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UConn never had a chance vs. Louisville for ACC birth (Link) - CardinalJim - 12-09-2012 04:48 PM
From the article:
" In fact, Louisville's college basketball ratings on ESPN were the highest in the country last season and have traditionally been among the highest of any market in the past 10 years. The men's basketball program is reportedly the most profitable of any basketball program in the country, with Forbes.com reporting that the Cardinals revenue was $23.2 million last season as the program attracted $20 million in donor contributions and has grown 39 percent since the KFC Yum! Center opened in 2010.
In the end, though, it's about more than where the team practices and where the games are held.
As Louisville basketball coach Rick Pitino said a few weeks ago, fans in his market have a far deeper interest in college sports than fans in the Northeast. Louisville is a smaller TV market than Hartford/New Haven, and UConn provides an entry into the New York market through alumni in Fairfield Country and the school's relationship with SNY. That market is attractive to advertisers. But Louisville has the reputation as a college sports hotbed, which might explain the contrasting numbers when each school went to a BCS bowl game.
UConn's football program garnered some negative national publicity when the school sold only about 4,000 of its allotted 17,500 tickets for the 2011 Fiesta Bowl. The last time that Louisville earned a BCS bowl bid, the program sold all 17,000 allotted tickets and reportedly brought about 30,000 fans to the game.
Former Louisville coach and Louisville native Howard Schnellenberger, the man credited with saving the program in the 1980s, feels strongly that the school is in football territory. And that's the opinion reportedly shared by folks in the ACC, even though Louisville has historically been more of a college basketball market.
"People in the state of Kentucky and in particular Louisville always loved football," Schnellenberger told The Courant. "Nobody had ever given them anything to be proud of except the basketball team, so they migrated more toward basketball than football. But these are blue-collar workers, farmers and mechanics and the people in that area. … These are more football people. Their lifestyle, their psyche is more football than it is basketball. Still is."
Conversely, UConn is viewed nationally as a basketball school with a relatively new football program. Sandwiched between two of the largest professional sports markets in the country, fans in Connecticut embraced UConn basketball decades ago, but their attention can be scattered. Even basketball attendance has dipped."
Hartford Courant