RandyEdsallleft UConn football in 2021. Why he doesn't miss coaching 'one bit' and is proud of legacy
Jul. 21—"I play golf six days a week," he said. "I'd play seven, but my club's not open on Mondays."
It's been nearly two years since Edsall abruptly retired as UConn coach in September 2021. He had been in the business and on various sidelines for 40 years, from his days as a grunt graduate assistant at Syracuse in the early 1980s to his final hours with the Huskies — the low point for a program he built during his first stint in Storrs.
Then he was gone again. Poof. For good, this time. He isn't looking back up the Florida fairways wishing for another go in the sport that consumed his life for decades.
"I am so glad to be done," Edsall said. "College athletics is so messed up, and you ain't getting it back."
A day after UConn's embarrassing home loss to Holy Cross on Sept. 4, 2021, Edsall issued a statement about a plan to retire at the end of the season. An adjustment to that timeline came 24 hours later with a university announcement that Edsall would step down immediately. A hastened departure followed, the end of the road for the most successful coach in program history in one chapter, the least successful coach in program history in another, a bit of everything in between, a complicated body of work befitting many labels.
"I'm proud of what we accomplished there, in totality," Edsall said this week from the Jacksonville area, where he lives with his wife, Eileen. "The run I had at UConn, I think I was very successful, regardless of what happened the last five years. There are circumstances there that I won't get into. But it is what it is. The numbers are what they are. I just know that I feel good because of the things we did accomplish and the number of young men that I gave opportunities to, and seeing how those young men turned out.
"We were in it for the right reasons. We weren't in it to win at all costs. And I'm glad I'm not in it now because I don't believe in the philosophy that's out there now. What it is, you're paying players. I don't think that's what college football is all about. Basically, cheating is legal now."
Edsall was on the other end of the phone line to discuss the legacy and recent death of longtime UConn athletic director Lew Perkins, the man who hired him in 1998 and trusted him to build a football program that would transition to the nation's highest level, then called the Bowl Championship Series.
The conversations took many twists and turns, though, not unlike Edsall's career. He was in the rare position of being the head coach of the same program on two separate occasions. He led UConn to the top of the old Big East and on to the Fiesta Bowl in the 2010 season before his first departure — in the darkness of night, to take the job at Maryland.
Edsall was 74-70 with the Huskies the first time around, with two conference titles and five bowl games, making him the program's all-time leader in victories. He was 6-32 after returning in 2017 for what turned out to be five years and three-plus seasons. UConn skipped the 2020 season due to COVID-19 and scheduling impossibilities and returned to the field in 2022 only to get blown out in the opener at Fresno State, 45-0. The loss a week later to Holy Cross, of the lower-level FCS Division I tier, ended it.
Should the last image be the lasting image of Edsall? He was once the face of something so ambitious and successful.
"Overall, in totality, I look at it as I had a great run, I enjoyed it, I gave a lot of kids opportunities and we won some big games," Edsall said. "We did things people never thought we could do. I'm enjoying life. I had a great run of 40 years. It was super. I got a chance to do a lot of different things and be around a lot of really good people. I really enjoyed the aspect of developing kids. That's what we did. We developed kids and made them better people, better students and better athletes."
That's over now, though.
Edsall clearly has a particular distaste for complications that have come with the era of name, image and likeness, how it's spun recruiting and roster-building in different directions. He's no fan of transfer portal chaos, either, the era of virtual free agency. The sport changed rapidly. Edsall did not. Some would argue that hindered his ability to succeed the second time around at UConn. Some would bemoan the new realities just like Edsall and celebrate his remaining true to certain ideals.
Edsall, 64, is into the golf-travel-repeat portion of a life now under the sun instead of the spotlight. And he's loving it. He plays golf every morning. On Wednesday afternoons, he gets in an extra nine holes with two longtime friends — Tom Coughlin, who won two Super Bowls as coach of the Giants and was Edsall's boss at Boston College in the 1990s; and Mike Mularkey, the longtime NFL assistant who was head coach of the Jaguars and Titans.
