Jim Mora ready to start uphill climb with UConn football
It’s called “skinning,” for those who prefer to stay indoors when it’s cold outside. You attach a material, such as moleskin, to the bottom or your skis and walk up the mountain in the dark, then put on a miner’s cap and ski downhill.
“Which I think is crazy,” UConn AD David Benedict said.
Jim Mora, UConn’s new football coach, is an avid skinner.
“I love to go uphill,” Mora said Saturday, as he was introduced in person to UConn boosters and alumi and state media. “Whether it’s hiking, climbing, skinning, snowshoeing, mountain biking, I like to go uphill. Like things that are hard, hard things motivate me. This is just another chance to continue to walk uphill.”
Mora, who turned 60 on Nov. 19, has come to the right place for an uphill battle. The Huskies, who finished their season 1-11 with an XX-XX loss to Houston, offer no other direction. His first step upon taking over the program comes with a 9 a.m. meeting with players Sunday.
“Coach Mora’s the perfect fit for this program right now,” Benedict said. “We are very fortunate that he wanted to be at UConn, and that is something that, beyond all the other things, was the most important, that he wanted to be at UConn, knowing the challenges.”
A few details of UConn’s coaching search were revealed. Mora made the first move in the process, contacting Benedict shortly after Randy Edsall departed to say he wanted the UConn job when it became available. “This was the job that I wanted,” he said, pounding the podium for emphasis, “and there was no doubt or hesitation.”
In addition to Parker Executive Search, Benedict utilized Coaches by the Numbers, an analytics platform that offers objective evaluations. Benedict talked to a large group of candidates that included coordinators, former head coaches, present head coaches, and NFL coaches, mostly in virtual interviews. In early November, he traveled to Idaho to spend several days with Mora, and that clinched it. While out there, Benedict waited as Mora finished a letter of recommendation for a former player who had applied to law school, and saw a large journal of coaching decisions Mora had kept, analyzing the ones that didn’t work and why.
Once the hire was made Nov. 11, with Mora signing a five-year memo of understanding worth $1.5 million the first year, the new coach went to Clemson to watch the team play under interim coach Lou Spanos, then landed in Connecticut and hit the ground running. Mora has been to men’s and women’s basketball games, and other events on campus, joined Gov. Ned Lamont in handing out turkeys for Connecticut Foodshare.
His fiancé, Kathy, his daughter Lilia, wearing a UConn hockey sweater, and sons Cole, Ryder and Trey, joined him at his press conference on Saturday, where Mora began to lay out his vision for a building a relevant program, where Paul Pasqualoni, Bob Diaco and Randy Edsall have failed since the last winning season in 2010.
“Success takes on many forms,” Mora said. “On the field that means a competitive, respected football team on a national level. It also means our student athletes graduate and in graduating get an education and develop other passions and paths to success off the field. I’m not going to tie us down to a timeline, I’ll just say every single day we’re going to take another step toward being better.”
Mora, however, did point out that the NFL’s Atlanta Falcons were 5-11 in 2003, the year before he took over, and went 11-5, reaching the NFC Championship Game in his first season, and that UCLA was 6-7 before he took over in 2011, and went 9-5, reaching the Pac 12 Championship Game in his first season there. Mora was eventually let go by the Falcons, Seahawks and UCLA.
“I can promise you this, I’m more impatient than anybody,” Mora said. “In Atlanta and UCLA, we were able to turn it pretty quickly because I’m not a guy that compromises a whole lot. I don’t concede. I’m not going to look at our schedule next year and say, ‘we’re not going to win this game, we’re not going to win that game.’”
With the new transfer rules, Mora sees program building as something closer to the NFL, where rosters are constructed through both the draft and free agency. In college, he says, you build with recruiting and supplement with the transfer portal. He stressed, however, recruiting and development will be a key, “we do not want to become a team of mercenaries.”
Mora has made dozens of calls to state high school coaches to help improve the program’s chances of landing in-state talent that has been going elsewhere. He went to high school football games, Hand vs. Guilford and New London vs. NFA over Thanksgiving. UConn is expected to hire former Greenwich High head coach John Marinelli, now at Illinois, for its staff.
“This is the state school and we’re going to build something special,” Mora said, “and the players that fit our profile and have the ability, this is where they should dream of coming. When they’re little kids they should grow up passionate about playing for UConn, running around in the streets with UConn jerseys on. We have to recruit everywhere, but there are good players in this state and we should want them and they should want us.”
One player, defensive back Jeremy Lucien, entered the transfer portal this week. Mora has already had some conversations with individual players who have asked “what’s my future here?,” and said he will be honest, “brutally honest” in some cases as the uphill trek begins.
UConn president Andrew Agwunobi, citing Mora’s accomplishments, called him “the right coach at the right time for UConn football.”
“We have a lot of optimism for the future of this program,” said Dan Toscano, president of UConn’s Board of Trustees, “and it’s really important that Connecticut’s flagship have a very competitive program we can all be proud of. This program needs leadership, it needs direction, it needs passion and it needs someone who’s willing to stand up and dare to be great. Coach Mora’s the perfect person.”
Dom Amore can be reached at damore@courant.com
