Should UConn abandon big-time college football?

The question is a complex one to answer

Two years after playing its last game, the UConn football team returned to the field with a 45point loss at Fresno State.

But it took all of seven days for

the Huskies to experience an even more embarrassing performance. On Saturday, the program on a decade-long free fall hit a new low in its home opener at Rentschler Field in East Hartford — a 38-28 loss to Holy Cross, a school that competes at a lower level of college football.

Ten years after losing in a New Year’s Day bowl UConn is unable to beat a Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) program from an hour away.

The losses and the overall state of UConn football has led some to ask: What’s the point of keeping a seat at college football’s big table?

Why is playing at the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) level the best option for UConn, whose decline now runs longer than its rapid rise in the 2000’s?

“That [question] would suggest that one of the alternatives is better,” athletic director David Benedict said last week.

FBS football — formerly known as Division I-A — is the most lucrative yet most expensive, the most prestigious yet most challenging, level in the nation’s most popular college sport. UConn, with a 6-32 record since Randy Edsall’s return in 2016 and annual expenses that exceed returns, floundered through membership in the American Athletic Conference and debuted as an independent program after opting out of the 2020 season due to COVID-19 complications.

If quick-twitch social media reaction is any guide, there is a growing sentiment among those who care about the program — or those who care to mock it — that one of the alternatives Benedict alluded to might represent more prudent avenues to explore.

Among them: 1) drop UConn to the level of FCS, where some expenses are reduced; or 2) drop football altogether, recognizing that Lew Perkins’ and John G. Rowland’s big gamble of 20-plus years ago was a winner with an expiration date.

Such moves, though, represent giving up on something UConn has invested so heavily in — and still sees great value in, despite ongoing struggles on the field and on the ledger sheet.

“If we can’t manage our way out of this, and the narrative is that when we go play FBS teams we get our [butt] kicked, well, that’s not good for anybody and it’s not sustainable,” UConn Board of Trustees chair Dan Toscano said last week. “I just don’t believe that’s going to be the narrative. We’re going to give it some time and see it play out. … It’s not short-term. It’s definitely not long-term. It’s somewhere in the middle. I don’t know if that’s 3-5 years or whatever. We’re going to be impatiently patient.”

Patience is evaporating among fans, though. Edsall, 63, was 22-34 in four-plus seasons at Maryland before returning and he’s been unable to generate excitement as attendance has steadily slipped. Yet he was awarded a contract extension through 2023 earlier this year and is earning $1.26 million this season.

If Edsall is unable to steer the program back to relevance, the school’s decisionmakers will be faced with a decision beyond just who is the next coach. But Benedict and Toscano say a move to FCS — formerly known as Division I-AA, the level UConn played at before applying for the Big East in 1999 — or the elimination of football altogether would only exacerbate financial problems for which football has been a primary driver.

The football program in 2020 fiscal year budget — which includes the 2019 season, the last time the Huskies competed — accounted for $17.2 million in expenses and just $2.3 million in revenue. The $14.9 million gap is over one-third of the $43.3 million revenue shortfall for the UConn athletic department that year.

But football, at any level, comes with built-in costs. And while several of those would be automatically reduced — coaching salaries, scholarships, travel budget — jumping off the sport’s biggest stage means forsaking the program’s main revenue streams.

UConn has a national TV contract with CBS Sports Network worth $500,000 a year over four years.

It has “guarantee games,” road games against Power Five opponents, scheduled well into the future. The Huskies, for instance, will receive $1.8 million for playing at Michigan in 2022, $1.8 million for playing at Tennessee in 2023 and $1.95 million for playing at Ohio State in 2025.

Also, UConn’s corporate rights sponsorship deal with Learfield/IMG College and Nike brings in over $6 million a year — $3.7 million of which is specifically tied to football.

So abandoning FBS would impact the entire athletic department. Football, regardless of the on-field success of a program, remains the economic engine throughout college sport.

Only one school has dropped its football program from FBC to FCS since college football split its tiers into Division I-A and Division I-AA in 1978: Idaho, which has reportedly seen a 50 percent drop in football ticket revenue and contributions since making the move in 2018. “And to the extent there are any promotional benefits at all from being in FBS, they’ve lost those,” sports economist Andy Schwarz said in an email.

The financial incentive to remain at the highest level, even with a beleaguered program, is tangible.

“Football is the revenue driver ... it’s always going to be the elephant in the room for financial reason,” said Woody Eckard, a sports economist and business professor at the University of Colorado Denver. “Even at a school like UConn, which has traditionally had such a good basketball program, it’s about the (football) money. … Football is the driver, more than other sports.”

There are examples of basketball-centric athletic programs that don’t rely on football — Wichita State, Gonzaga, and Villanova, which fields a FCS-level program.

But the revenue stream is far less and the structure of UConn’s athletic department would be impacted by a move away from FBS.

“Those are things that just aren’t replicated at the FCS level,” Benedict said. “There are great schools and there is a lot of very good football at the FCS level — I played at that level. … We have relationships and partnerships that are associated with our university and our athletics program that I think would be substantially different if we didn’t play football on [the FBS] level. Obviously, we understand the impact that success or lack thereof has on our program, and we need to find a way to be successful.”

UConn athletics has been subsidized by the university for about $40 million annually in recent years. The bleak financial picture led the school to eliminate four sports last year, although the women’s rowing program received a reprieve through a lawsuit.

