UConn coach: Idea of Civil ConFLiCT 'worked' because of the attention it's gotten

Connecticut coach Bob Diaco is taking the route of all publicity is good publicity regarding his team’s “rivalry” with Central Florida.

By now you may know that UCF left the rivalry trophy on the field in Storrs on Saturday after beating the Huskies. Diaco said it was “disappointing” the Knights didn’t want to have anything to do with the trophy, but decided to view the positives of his brainchild during his Tuesday press conference.

“The idea worked,” Diaco said. “I pose this challenge: What matchup, even including the championship game, has been more widely covered than the Conflict? What matchup? Bring it to my attention, I’m very interested. So an obscure game that would have been meaningless otherwise and had no energy at all for two teams that really never played each other became a national conversation. That’s a bad thing? It definitely filled some papers.”

UCF has publicly been tepid about the creation of the “ConFLiCT” (the abbreviations of Florida and Connecticut are embedded in the name) — as evidenced by the way it treated the trophy — and former coach George O’Leary said in 2015 that he “didn’t know about” the rivalry and trophy.

Diaco owned the Conflict’s creation Tuesday, but said that he didn’t create the rivalry “unilaterally.” He said he had pitched the idea of trophy games at an AAC spring meeting.

“From there I went and talked to exactly who I needed to talk to,” DIaco said. “Exactly who I needed to talk to. Here and there. About what my intention was. To add some intrigue, to add some excitement, to add some excitement to a game that otherwise would have no intrigue or excitement.”

If you have 10 minutes, you need to watch his rant about the trophy and the game above. It’s priceless and he even suggests broadcasting AAC games on Nickelodeon to reach younger viewers.

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While Diaco has every right to be upset about the way UCF has treated his idea, it’s hard to believe he was blindsided by the Knights’ refusal to care about the trophy. This is what he said in June of 2015 about UCF’s refusal to jump on the rivalry bandwagon.

Now that UCF is the rightful owner of the trophy, we’re intrigued to see what UConn does with it given that the Huskies still apparently have possession (Diaco joked it could be a coat rack via the Hartford Courant). Will UConn put it in storage for a year until the 2017 game in Orlando? Will the trophy make the trip? Diaco is right. We care a whole lot more about this game than we would without the trophy.

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Nick Bromberg is the assistant editor of Dr. Saturday on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at nickbromberg@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!

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