In Today's JI

A little late at night, but here is a notebook on Darius Butler and his enrollment in Prime U. Primetime University of course in Dallas of course.

Now onto a more pressing topic, which is the seeming disaster of International Bowl tickets remaining. If they haven't sold by now, they aren't going to move. There are many reasons for this and of course the economy is No. 1.

UConn is a public institution and for the most part, state employees are immune to the chaos in the private sector (though not only the case, but most jobs are stable with certain raises). When I heard the number, 10,000, I cringed. Ancedotcally, it seemed like way too many tickets considering the state of things. If the athletic department hasn't figured it out now, especially in Connecticut, no one has any money left. 401ks are decimated, costs have risen (until recently of course) and if you are in the financial or real estate industry the bottom has dropped out.

Everyone is private industry is suffering. Money isn't moving, so there is no cash flow. That makes a 10,000 ticket ($450,000) outlay to a bowl game in Toronto daunting. I never expected people to go, but the buying of tickets to donate is a casualty of the economy and seems that UConn underestimated this.

Now, the game isn't that attractive (let's be honest) and it is a cold weather city in the winter after the New Year when everyone is set to go back to work.

So the economy, the place, opponent and time is not attractive. Four strikes against, but the fatal one is the lack of buzz about the team.

There is no momentum for this season.

Sure, part of it is the performance on the field and the fact that the Huskies struggled finishing up, but the second half of the UConn season has been a scheduling disaster.

UConn played six games through Oct. 4 and went 5-1. Then there was the first of three bye weeks. That destroyed the season.

UConn spet a month away from the Rent and then went two straight weeks of games before the they had another bye week. There was two month long breaks between home games.

The fact the season started on the first possible day --Aug. 28-- and ended the last possible day on Dec . 6 made this season too long and I think people started losing interest.

College football is about routine after the halfway mark, the season never got back into a rhythm.

I could feel it writing stories. As a beat writer you get into a routine and rhythm with stories and ideas start to fall into place like a waterfall. After a game, that theme carries over into the following week. The narrative keeps on going and as a writer, you work off that. But, with all the bye weeks, the stories dried up, angles weren't fresh and you ended up losing a focus and theme of the season.

After a bye week, I tried to recreate the narrative and keep the momentum going. It is very difficult though doing that a second and a third time. It's a connection problem.

The narrative of this season was lost by all the time off.

Now, I am sharing this not to complain about how difficult it was to write this season (it wasn't), rather I think the same mechanism is at work with the fan. They were having a difficult time keeping up with the team and essentially they lost interest. Why else would there be no juice whatsoever on Dec. 6 against Pittsburgh? There was absolutely no buzz in the building or even pregame excitement. It felt like a chore.

The key to a good bowl game is to build up excitement and then capitalize on that enthusiasm. By the end of the season there was no excitement simply because the fans in Connecticut had no games to get excited about.

They weren't spoiled, as some might say, rather UConn football stopped becoming an important part of the fall routine because it was not available.

Scheduling is difficult for football, and UConn is still trying to find its niche. But I don't think the schedule did anyone any good this year.

It took the life out of the season.