16 teams entered the 14th and final week of the regular season needing just one victory to become bowl eligible. Only five achieved that feat.
Including the College Football Playoffs, the NCAA has 82 available spots in 41 bowl games for FBS programs. The number of bowl-eligible teams and available spots is the same this year, meaning that every program with at least six wins will play one more game.
The UConn football team, one of two independent teams that qualified for postseason play, will go bowling as a result. It will be the Huskies’ eighth bowl appearance in their history and their second in three seasons under head coach Jim Mora.
In scrolling through projections from several media companies, I found multiple potential bowls that they could play in. As Connecticut is an FBS independent, I primarily focused on those bowls that could choose from a pool of programs to fill their conference tie-in spots. The Huskies’ last bowl, the Myrtle Beach Bowl, is one such postseason contest.
Yet one bowl game almost immediately stood out.
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Do not get me wrong; I found several quality options. The GameAbove Sports Bowl, formerly known as the Quick Lane Bowl, takes place at Ford Field in Detroit, Michigan. UConn’s last bowl victory during the 2009 season came in that building.
247 Sports had the Huskies playing in the Pinstripe Bowl at Yankee Stadium on December 28 for some reason. That bowl currently features an Atlantic Coast Conference team clashing with a Big Ten Conference program. Those tie-ins have been in place since the Big East dropped football after the 2012 season. Connecticut fans would pack Yankee Stadium the same way they fill Madison Square Garden without hesitation if invited.
Location was not a factor I considered, though. In the end, I felt like the StaffDNA Cure Bowl was the ideal choice because of some of the Huskies’ initiatives.
UConn has designated one home contest as their Cancer Awareness game since Mora’s hire over three years ago. On top of an all-white uniform, every Husky player wears a white helmet featuring a colored decal, most times a ribbon.
Those decals, which come in different colors for each specific type of cancer, help an athlete recognize a family member that cancer has affected. Players also had the option of sporting multiple colors.
The football team’s cancer awareness decals vary from what the UConn men’s basketball team did with their Coaches vs. Cancer buttons back in January. Nevertheless, the connection to the fight against cancer remains a personal one.
Mora lost his grandmother to breast cancer and his father-in-law to pancreatic cancer. His mother had, as of 2022, beaten breast cancer three times. Being at UConn has given the 2004 NFC Coach of the Year the opportunity to model Connecticut’s cancer awareness after the NFL’s Crucial Catch program. It built off what Mora did at UCLA in 2015, when the football team wore pink ribbons on their helmets to highlight breast cancer.
The Cure Bowl initially focused on highlighting that form of cancer when Laura Goldstein succumbed to the disease in 2011. It did not take long for the bowl to spotlight all forms of cancer. Despite highlighting just one disease, there is a serious commitment to bringing awareness of and finding the cure for it.
Since the first edition in 2015, the Cure Bowl and the Orlando Sports Foundation’s partnering events have raised over $4 million. Most of those donations go toward research for Dr. Annette Khaled, a professor at the University of Central Florida’s College of Medicine. Dr. Khaled also utilizes nanotechnology as the head of the Division of Cancer Research at UCF.
UConn has engaged in its own work in combating the disease through UConn Health. The university’s John Dempsey Hospital in Farmington, Connecticut, earned eight different Women’s Choice awards in 2024, specifically in cancer care and comprehensive breast care. The Breast Program at the Neag Comprehensive Cancer Center has a three-year full accreditation from the National Accreditation Program for Breast Centers.
In an ideal world, the Huskies’ football program would face off with the reigning MAC champion Miami-Ohio RedHawks. Miami-Ohio wore cancer awareness decals on their helmets first, beginning the tradition back in October of 2018. The only catch is that they participated in last year’s Cure Bowl, where they fell to the Appalachian State Mountaineers 13-9.
The North Carolina Tar Heels, who Jerry Palm once projected to face Connecticut in the Boca Raton Bowl, could be another possible opponent.
Tylee Craft, a former wide receiver and special teams player, passed away at 23 from a rare form of lung cancer in October. North Carolina honored Craft during their cancer awareness game the day he passed and recognized him again on senior day last weekend. A tilt between two teams who dedicate one home contest to highlighting the disease could do wonders for the Cure Bowl.
One caveat exists, however; the Tar Heels are in the Atlantic Coast Conference. The Cure Bowl has never invited a Power Four Conference program, instead focusing on Group of 5 schools. There is also a high probability that the Huskies could face a Sun Belt Conference program in a bowl game again. Seven teams have represented the league across all nine previous editions.
Regardless of who they face, UConn’s potential opponent should be one that commits to fighting cancer as much as they do.
Friday, December 20 marks the 10th edition of the Cure Bowl. What better way to celebrate the bowl’s diamond anniversary than to invite a program with a personalized cancer awareness connection?
Programs that played in past versions of the bowl have sported a special helmet highlighting the fight against cancer. The Huskies would also likely sport their personalized cancer awareness decals on their helmets if invited.
No other bowl game focuses on highlighting the disease as much as the Cure Bowl does. Should it happen, the match between Connecticut and the Cure Bowl could be a significant win for college football.
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