National title validates Connecticuts choice to embrace basketball in Big East at footballs expense

HOUSTON — For all the grandeur of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament, football is the engine of college athletics. And at the most crucial time in the history of college sports to be relevant in football, UConn was bad at it. Very, very, very bad. When Dan Hurley arrived as the Huskies’ basketball coach in 2018, UConn had arguably been the biggest loser of the decade in conference realignment. From its once proud place in the original Big East, duking it out with Georgetown and Villanova and Providence and Seton Hall in a league where basketball mattered more than anything,…