewarding," he said. "But, still, I want this one for this team, for these seniors."

The Bulls are not thinking about playing spoiler, even though a win over South Florida sends the Huskies to a BCS game as champion of the Big East Conference.

"If they come in here and beat us, they go to the BCS, and of course we'll try not to allow that," Bulls wide receiver Dontavia Bogan said. "But this would mean a lot for the seniors, because we've put in a lot of hard work."

On the visitor side, UConn has been being messed with for a couple weeks now by critics. Professional analysts and several fans on websites such as bleacherreport.com have been saying the Huskies do not deserve a spot in the BCS.

Randy Edsall would disagree with you, but the Husky coach, who has been with the team since it was an FCS school transitioning to FBS in 1999, will not worry about a bowl game, BCS or not, until the end of the game Saturday.

“I can’t control what people think or what people say,” Edsall said. “The whole thing is…let’s just take care of our business and do what we can do and worry about what we control...

“This game is no different than the last four we played. We have been playing one-game seasons the last five games. This game is no different than the other games we approached. If we win, you move on, if we don’t win, you don’t get as big a prize.

“I told them what the truth was, we deal in truth serum, we don’t deal in fantasy. We have won and we have stayed in the hunt. If we win, we win a championship. With that championship is the reward of a BCS game.”

That is all you will hear of the BCS, three forbidden letters by Edsall this week, from the coach until Saturday at around midnight.

This group of players, led by fifth-year senior quarterback Zach Frazer, a transfer from Notre Dame a couple years ago, have been in must-wins several times in the last two seasons.

Last year, after a huge morale-boosting victory over Louisville, tragedy struck the Storrs campus when star cornerback Jasper Howard was murdered outside the Student Union. I was not yet a UConn student, but the emotions traveled throughout the state, as all of UConn Country mourned this loss that affected us all.

I did text a friend at Storrs the morning of the tragedy to ask the state of the university in the aftermath.

I got a simple, resonating answer:

"You can be in East Campus and hear a pin drop at Hilltop," my friend said.

That is a long distance for those unfamiliar with UConn.

The games that followed were full of grief and anguish, as the Huskies looked to be letting their season uncontrollably slip away.

But then, something happened—a sudden change that made 2009 the greatest in UConn history.

Many believe a certain No. 6 had taken the strings and not a moment too soon.

The moment is the second half of the Cincinnati game.

After two straight heartbreaking losses, the 4-4 Huskies went to play the No. 5 Bearcats in Cincy. They trailed 30-10 at halftime.

The second half was something else entirely.

The Huskies won the second half 35-17 and only a failed two-point conversion by the Huskies gave Cincinnati a 47-45 victory by a thread.

That would be the last Husky loss of the season.

They went on to, in succession, beat Notre Dame in South Bend (to date the Huskies' proudest victory) in double overtime, Syracuse, South Florida and then South Carolina in the PapaJohns.com Bowl.

Then there is this year: On top of injuries to key players such as Jordan Todman, Scott Lutrus and Zach Hurd amongst others near the start of the season, the Huskies had to deal with suspensions, primarily the suspension and eventual reinstatement, then expulsion of quarterback Cody Endres.

Endres, who seemed to be the No. 1 heading into this season after splitting snaps with Frazer last year, was expelled from UConn for drug violations. This season, he threw for 471 yards and five touchdowns in two-and-a-half games. His loss was a difficult one for the Huskies.

Zach Frazer was forced to become the sole quarterback and leader on the offensive side of the ball. While having team captain Zach Hurd on the line and star running back Jordan Todman in the backfield, Frazer was under a lot of pressure, even from the Huskies student section, where when times looked down, the chants of "Cody Endres!" (even after his expulsion) and "Michael Box!" (freshman) have been heard repeatedly.

Frazer has become much more effective of late, leading the Huskies in their victories in the last four games, especially over Pittsburgh.

For Frazer, Saturday is the biggest game of his, and all his teammates' careers in his eyes.

“It puts something else on the table,” Frazer said. “It’s not just let’s go win this game. It’s you have to win this game to get what you want. We are going into that with more excitement because we know what we can get out of it.”

Like a pack of wild dogs, all the Huskies will be hungry; just ask defensive lineman Kendall Reyes, whose contributions on the defensive side of the ball have been superb and clutch for UConn.

“I am more motivated for this game because this is the last game,” Reyes said. “There is a lot on the line and all our guys know that. All we think about is USF. We want to go out and get this win.”

Though they do not want to think about it too much, one has to think that the criticism of them and the BCS will be in the back of UConn's mind. Do they deserve to be there?

“We have a right to be there,” Frazer said. “If we beat South Florida, we can go there.”

This game is surely a game to watch. Pretty much everyone in Connecticut will have their televisions turned to ESPN at 8pm Saturday night for this incredibly important game.

This is about more than one win and one trophy; this game is about two decades of hard work to bring a middle-of-the-road FCS program to the threshold of the most important series of games in the FBS.

That is a short time frame realistically.

No football players to ever wear the Husky blue and white have played in a more important game.

At last, the talk can end and the football can do the talking. It's rivalry time! History could be upon us! All we can do is watch it unfold.