COLUMBIA, Mo. • A few days before Missouri played Iowa in the 2010 Insight Bowl, Connecticut arrived in Phoenix for the biggest game in the history of its football program. Staged for New Year’s Day, the Fiesta Bowl would match UConn against Oklahoma, four days after the Tigers and Hawkeyes played the area’s hors d’oeuvre bowl game.
The main entrée hardly was satisfying.
The Sooners bludgeoned the co-Big East champions 48-20. Connecticut came to the desert as a program on the rise. It left on a steep descent. The next day, coach Randy Edsall left UConn for the head-coaching job at Maryland.