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.

C.J. Leslie said Wednesday morning that he hasn't made a final list
of schools that he is considering, but that he is most interested in
Connecticut, Florida, Kentucky, N.C. State and Oregon.

And I thought UNC Chapel Hill's last chancellor was the keyboard guru.

Last night at the women's basketball game between UNC Chapel Hill and the University of Connecticut, Carolina Chancellor Holden Thorp provided the musical accompaniment for the National Anthem. He played the keyboards in support of Terri Houston, the university's director of recruitment and multicultural programs, who belted out a powerful rendition of the anthem that drew raves as it crescendoed to its conclusion.

Thorp became chancellor last summer, succeeding James Moeser, an accomplished organist. I was curious about how Thorp and Houston put their act together; turns out they perform from time to time, as you can see in this photo of the two of them from a campus event from last year called Fallfest.

I e-mailed the chancellor late last night and he was gracious enough to fire back some answers. 

Click "Read More" for all the details.

Mount Zion Prep’s Jamaal Trice, a 6-foot-6 shooting guard, committed to Connecticut on Wednesday, according to coach Stephen Baines.

Trice, a graduate of Santa Ana (Cal.) Mater Dei, is averaging 26.2 points and 6.3 rebounds for Mount Zion’s post-graduate team.

“He is a fabulous shooter,” Baines said. “The Connecticut coaches believe he can make an immediate contribution.”

Trice plays on Durham school’s prep team, not its better known national high school team.

Incidentally, Karron Johnson, the leader of Mount Zion’s national team and a candidate for All-America honors, has transferred from Mount Zion, according to Baines.