Toscano, though, said the financial figures are “misleading,” largely because he views scholarship costs as educational investments and because money from the athletic budget goes back to the CRDA for use of state-owned Rentschler Field.

“The actual cost of athletics is nowhere near $40 million,” Toscano said, “I know they have to start winning.”

But UConn hasn’t had a winning season since 2010, when it finished 8-4 after a 48-20 Fiesta Bowl loss to Oklahoma. After a difficult stretch under Paul Pasqualoni, fired midway through his third season by thenAD Warde Manuel, and three strange years under Bob Diaco, who was fired by Benedict after 2015 momentum was thwarted by the mess of 2016, the Huskies brought back Randy Edsall at a salary of roughly $1 million a year — cheap, by FBS standards.

The Huskies were 3-9 in 2017, 1-11 in 2018 and 2-10 in 2019. More fans lost interest along the way.

UConn averaged over 30,000 fans at home games in 2003-13. The Huskies’ average home attendance in 2019 was 18,216 tickets distributed and 10,126 tickets actually scanned. Rentschler Field’s capacity is 40,000.

Toscano called it a “financial loser” to step down to FCS or below, or to eliminate the program. Sports economist Victor Matheson, a Holy Cross professor, said schools are reluctant to drop to FCS based on the loss of revenue.

But UConn’s place in the college sports landscape is unique. No athletic department has been impacted more by conference realignment, leaving a program with national basketball brands outside of the Power Five world.

“They're kind of in this no man's land,” Matheson said. “They’ve stuck with football in the hopes, still, that having a football program makes it easier for them to eventually get invited to a Power Five conference. ... It’s what a lot of schools around the country do. They stick with their very expensive program because at least they have some hopes of someday going up to that next level. But UConn is in a very unique spot.”

UConn, if ever it decided to drop levels or cease operations, would have to consider the fallout, too, in regard to Title IX compliance. UConn, as an FBS program, can award as many as 85 scholarships. A move to FCS would be a reduction to 63.

“That would be significant and would have a dramatic impact on what we would have to do from an equity standpoint on the women’s side,” Benedict said. “So there a lower cost to staffing, certainly fewer scholarships. You reduce those costs. You might have a little less travel. But at the end of the day, you’re not going to get paid.”

Benedict noted that UConn pays visiting FCS opponents — such as Yale and Central Connecticut State — $275-280 thousand to play the Huskies in East Hartford. Some road games can be highly lucrative — Central, for instance, is earning $650,000 for a game at Miami this season — but still pale in comparison for what UConn will earn at Michigan and Ohio State.

It’s also impossible to quantify how football, in UConn’s mind, advances a brand’s visibility as the “front porch,” for the university, as former president Susan Herbst said. Football also engages alumni and has drawn some of the university’s major donors.

“I’m not sure of the perspective of people who say, we should just drop it or we should drop down,” Benedict said. “Whether it’s because of the way they equate the money aspect of the investment versus what the return is, or what their rationale is, but certainly they don’t seem to value the opportunities that have been given to the young men that play football. I think there is a huge benefit to that and what we’re doing with those student-athletes, and many of them are first generation college graduates.”

But is there a cost/benefit element to the brand discussion? UConn’s football program, with few wins and few tickets sold, has become something of a punchline in the college sports world.

Does the school’s athletic brand — cultivated by national championships in basketball — suffer?

“That could definitely be the case,” Matheson said. “There’s great basketball tradition but you wonder . ... Is this really where we want to spend our money and a huge portion of that $40 million deficit is coming from a pretty unsuccessful football team? It’s not unsustainable, but it is a lot of money that you could direct towards all sorts of other things that may improve the student’s living experience or academic experience more than being able to watch a bad football team with a small crowd, 30 minutes away from campus. So that’s the problem.”

Most state flagship universities in the nation play FBS football, though four of six New England flagships do not — Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont and Rhode Island. Vermont eliminated football in the mid-1970s, while the other New England schools compete at the FCS level.

“We all understand the desire and the need to be competitive,” Benedict said. “We’re going to continue working at it until someone tells us we can’t. But I think while the schools that we mentioned are state flagships in this area, which group of schools do you want to be associated with? Pose that question. Who are we trying to be like? Just generally, which group of schools are we trying to align ourselves with and be more similar to? There’s a cost to that, in lots of different areas [even outside of athletics].”

When UConn chose to leave the AAC in 2019 with the strengthening of its basketball programs in mind, Benedict and Toscano talked about a logical destination for football. Benedict first pitched, and the university settled on, independence. It is very unlikely that a lower-level FBS conference, such as the MAC, would accept UConn as a football-only member.

“And [independence] was a logical next step,” Toscano said. “If you went to FCS, or shuttered the program entirely, you can’t really come back from that. It would take a lot to change your mind and try to rebuild. So it seemed very logical to take this step. I don’t know if it’s going to work or not. If it works, great. If it doesn’t, you say, OK, what are my choices? Go to FCS or dismantle?

“I know they have to start winning. That’s my view, that’s David’s view, that’s Randy’s view, it’s those student-athletes’ view. We have to find some success. I believe it’s out there. If you look at the last three years, it’s easy to say it’s the laughingstock. OK, but it shouldn’t be and I don’t think it will be and we’ll keep working on it until we get it right and I don’t know how long that’s going to take.”

Gary Kazanjian / Associated Press