Dom Amore: A coaching presence to suit the place and times at UConn

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STORRS — Jason Candle was asked questions rather typical for a head coach about to debut with a new team. How does he approach a season opener? How would he define success in year one?

Does he have any pregame rituals? After that one, he looked down from the podium and shook his head, a little chuckle coming out.

“Again, a game day is not about me,” Candle said Monday. “This is about me staying the hell out of the way and letting these guys do what they love to do. However I can support them, get them to do this at a very high level, that’s why you do this, that’s why you put the time and effort into forging a career in this industry.”

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Some coaches we know would’ve had a laundry list of rituals, but we will just have to go into the Jason Candle era blind, not knowing what color M&M’s he separates, whether or not he uses incense. We won’t even know what, if any, cartoon characters appear on his underwear. But it is no mystery, and it’s unavoidable that this game day, when Lafayette comes to Rentschler Field on Saturday, and most of the game days in 2026 will be about Jason Candle. After 10 years at Toledo, his first head coaching job, he is not an old hand at being the new coach in town, nor, perhaps to the scrutiny that comes for anyone connected with UConn athletics in this state. But as he learns the nuances of his new coaching assignment, we will be learning more and more about him.

I plead guilty to being fascinated, perhaps overly so, with coaches’ personalities, approaches, the ways they operate, motivate, the way completely different coaches can be equally successful —  provided their personalities fit the time and the place. I’ve been fortunate, during my career, to cover some of the greatest, Hall-of-Famers, future Hall-of-Famers and should-be Hall of Famers, a list that includes Joe Torre, Dan Reeves, Jim Calhoun, Geno Auriemma, Dan Hurley. Even wrote a book with one of them, maybe you’ve heard.

And at the other end of the spectrum, my first coach: Ray Handley. If you’re old enough, you know.

Candle is radically different from his predecessor, Jim Mora, but he enters UConn in a different place than Mora did, so his humility and Midwestern matter-of-factness has a chance to play very well at the outset.

“That’s absolutely coach Candle’s character, it’s never about him,” said sophomore defensive back Saxton Suchanic. “He’s trying to instill into this program. That’s something you’ll always see from him, unselfishness, that’s one of the things I really respect about Coach Candle.”

Coaching personalities come with gauges, needles that move back and forth with the results. A coach is “stoic” or “even-keeled” until they lose a few games and are then considered “too laid back.” A coach can be “passionate” or “intense,” but are only a few losses from being “totally out of control.” A winning coach may have “slogans” or “(Ollie)-isms” that, within one losing season, become “cliches.” And a coach who is “dynamic” or “charismatic” or “innovative” is separated by a slippery slope from “making it all about him” or “thinking he invented the game.” The line between “quirky” and Bob Diaco is just that fine.

But a coach who doesn’t try to be “the smartest guy in the room” can convince everyone, over time, he is just that.

We do know that, with his 81-44 record, Candle kept those needles on the right side while at Toledo. As Candle and UConn folks drive between the campus and the stadium this week, they may just see a billboard flashing on I-84 East that reads: ” THANK YOU. … Go Huskies. …  Jason and Nicole Candle. 10 Years of Great Memories. Always a Rocket.”

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That’s a unusual touch of warmth and class that says something about the people back in Toledo, and says something about the coach who left them for UConn last December. There is a reason more than two dozen players left Toledo to follow Candle to Connecticut, some without seeing the UConn campus, and a reason a number of players, like Suchanic, stayed through the coaching transition.

“(In front) of the cameras I’m sure he’s very laid back,” defensive lineman Avery Dunn, who started at Michigan State, then played for Candle at Toledo. “But once he gets to the football field, that fire definitely lights up and he gets a lot more fired up. At the end of the day, Coach Candle says, ‘we win the games, not the coaches,’ and you see that every day. He challenges us as much as he can, but we have to go out and make the plays and execute the play calls.”

Mora came to UConn with NFL and power conference pedigree and the, let’s call it, “fanatical attention to detail” that goes with it. (When you lose, that’s called “paranoia.”) But he was exactly what the downtrodden, newly independent FBS program needed after the 1-11 debacle in 2021. The changes in college athletics played to Mora’s strengths and experience and he was able to turn the Huskies around. If the NCAA had been able to implement a “five-in-five” eligibility rule back then, all the good things that happened in 2024 and 25, the nine-win seasons and Joe Fagnano’s rise as a sixth- and seventh-year collegiate quarterback, would not have happened, or would have had to happen a different way. Again, right coaching presence for the time and place.

Assuming five-in-five and other proposals become NCAA rules, or the laws of the land, Candle’s emphasis on player retention and development could be that right approach/right time in the coming years. There is one thing just about all coaches have in mind, however they choose to express their definition of success.

“It starts out by winning our first game,” Candle said. “After that, you figure out what’s going to get it done. What it looks like in December, my wife asked me the other day if we’re going to go on vacation anywhere. I don’t know when the hell vacation is. Can we just get to Saturday, play Saturday, before we worry about what a successful year looks like and where we’re going on vacation? There are so many hurdles in today’s college athletics that you have to jump over that you see down the road, and equally as many you don’t see coming.”

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