Last season was a dream season for the UCONN Husky football program. They were the Big East Conference Champions, the earned a berth to the Fiesta Bowl and an opportunity to play the Blue Bloods of college ball, the Oklahoma Sooners. Sound like the Boise State Cinderella story of 2006. The outcome for the Huskies was different, the Sooners destroyed UCONN and now things have gone from bad to worse.
After a crushing defeat on the deserts of Arizona, UCONN saw its best player bolt for for the NFL Draft. Making matters the coach, Randy Edsall, who guided the Huskies from Division 1AA to ta BCS Bowl, has fled for his "dream job" to Maryland. Sources say he did not even bother to speak to the team before his departure.
Hard to imagine, but from there things got worse. Talk about things going downhill fast, UCONN is the new poster child for the old saying, " just when I didn't think things could get any worse, they did."
Last week UCONN athletic director Jeff Hathaway received a six page scathing letter from Husky supporter Robert G. Burton, CEO of Greenwich, Conn.-based Burton Capital ManagementRobert. This letter expressed in no uncertain terms Burton's chagrin at being left out of the hiring loop and was particularly disenchanted with the hiring of former Syracuse coach, Paul Pasqualoni.
Apparently Burton had a son who played football under the tutelage of Pasqualoni and he didn't care for the coach. Below is a copy of Burton's letter.
Burton informed UConn Athletic Director Jeff Hathaway of his intentions via a six-page letter dated Jan. 19, a copy of which was obtained by The Day. […]
"After we get our money back, you can take our name off the complex," wrote Burton, who also has a luxury box at Rentschler Field and who donated more than $1 million to endow two scholarships at the school.
Burton cited philosophical disagreements with Hathaway and his management style as reasons for his decision to end his involvement with UConn.
"The primary reason (former coach) Randy (Edsall) took another job is because he couldn't work with you," Burton wrote in the letter to Hathaway. "You are not qualified to be a Division I AD and I would have fired you a long time ago. You do not have the skills to manage and cultivate new donors."
According to the letter, Burton called Hathaway on Jan. 3 and asked to be "kept in the loop" with the hiring process for the next football coach. It was "the same process that (former Athletic Director) Lew Perkins had with me when Randy was hired."
Burton also wanted to "provide insight" about coaching candidates who he felt "would be a good fit." Burton wrote that he didn't hear from Hathaway again until Jan. 13, when the process ended.
"I was not looking for veto power," Burton wrote. "Your lack of response on either of these requests tells me that you do not respect my point of view or value my opinion.
Since Burton's son Micheal played for the Huskies back in 1999 and was captain of the football team, Burton has donated over $7m to UConn. Now as the letter implies he wants some of his money back, $3m to be exact.
Adding insult to injury, Subsequently, he's threatened not only to revoke his donation, but also to give up his $50,000-per-year luxury suite ("You already have many other empty boxes at Rentschler. My box will just join the list."), cut off an annual $20,000 donation for summer coaching clinics, transfer all remaining scholarship dollars from football to the business school, and begin training "front line managers" for his company at Syracuse's business school instead.
The timing could not have been worse for UConn when considering donations to the UConn athletic department are reportedly down $9 million from five years ago.
Let this be a lesson for aspiring athletic directors, and managers in all fields, really: When considering major decisions, always, always value the opinion of the guy whose name is on one of the buildings you go to work in. Otherwise, there won't be any more buildings anytime soon, and even if there are, you're not going to be working in them.
The material for this article and most of the quotes are derived from an article published by Matt Hinton: Top UConn donor wants his money (and his name) back over Huskies' new coach
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