Football?
"I don't miss it," Edsall said. "I don't miss it one bit. We're leaving on Saturday for two weeks in Alaska. I've never been there before and it's something we've always wanted to do."
Edsall recruited and coached many members of the current UConn football team, which reached a bowl and finished 6-7 last season under Jim Mora. He did not watch a single game but took note of the results every week. He barely pays attention to college football — the competition, anyway. It does remain part of his life in the way of family and personal experiences.
He and Eileen made several trips to see games at Stanford, where their son, Corey, a former UConn assistant, is an offensive quality control analyst. Edsall attended the Peach Bowl, for which his daughter, Lexi, works as director of events. He attended the Army-Navy Game in Philadelphia, a bucket list type of thing. The tickets were a gift from Aaron Smith, the Army assistant who played at UConn and worked there under Edsall.
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Edsall attended a Stanford road game, too — Oct. 15 at Notre Dame. A buddy from Glastonbury gave him those tickets.
"That was neat, to sit there in the stands," Edsall said. "You're sitting on the 50-yard line, sitting in the stadium knowing that when I was at B.C., we beat them, and as a head coach at UConn, we beat them."
That was Nov. 21, 2009, a 33-30 Huskies victory in overtime, a signature moment in program history and Edsall's career, just four-plus weeks after Jasper Howard was killed on campus. It was about midway through the entire experience, timewise, years after the strategic construction of something great began, years before the 2021 flashpoint.
"I don't know if anybody would ever go through what I went through at one school," Edsall said.
He essentially coached in seven distinctly different situations. UConn was a Division I-AA program when he arrived, a member of the Atlantic 10. The Huskies then transitioned to I-A, or BCS, as an independent and joined the Big East in 2004. He coached parts of five seasons at Maryland, three in the ACC, two in the Big Ten. UConn was a member of the American Athletic Conference when he returned, and an independent by the time he left because the Huskies joined the basketball-driven Big East in 2020.
"That wasn't part of the plan when I was hired the second time," Edsall said. "That's somebody else's decision. I'll leave it at that."
That move saved UConn basketball, the university's greatest asset. The money coming in, overall, is roughly the same as it would have been as a continuing member of the AAC. UConn, of late, has been rumored as a candidate for membership in the Big 12, should the conference expand.
But none of that is any of Edsall's concern. Not anymore. No more 80-hour work weeks. No more film sessions. No more recruiting or practices or whistles or press conferences. No more headset, no more buses, no more games to coach. He's looking forward to a trip to Syracuse during the upcoming season. He'll reunite with teammates and friends he hasn't seen since graduating in 1980.
"Saturday mornings, I'm on the golf course at 7:30," Edsall said. "Sundays, I'm on the golf course. The best thing I do on Sunday afternoons is, I've got a pool in the back yard and a summer kitchen, big screen TV. I sit there and watch the RedZone channel on Sunday afternoons. I watch more pro football than I do college."
Many coaches are so invested in the job for so long that separation is difficult. Coaching has become their forever self-identity, in a way. Some hang on, in some capacity, to the sport until they're unable to. This is not an issue for Edsall.
"I don't miss it," he said. "I don't miss it one bit. ... I had a great run and I enjoyed it. But I don't even want to be involved with it."
Edsall is quite comfortable without college football.
He's quite comfortable, too, with what he did in college football.
"The relationships I had with my players, that's the thing that's special to me," Edsall said. "Those are what it's all about. For me, and maybe I'm different, it's not so much how many games you win in college athletics. I understand that's what it is about, basically. But you know what? I gave a lot of young people tremendous opportunities to grow and develop and go on and be successful as fathers, as people in business, in their life. To see what those kids have done and seeing how they're continuing to move forward now with families and children, that's what is important to me.
"I did it the right way. I did it without cutting corners. I did it without cheating. I did it in an up front and honest way, which some people didn't like. So I don't have anything to look back on, from any negativity. I feel good about what I did there and the people I affected."
