As for Diaco and football, I can not imagine a more difficult job in college athletics than UConn football coach. We are in a good southern mid-major league, which has several implications:
1) There are multiple quality programs: UCF, Houston, Cincinnati, SMU, ECU, USF (once they un-Skipify the program) that are going to be competitive a lot more often than they are not. These programs all have strong local recruiting bases that enable them to compete at a mid to low P5 level year over year, with the occasional break out season. The bottom programs are terrible though, with Tulane, Temple and Memphis among the worst FBS programs over the last 10 years and Tulsa appearing to be in decline.
2) The rest of the conference makes some geographic sense, with a western nexus of SMU, Houston, Tulsa, Memphis and Tulane, with Cincinnati not too far away, and an eastern nexus of UCF, USF, and ECU, with Temple and Navy not too far away. And then there is UConn, a program that is 250 miles from its nearest conference rival and over 1,000 miles from most of the league. This makes it difficult to develop rivalries or generate schedules that casual fans care about. We have already seen the impact in attendance for both hoops and football.
3) Recruiting is going to be very tough with no local rivals. We will not get much benefit from conference mates in Florida, because if a kid in Florida is more interested in playing time than program or conference prestige, he still has to be willing to attend school 1,000 miles away when there are several AAC schools with good coaches that are much closer and don't have a foot of ice on the ground in the winter. Likewise for Texas. What is the pitch to get a 3* Florida kid to not play for O'Leary or a 3* Texas kid to not play for June Jones? If they are willing to look past the coach's reputation, then there is USF and Houston.
It won't be any easier to get northeastern kids. When Pasqualoni was recruiting the northeast for Syracuse, or Schiano was doing the same for Rutgers later on, they had a league with BC, Rutgers and Temple, and later UConn, so he could pitch kids from New Jersey or New England on the fact that they will be playing multiple drivable games every year, and there were some rivalry games in the area. There was also no local competition from other equal or better leagues until BCU joined the ACC, and that was manageable. Now the Big 10 will be all over the mid-Alantic and New Jersey, and the ACC is already there. Navy and Temple will help a little in PA and the mid-Atlantic, but there is a lot of competition in that region.
So what does Diaco have to pitch with other than his own personality and leadership? He doesn't have the conference or geographic proximity, the program itself has limited prestige, and he has to sell kids on why travel is not going to kill them. He does have an athletic department that is supporting the program, for now, at a level that is probably better than most of our conference partners, and I think the basketball championships does help the football program somewhat.
I think Diaco is a good coach, and I really hope he will be successful, but we should recognize how hard his job is. We need him to win now in a situation that has a lot of challenges, and if he fails, our chances of getting into a major conference are likely over.