Rivalries are born, they aren’t created. Unless you are UConn Huskies football coach Bob Diaco who would like to see a rivalry be born between his program and the UCF Knights.
During his postgame press conference after the win against UCF, Diaco talked about how he would like to the start “Civil Conflict” with the Knights. And by “Civil Conflict”, he meant a rivalry game with them.
And when he said it, he meant no disrespect towards the UCF football program.
Oh by the way, he’s even willing to pay for the trophy himself.
Watch below as Diaco talks about the “Civil Conflict”
During his postgame wrap Sunday, he expanded on the remarks.
“What’s interesting is now that I’ve been in it for a little while here, in this conference, it’s an exciting conference and UCF becomes a conversation because they’re awesome, because I have such admiration and respect for them,” Diaco said. “Watching Coach O’Leary’s team and trying to prepare against them, you’re thinking what a contest this is going to be if we’re prepared.”
“I know he’s been doing it for 11 years without change, so it’s not going to change in the future and I know where we want to go and where we are going to go, so I thought, what an awesome contest it would be to kind of create a rival.”
“Obviously it takes two to tango, we’d need cooperation on their part, but to me that’s fun,” he said. “It spices things up and not in a negative way, but a positive way. I think it adds to the overall enjoyment for the fans and the universities and creates some spice and some pizzazz.”
While I like the idea, it is hard to create a rivalry. It might be better to look down the road and try to get something similar to this going with the UMass Minutemen, with whom they play in 2016 and 2017.
The two teams have a rivalry that dates back to 1897 and was played every year from 1952-1999. The two teams met as FBS opponents in 2012 when UConn beat UMass 37-0. Overall, UMass leads the rivalry 36-34-2
photo credit: sox & dawgs illustration
