Rob Ambrose was there for the climb. Of the endless stairs to the old press box at Memorial Stadium. Of the program's path to relevance. Of the ball as it thundered off Dave Teggart's foot and ran like a current through the Tampa night, eventually landing all of them in Glendale, the Fiesta Bowl, the BCS.

Rob Ambrose was there for it all, from the early days when his office was a trailer, all the way to the end when he went to work at the palatial Burton Family Complex that houses UConn football today.

"I have a lot of memories," Ambrose was saying on the other end of the phone the other day, "and they're all good."

Ambrose, once the offensive coordinator under Randy Edsall at UConn, is coaching The Enemy now. He's gone home again, back to his alma mater, Towson State, which just happens to be UConn's opponent in the season opener next week at Rentschler Field.

He'll always love Connecticut, Ambrose will. His son, Riley, was born here. His daughter, Grace, got a head start this week on the trip back and flew to Connecticut to see her friends in advance of the game.

Rob Ambrose calls Towson "Mama," invoking an old Bear Bryant story about why he returned to his alma mater. "When Mama calls you," Bear Bryant said, "you just have to come running."

And so if Towson, the alma mater, is "Mama" to Rob Ambrose, that must make UConn his favorite aunt.

"Or maybe my best friend's mom," he said. "And I spent a lot of time at my best friend's house, too."

Ambrose arrived here in 2002. He was here for Dan Orlovsky's emergence, they day they stormed the field when they beat No. 11 South Florida, for Donald Brown, bowl games and the BCS.

"It was a life-changing experience for me," he said. "The memories. One of my favorites was when we played Georgia Tech the last year at Memorial. The look on their faces when they jogged on to the field for the first time. It was like, 'we have to play HERE?'"

Ambrose remembered former athletic director Lew Perkins, especially the last day of Memorial, seeing Perkins beam and never having to play there again. He remembered how much it meant to build Rentschler. Opening the building with Indiana. Beating Iowa State in Ames when "nobody knew who we were."

"I remember hugging Donald Brown after the International Bowl," Ambrose said. "I had my son on my shoulders. It got up there on the Jumbotron. The coolest thing ever."

And now Ambrose would qualify under the category of "hot young coach." Ambrose, 43, won the Eddie Robinson Award in 2011 as the top coach in the Football Championship Subdivision (formerly 1-AA), after resuscitating the Towson program. The Tigers are 13-3 in the last two years with consecutive Colonial Athletic Association titles and their first berth (2011) in the playoffs.

They even gave LSU a tough game (38-22) last year in Baton Rouge. So while the Huskies should be expected to win next week, think Lee Corso when he says, "closer than the experts think."

Towson, ranked eighth in the Athlon FCS preseason poll, has a big, veteran offensive line, a keeper in running back Terrance West (two-time All-American) and has played Kent State, Navy, Northwestern, Indiana and Maryland in recent seasons. No intimidation here.

"Schools from (the FCS) beat (FBS) schools less than three percent of the time," Ambrose said. "We were 7-4 last year and we lost to LSU and Kent State by 20, a game we turned the ball over six times. At the end of the day (in the FCS) winning percentage gets you in the playoffs. They really don't care who you play. It's a numbers game."

But the rhetorical usefulness of a victory at UConn might be as significant as the number in the win column.

Ambrose might even get a twinkle when he visits the field again Thursday before the juices of the game and the season pump through the veins. Maybe only the ardent UConn fans remember him here. But they were good days.

"I still refer to Connecticut as home," Ambrose said, "and I always will."

This is the opinion of Day sports columnist Mike DiMauro.