The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Yale can’t forget first loss to UConn
Tony Reno will lead Yale into Rentschler Field on Saturday at noon to face UConn in their first football meeting in a generation.
But it used to be an everyyear thing, and though even Reno’s first tour at Yale came after the series ended, he heard the stories from people like the late legend Carm Cozza.
“His first game against UConn as a head coach at Yale, Yale lost to UConn” in 1965, Reno said this week.
“Carm said that he woke up the next morning and there was a sign on his front lawn. It said, ‘Coach, there’s a train at four o’clock heading out of New Haven. Be under it.’ ”
The 49-game series dates to 1948, and like a lot of college football, the tables have turned a time or two since then. Yale won the first 16 meetings between the two schools before that 13-6 Huskies win in 1965.
UConn bulked up toward a move to Division I-A foot
ball, now called the FBS, and won 14 of the last 16, including the Huskies’ only home game in 1992, to cut Yale’s all-time edge to 32-17.
Arnie Pinkston came to Yale in 1976 after starring at Saint Bernard and wound up facing UConn’s Reggie Eccleston of New London, against whom he’d played against in different sports since fifth grade.
“You had buddies playing for them,” Pinkston said. “You had former teammates playing for them, former rivals playing for them.
“We had guys from Texas, Ohio, out of state too, but they knew it was important to us.”
There would be friends and family in the stands, too, huge crowds at Yale Bowl, Pinkston said.
“It sounded a little different than 5,000, 10,000,” Pinkston said.
“The tailgating, it was a big picnic. It was a great atmosphere. It really was a lot of fun having that amount of interest. You felt supported.”
Reno said he’s proud that Yale schedules FBS teams; the Bulldogs played Army in 2014, an overtime win for Yale.
The Huskies are 0-7, but Reno said they’re “arguably the best team on our schedule,” a group of scholarship
players. Yale is 2-2 with a last-minute loss to Holy Cross (which beat UConn by 10 earlier this season) and an overtime loss at Dartmouth.
“I know it was hard work to schedule this game,” Reno said on Yale’s weekly media availability. “The credit goes to Ann-Marie and Vicky for getting this done for us.”
That’s deputy athletic director Ann-Marie Guglieri and AD Vicky Chun.
“It’s great for the state of Connecticut,” Guglieri said on the Yale availability this week.
“Long term, I think it would be a great series to continue. There’s a lot that goes into football scheduling
10-15 years in advance so a lot of things will have to line up. I have a lot of respect for their athletic director, and so hopefully the conversations will continue.”
Pinkston is glad to see it back. There was mutual respect when the teams met, Pinkston said.
“It wasn’t a mean rivalry,” he said, “but it was a heated rivalry.”
Living in California, he has plenty of pride in his home state’s university, rooting for the Huskies’ basketball teams.
“Except,” he said, “when they’re playing Yale.”