He then coached at Syracuse under Frank Maloney and Dick MacPherson from 1980 to 1990 and was a part of the 1987 team that went 11–0–1, including a tie in the Sugar Bowl.

In what has been considered one of the best and fastest building jobs in recent memory, Randy Edsall oversaw a period of unprecedented success at the University of Connecticut.

UConn ended the 2002 season impressively with four-straight wins to reach the .500 mark, including season-ending road wins at Navy and at bowl-bound Iowa State of the Big 12 Conference led by Seneca Wallace that was ranked as high as 9th in the country that year, 49–37.

The excitement for Edsall and his team continued to swell in 2003 as the Huskies moved into their new home, Rentschler Field, and enjoyed the nation's largest attendance increase with a gain of 21,252 fans per game.

Finishing with a 9–3 record, many national media outlets, including Bristol-based ESPN, proclaimed that UConn should have received a bowl berth, a feat highly uncommon for an independent team.

Behind one of the best players in Connecticut history in Dan Orlovsky, the Huskies capped their historic season with a resounding 39–10 win over Mid-American Conference champion Toledo in the Motor City Bowl.

The Huskies finished that season at 9–4 with a berth in the Meineke Car Care Bowl, earning Edsall New England Division I Coach of the Year accolades.

After a 5–0 start and a return to the top 25 rankings, the Huskies finished the season at 8–5 and defeated Buffalo in the International Bowl in Toronto, Canada, 38–20.

After defeating Louisville on October 17, 2009, Jasper Howard, a cornerback on the team was stabbed to death the next day outside of a school dance at the UConn Student Union.

On September 11, 2010, Edsall became the winningest coach in Connecticut football history with a 62-3 victory over Texas Southern.

By virtue of their overtime win over the Mountaineers, the Huskies represented the Big East in the BCS, the first major bowl appearance in school history.

Edsall was named 2010 Big East Coach of the Year, however, the nature of his unannounced departure for another program clouded this triumph.

In 2013, his third season as head coach, after one of the program's biggest wins over West Virginia, Edsall led his 4–0 team into the Associated Press top 25 poll, entering at #25.

Previously, Penn State had dominated the series and the rivalry with a record of 35–1–1 against Maryland and the Terrapins had never won in Beaver Stadium.

After a 2-4 start, Edsall was fired on October 11, 2015, with offensive coordinator Mike Locksley named interim head coach for the rest of the season.

Lions general manager Bob Quinn was a graduate assistant in the Connecticut athletic department when Edsall was the head coach for the Huskies in 1999.

[6] During his first month back, Edsall created a media backlash by withdrawing a scholarship from linebacker Ryan Dickens, who had verbally committed to Connecticut under fired head coach Bob Diaco, two weeks before signing day.

In 2018, Edsall was involved in a controversy over nepotism in the football program and favoritism in the State General Assembly.

The plan was reportedly hatched during the Carmen Cozza all-state high school football banquet at the Aqua Turf Club in Southington.

[citation needed] In November 2018, a Superior Court judge ruled that UConn did not violate state ethics codes when it hired Corey Edsall to be a coach on his father's football staff.

[13] Edsall has two children, a son Corey who is an offensive quality control assistant at Stanford after spending six seasons at UConn and the previous two years on the staff at Colorado, and a daughter, with his wife.