UT Vols, UConn 'in discussions' about resolving football agreement with a game

Blake Toppmeyer | Knoxville

Tennessee and Connecticut are discussing a possible football matchup.

The schools signed a contract in 2008 for a home-and-home series. The agreement called for a game in East Hartford, Conn., in 2015, with the Huskies making a return trip to Knoxville in 2016.

Clips from UT Vols practice, Aug. 14 Here are clips from Tuesday’s Tennessee Vols practice.

In 2014, Tennessee announced that it had reached “a mutual agreement to suspend that series” with UConn to create the opportunity for the Vols to play two neutral-site games. They played Bowling Green in Nashville to open the 2015 season and Virginia Tech in Bristol during the 2016 season.

Then-Vols athletic director Dave Hart sent Warde Manuel, who was UConn’s AD, an amendment in 2014 that outlined the schools’ agreement to push back the series. Manuel signed the amendment, which stated that dates for rescheduled games “shall be mutually agreed upon by Sept. 26, 2015.”

The series was never rescheduled, and the home-and-home now appears unlikely, but UConn coach Randy Edsall remains interested in playing Tennessee.

“We feel, hey, we had a contract signed, we should be getting something out of that,” Edsall told the Hartford Courant earlier this month. “So we’re just trying to do our due diligence for our program and trying to hold people accountable to something we had. Whether we can have it as a home-and-home, I don’t know, but we’re going to explore our possibilities to at least get something out of something that we had signed.”

Edsall is in his second stint as UConn's coach. He was coaching the Huskies in 2008 when the contract was signed.

Vols athletic department spokesman Tom Satkowiak told USA TODAY NETWORK - Tennessee that UT is “currently in discussions with UConn.”

The original contract called for a $1 million breach-of-contract penalty for failure to participate in the game. It’s unlikely UT would pay that penalty.

What’s more likely is that the teams will agree on a single matchup in Knoxville as a so-called guarantee game. If that happens, the Huskies likely would receive more guaranteed money than the $300,000 that the visiting team was slated to receive in the original home-and-home agreement.

Guarantee games typically carry a price tag of at least $500,000, sometimes exceeding $1 million.

Tennessee has never played UConn.

The talks on the football contract aren’t the only dialogue the schools have had recently. UConn and UT announced on Tuesday that they were renewing their women’s basketball series.

UConn will host Tennessee on Jan. 23, 2020, with the Huskies coming to Thompson-Boling Arena sometime during the 2020-21 season.