In Connecticut today, a staggering example of one booster's sway - or at least desired sway - over a collegiate football program.

At the University of Connecticut, football booster Robert Burton has set tongues wagging with a recent letter to Jeff Hathaway, director of athletics. In his deliciously labeled "personal and confidential" letter to Hathaway - a public employee - Burton makes quite clear that the millions he donated to UConn over the year have strings attached.

(A refresher: Burton is a longtime donor to UConn athletics; his $3 million gift a few years ago funded a massive indoor football practice facility on the Storrs campus, a supposed necessity for a university pouring resources into a burgeoning football program.)

Well, it appears Burton didn't like the athletic director's recent hiring of a new football coach.

The letter starts thus:

Dear Jeff:

When I called you on Monday, January 3rd, I made two things very clear to you, as the largest donor in the UConn football program. I told you that I wanted to be involved in the hiring process for the new coach. I also gave you my insight about who would be a good fit for the head coaching position as well as who would not. For someone who has given over $7,000,000 to the football program/university, I do not feel as though these requests were asking for too much.

Somewhere, a professor just developed a nervous tic.

Later in the letter, Burton demands his family's name removed from the building he funded, and he wants his $3 million back. He further pledges to no longer make various donations to the football program, buy advertising in the football programs, transfer scholarship donations from athletics to the business school, and even stop using UConn's business school for workforce training.

Instead, he's going to enlist the help of Syracuse's business school, he says.

For good measure, he points out he also paid for pictures and other art to decorate football offices, as well as an audio system for the weight room.

All of this because he feels disrespected and left out of the loop.

At this point I ought to reinforce the fact that Burton is not on the UConn staff nor a paid search consultant.

But 7 million bucks ought to buy him some face time with the boss, right?

The kick sails through the uprights and an entire state goes bananas.

The UConn Huskies, a Division I team for about a decade, had somehow found its way to a BCS bowl, the pinnacle of college football.

All is right in the world, right, Husky fans?

Not so fast.

The most sobering part of UConn's unexpected berth in the January 1 Fiesta Bowl should be its odds of winning - pretty slim, given it is a 17-point underdog against perennial power Oklahoma.

But it looks like the bowl experience will be a financial albatross for UConn, a public university that, like many, has faced financial struggles in recent years thanks to the weak economy.

Welcome to big-time college athletics, where gridiron glory and financial prosperity don't always match up.

As the New Haven Register reports, the University of Connecticut stands to lose money on the deal, even with a guaranteed $2.5 million payment for making the bowl game.

The main culprits here are geography, ticket sales, and perhaps, a fan base reluctant to travel across the country to watch a game that may get out of hand quickly.

Universities headed to bowl games are routinely obligated to buy large chunks of game tickets and hotel rooms. In UConn's case, it is on the hook for 17,500 game tickets - of which it has sold about 4,000 so far - and 550 hotel rooms.

It's a long way from Storrs, CT to Phoenix. The weather's better, for sure, but the airline tickets are costly.

So ticket sales lag.

And the university's expenses are many. Factor in the cost of transporting a team, cheerleaders, band, administrators and the like all the way across the country, and you've got problems.

In North Carolina, the local teams are in better situations.

N.C. State takes on West Virginia in the Champs Sports Bowl Dec. 28. Tickets are selling briskly and campus officials expect to sell all 13,500 they were alloted.

And UNC has already sold all 10,000 of its tickets for the Dec. 30 Music City Bowl against Tennessee.

Here's another financial football sob story: The University of Nevada, which cost itself a cool million bucks by upsetting Boise State in the last game of the regular season. Yes, this is another case of a team costing itself a bunch of money by succeeding on the field.

Try to follow along:

Boise State was the nation's darling all season long, David to the many Goliaths from major football conferences like the SEC.

Undefeated heading into its final game against Nevada, it needed only to win to make a BCS bowl and snare $10 million that would be shared among the rest of the teams in the Western Athletic Conference.

Teams like Nevada.

But Nevada pulled the upset, jettisoning Boise State from a BCS bowl and with it, losing the estimated $1 million it would have netted simply by being in the same conference as a team having a great season.

Whoops.

UConn doesn't have Donald Brown anymore but the Huskies can still run the football.

No one in the country ran for more yards (2,083), or averaged more yards per game (160.2), than Brown, the first-round pick of the Indianapolis Colts. The Huskies rode Brown to an 8-5 record.

UConn will watch Michigan State and UNC play for the national title on Monday.

The Huskies were on the wrong side of karma. The Huskies had the whole "Yahoo!-we-cheated" thing working against them, Jim Calhoun's defiant "Get-some-facts" taunt that blew up in his face (when Yahoo! got some facts), the continued presence of A.J. "Hot Laptop" Price on the roster and last week's refusal to cut down the nets at the regional final.

Pencil Michigan State in for the 2013 Final Four and UConn for a return in 2014, but not before.

History majors should have put the Spartans in Detroit on the four-year cycle. Tom Izzo took the Spartans to the Final Four in 2001 and 2005 (let's just ignore the '99 and '00 trips for purpose of this blog post).

If you're like me and didn't stay up to see all of the six-overtime thriller between Syracuse and UConn — the 'Cuse won the Big East tourney game, 127-117 — here are the plans to replay it:

ESPN Classic will air it again from 8 a.m. to noon and from 9 p.m. to 1 a.m. on Sunday. ESPN Classic also will show four multi-overtime games Tuesday: 8 a.m., Baylor-Texas A&M, five overtimes, 2008; 11 a.m., Texas-Oklahoma State, three overtimes, 2007; 1 p.m., NCAA regional final, Michigan State-Kentucky, two overtimes, 2005; 3 p.m., Big East quarterfinals, Syracuse-UConn, six overtimes, 2009.

ESPNU will televise a special two-hour encore of the six overtime periods between SU and UConn at 3 p.m. Tuesday.

Staff photo by Robert Willett

If the point wasn't bludgeoned home with a 98-63 win over the alleged 13th-best team in the country on a neutral site, UNC's the best team in college basketball.

By a mile, actually make that 11 because the reality of the talent-depleted state of college basketball is the second-best team is Duke.

ESPN The Magazine came out with its College Hoops Preview this week. It focused on the big men who stuck around for another year like UNC senior Tyler Hansbrough, the reigning national player of the year, Notre Dame junior Luke Harangody, Okalahoma sophomore Blake Griffin and Connecticut junior Hasheem Thabeet.

Thabeet got off the best line, which was prominently displayed on the Mag's cover for the world to see. Asked who he thought were the toughest big men in college, Thabeet said, "Nobody's better than me, only more experienced. I played Luke Harangody and he was not tough. Tyler Hansbrough? I don't see nothing."