The ADB Mailbag: Realistic Expectations for Football

Same Shirreffs in town (Ashley Maher/The Daily Campus)

Like every other Connecticut media outlet, the A Dime Back staff blew off covering the Big 12 meetings this week in order to bring you supremely hot #content, including this mailbag.

Remember: If your question wasn’t answered or you’ve been living under a rock and are just hearing about this, you can submit your questions here or on Twitter (@ADimeBack).


Husky Army asks: is this upcoming football team overhyped?

Depends who’s doing the hyping. The national preseason preview folk I’ve read have UConn pegged for another bowl game, which is fair, and also the basic pass/fail level for a program that played in a bowl game and returns 75% of the starting lineup. I personally think 8 wins and remaining in the AAC East race into November would be a plausibly tremendous season.

That being said, while the Huskies have enough talent and experience to compete with (and beat) all 12 teams on their schedule, it would take a lot of coin-flip-or-worse probabilities going right for UConn to jump from to 9-10 wins, which is something you might occasionally see on Lyndon LaRouche fansite “The Boneyard“. (If UConn wins 10 games for the first time in the FBS era in 2016, should we start calling him Governor Diaco or just skip straight to Holy Roman Emperor Diaco?)

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UConn is in the mix among the top four teams in the AAC East, but it’s not clear that they’re significantly better than any of Cincinnati, Temple or USF, teams they haven’t beaten much recently. Houston’s still good, as is Navy probably. The non-conference schedule features three very beatable and stupid suckface ACC teams, but until UConn proves it can score enough #points to win consistently, it’s hard to chalk up any of those games as a sure win.

So long story short, the 2016 team does have a path to 10-2, and it involves a revamped offensive line, a stout defense picking up exactly where they left off, and turnover/injury luck. The Huskies control the first two, and we’ll know a lot more early in the season. But as things stand on June 3, any prediction of more than 7-8 wins is a bit too much too soon for me.

– Kevin Meacham


Penfield asks: What is a relationship deal breaker for you?

  1. Anyone who says “football drives the bus in conference realignment.”
  2. BC fans
  3. Memphis fans
  4. Syracuse fans
  5. Rutgers fans (though they’d be out anyway, for the smell)

– Peter Bard


Timmy asks: Which pillar of the community should hang banners for our P5 campaign if we’re looking for maximum exposure?

You want someone who’s going to have influence. Someone who, when they speak, people listen. I assume you asked this after the Memphis Children’s Museum began its weird lobbying effort for the Tigers, but I don’t think the “community” part is quite as important to the question. Lets go with a pillar of the Connecticut Influencer Community. I’m referring, of course, to Andrea.

– Russ Steinberg