Former SU Head Coach, Pasqualoni, Takes UConn Job

Just posted at UConnHuskies.com is the school's official announcement of the hiring of former Syracuse head coach Paul Pasqualoni.

"We are very proud to welcome Paul Pasqualoni to the UConn family and also bring him back home to his native Connecticut," said University of Connecticut Director of Athletics Jeffrey Hathaway. "Paul brings an outstanding coaching background to UConn on the collegiate, professional and high school level. He also is a man of strong character and integrity and we look forward to him developing our football student-athletes in the classroom, on the field and as part of the community."

According to the Boston Globe's Mark Blaudschun:

"After looking at all the angles--pros and cons--University of Connecticut athletic director Jeff Hathaway chose experience as a Big East head coach and at the FBS level as the deciding factor in choosing to hire former Syracuse coach Paul Pasqualoni over former University of Massachusetts coach Mark Whipple."

"Pasqualoni also had stronger UConn routes than Whipple and received an endorsement from the Connecticut High School Coaches over the weekend which boosted his standing with Hathaway who conducted a quick, but intense search for a new coach after former UConn coach Randy Edsall resigned on January 2nd to take the job at the University of Maryland."

The UConn Blog wants to be optimistic about the hire.

"Nevertheless, my really, really, really, really early impression," wrote Kevin Meacham on Thursday night. "I'm cautiously optimistic about this hire. The fact is the Orange under Pasqualoni were an annual Big East contender back when the conference was home to more than 0.5 ranked teams in a given year. So there you have it, folks. At the very least, the game against Syracuse should be fairly interesting next year."

Interesting? Just interesting? This takes things to a whole new level of interesting.

Not only did the Huskies knock Syracuse out of a BCS bowl berth this season, they now go and hire SU's old head coach, who arguably helped produced some of the most successful seasons in the programs history?

That is sorta like having your high school arch rival propose to your ex-fiance. That's double levels of hatred going on there!

Wow. That's all I need to say.

What are your thoughts? Opinions?