Lloyd graduates 10 years after leaving school

Greg Lloyd Jr., who once sent a Notre Dame helmet flying into the air while making one of the most famous tackles in UConn history, was a good college student when he wanted to be. He did not always want to be. “I can’t remember the exact day but I remember the moment when I woke up and was like, ‘I think I’m just going to be a football player,’ ” Lloyd said. “I was over school.”

That, Lloyd thinks, was during his junior year and early in the 2009 season.

That, he knows for sure, did not go over well at the Burton Family Football Complex.

Lloyd, a linebacker, remembers being in the front row for a team meeting when Randy Edsall addressed the group with words still seared into his memory.

“Coach Edsall starts,” Lloyd said, “and he says, ‘I’ve been getting a lot of emails from teachers — guys showing up late to class, guys leaving in the middle of class and there’s even some students who haven’t gone to class all semester. Isn’t that right, Mr. Lloyd?’ I was like, ‘Yup, there are going to be consequences that I didn’t see coming.’ ”

Lloyd, 32, can laugh at this learning moment now, particularly as a recent UConn graduate. He finished his coursework to earn a bachelor’s degree in general studies over the summer, crossing the academic finish line 11 years after departing Storrs to pursue an NFL career with about a semester’s worth of work remaining.

What got him to this point? For starters, weeks of extra time in study hall in 2009 — punishment for his done-with-this approach and a way to make up for lost academic ground — and being motivated just enough over the years by the consistent friendship and pressure of Kelli Kozaryn, UConn’s football academic coordinator.

“I nag them when I know they only have a few classes yet,” said Kozaryn, who was hired at UConn in 2008,