[FreeReign]

I stand by the fact that UConn athletics was totally irrelevant, and NOT known as UConn until the 80s and 90s and only became known as such nationally.

I remember around 1980 hearing a St. John's vs. UConn basketball game on the radio. The announcers where St. John's announcers. They referred to UConn as "UConn". I specifically remember the person I was with in the car thinking it was "Yukon".

[C. Edmund Wright]

Interesting: The more widespread use of the name UConn started about the time the Big East came into being, at least in basketball - which was 1979 I believe. So you heard one of the early uses of it outside of Hartford.

For whatever reason, and it may be that the Big East did not have football for a while, the football team was not really referred to as UConn til later, at least out in the country at large. UMass, not being in the Big East, and being in a pro dominated market - did not become the program that UConn has become, altho they probably were a little ahead of UConn in some of the 80s. UConn kept Calhoun, UMass was never able to keep big name coaches.