Huskies

The trophy nobody wanted sits at the centre of one of Connecticut's rivalries. When coach Bob Diaco set up a "Civil Conflict" series against the University of Central Florida in 2014, UCF refused to even acknowledge the thing, and the series has run 6–2 in UCF's favour ever since without either side treating it the way the coach intended. The older rivalry, with the University of Massachusetts, needs no invented prize: it has been played since 1897, runs level at 38–38–2, and is fought over a jug named for the Massachusetts town of Southwick.

UConn's football side traces back to 1896, when the school was still Storrs Agricultural College, and the Huskies name itself came later, chosen by a student vote in 1934. What sets the program apart is the jump it made from the second tier of Division I to the top flight as a member of the Big East Conference, the first school to do it. Randy Edsall oversaw that climb across two spells in charge, taking the Huskies to a share of the Big East title in 2007 and outright in 2010, the year the team reached the Fiesta Bowl and lost to Oklahoma.

Before the Big East years, the trophy case filled up in smaller conferences: fifteen Yankee Conference titles between 1949 and 1989, and a run of New England Conference championships stretching back to the 1920s. Sending players to the NFL has become more routine lately, with defensive linemen Travis Jones and Folorunso Fatukasi among those drafted out of Storrs.

Since that Fiesta Bowl appearance, a major bowl win has not followed; the 2025 Fenway Bowl ended in a loss to Army, and the Huskies still play as an independent, without a conference championship to chase.