(06-28-2019 11:29 AM)Attackcoog Wrote:  

(06-28-2019 11:13 AM)Sam Minuteman Wrote:  This is a bit of a different perspective, and I expect to get plenty of hate mail but here goes.....

I know it doesn't seem like it now but Once Uconn gets through the 2020 schedule which will be challenging to fill but not impossible Independence isn't that bad. With the hoops games they can offer other schools they should easily be able to find schools playing each other to push a game back and instead each play Uconn in exchange for Men's and Women's Hoop games.

No opportunity to play for a conference championship. How often were they going to compete for one in the AAC? Less than 20% of schools get to play in the game every year anyway.

No more Civil ConnFLict. No more rivalry with Tulane. Smack talk with SMU is all but done. Maybe they had some rivalries with Temple? Cinci? USF? Instead they will have games against Florida, Mississippi, Rutgers, Army, Hawaii, BYU, ND, Toledo, App State, UMass, BC, Buffalo, and so on and so forth.

Less $$.... they go from $7M/yr to $5M (or something like that I'm not an expert here) one check from an SEC team for $1.9M buy game takes care of that real quick, add another and they come out ahead I think.

Less CFP $$, see above.

Harder to find on TV. This was a gripe of mine in first year or two of UMass independence but with the quality of streaming service now it's not such a big deal. PLUS the away games are held by the opponent, and local fans are going to the games anyway. As someone who lives a 24 hour ride away from his school I have more trouble getting UMass away games on TV that home games. Also possible the average trip (mileage wise) for UConn away games will decrease in some years as an independent.

Officials from other conferences will have no problem hosing you with bad calls. Sorry this is true.

Your AD WILL have to earn his salary when it comes to putting the schedule together, but that is why they get paid the big bucks.

Respect. You will get none.... until you earn it. Even then you won't get much.

If you like football, they are still playing the game every week. Sit down have a cold beer and root for your team to win. All of this is without even considering how good the Big East will be for the rest of the Athletic Department.

All this is from a guy who hates everything about UConn, except the spring party in that one apartment village, that is cool.

I think thats fairly accurate. I think the real issue is that football program is likely to lose even more money playing indy than they do in the AAC. Not good when you have a 40 million dollar deficit. Thats why I suspect the long term plan is let the program continue to struggle against all the headwinds you describe with the expectation that it will slowly lose fan support. Then, after a few years of declining support, the administration can say "we gave it a fair try" and downgrade or eliminate the program all together--which will make a significant dent in the athletic budget overruns.

This is 100 percent what I think is going on. The university is bleeding cash from football. They need to pull the plug. The BE is the best place for them to go since it is fairly local, is another major basketball league, and allows them to slowly pull the plug on football. This will be a much easier task then say a school like UAB in the South. The UConn fan simply do not care about college football, along with the rest of the New England states.