Dom Amore: UConn football seniors left mark with Jim Mora, program and deserve one more game, Reggie Crawford hiking in fast company and more for your Sunday Read

Players who had stayed and stuck with UConn football for three, four, and in linebacker Ian Swenson’s case, six years, had certainly heard it all. How a new coach or coordinator would turn it around, how independence would be a good thing, how canceling the 2020 season would be better in the long run. Yada, yada, yada.

So it would have been easy for them to tune out Jim Mora’s message when he came to take over a year ago. They didn’t.

“I don’t know that I ever came at them with a strong message other than my vision of what we could become if we all did what was required of us,” Mora said as UConn wrapped up the regular season at 6-6 with a loss at Army and now hopes for a bowl invitation. “And I tried to stay on message with the whole team, but I tried to pay special attention to the players that it’s coming to an end for.”

And Mora, with his background in the NFL and at the UCLA, obviously came in with high standards for how he defines an FBS football player and could easily have pushed these players aside, or out, deeming them unworthy to be part of a solution. He didn’t.

“The most important thing I could ever have done when I got here was develop trust with these players,” Mora said. “Regardless of what my background was, or anyone else’s background was, coming in as head coach there is always a degree of apprehension when a new guy stands in front of you because they’ve heard it all before.”

Mora brought in 40 new players, and, yes, a fair number who he inherited saw they didn’t have a future at UConn, or didn’t want to start over with a new staff and transferred out. But what UConn accomplished in turning 1-11 with seven 30-point blowouts around to 6-6 with all but three games competitive, was done in great part with the veteran UConn players who never gave up, including Swenson, Hunter Webb, Tre Wortham, among those honored on Senior Day, and were willing to give Mora a chance and try one more time.

“I tried to make sure they realized I was trustworthy,” Mora said. “When you do that, for guys like Ian [Swenson] and the others, it’s refreshing when you’re honest with them, sometimes brutally honest with them. They know they can trust you and they know that above all else that you care about them first, and I’ve reached at point in my coaching career when it’s a great feeling to just have your ego subside and just be all about the players. I think a lot of these kids really grew as men, learned lessons about resilience and resolve and teamwork and competitiveness and competitive greatness and what it takes. I just see different men now, I see a different group than when I got here, I see confidence, I see calm, I see togetherness and I’m happy for the older guys that they got to experience this.”

Bowl bid looking good

They will know for sure by next week, but as Brett McMurphy reported for Action Sports, all signs point to the Huskies getting to play another game.

The letter of the rules are that if enough teams, 82, with conference-bowl tie-ins reach bowl eligibility, then others are out. But if there are not 82 bowl-eligible teams from that category, the remaining spots go to .500 or better teams without tie-ins. Bowl bids can’t go to 5-7 teams if there are 6-6 teams out there. So that would appear to mean UConn will get a spot. Moreover, ESPN can create a bowl game if there are 6-6 teams without bids, as it did in 2021 with the Frisco Football Classic for North Texas and Miami of Ohio.

Projections for where UConn might go are all over the map, but as far as going somewhere, it looks good. One of Mora’s coaching mentors, Dick Vermeil, once stood in front of a lot of grown professional men and, nearly sobbing, said, “Twelve years. Twelve years have gone by, since the Eagles were winners. Well, we’re going to come out winners today ....”

A moment that lives forever thanks to NFL Films, and the 1978 Eagles did come out winners, two years before reaching Super Bowl XV. Maybe Mora, as rejuvenated as the players and, like his veterans, unjaded, can say the same to his team in some far-off stadium sometime in December

“If we are able to get a bowl game, it will complete the journey of this season,” Mora said. “Every season is a new journey, but it will complete the journey, make everyone feel they accomplished something special, a sense of pride in sending our seniors out with a bowl. Seven wins against six losses, and you can call yourself a winner. That’s really important to these guys.”

More for your Sunday Read:

Jets recognize Jennifer Garzone

The Jets, who honored Hall-West Hartford’s Frank Robinson III earlier this season in their high school coach of the week program, honored Northwest United’s Jennifer Garzone, the first female coach to win a varsity football game in Connecticut.

Garzone led her five-school co-op program to a 10-0 record and the No. 2 seed in the CIAC Class MM playoffs. Jets coach Robert Saleh rocked a Workhorses T-shirt during his press conference Friday and got a few compliments when he related its background.

The Jets will donate $2,500 to benefit Northwest United football, and the program will be invited to compete in the Jets’ 11-ON Tournament in 2023.

Sunday short takes

* Former UConn baseball star Reggie Crawford, a first-round pick of the Giants in the last draft, debuted as a hitter in the minors, with plans to start pitching next spring as recovery from Tommy John surgery finishes. Meantime, he’s moving up in the organization on a different level, hiking at Sedona with the big league manager, Gabe Kapler and fellow prospect William Kempner last week. “That’s Reggie Crawford with me on an epic Sedona hike,” Kapler tweeted. Crawford’s drone provided breathtaking photos. Question: Did Kapler get back to San Fran in time to meet with Aaron Judge?

* Jordan Mazur, a Suffield High and UConn grad, is in his seventh season in the NFL, his second with the 49ers as director of nutrition. A member of the men’s rowing club at UConn, he credits professor Nancy Rodriguez and her sports nutrition class with getting him interested in the field.

* So Yale won the Ivy League title outright, Trinity went undefeated and the University of New Haven reached the Division II playoffs, losing a hard-fought game, 16-13, to Shepherd on the road in West Virginia. Pretty good season for college football in Connecticut.

* Yankees GM Brian Cashman, a long-time Connecticut resident, will be doing his annual holiday thing, rappelling down the 22-story Landmark Building in Stamford next Sunday afternoon. We’ll leave it there, for Yankee fans to come up with their own punchlines.

Last word

Hey, UConn fans, don’t you wish the Phil Knight Invitational lasted the whole season, so you could hear Bill Walton do all the games? Okay, I’m ducking. Maybe it would be better if Frank Caliendo can drop in with his dead-on impersonation.

Dom Amore can be reached at damore@courant.com