(04-13-2018 08:49 PM)ken d Wrote:  

(04-13-2018 08:29 PM)Bogg Wrote:  

(04-13-2018 07:06 PM)McKinney Wrote:  Maybe it's a case of "the grass is always greener", but my guess is every team that's ever transitioned to FBS would've loved to be in UCONN's situation of $200M investment (at relatively low cost to the university) and AQ status (even in a dying league).

My issue with calling the Big East invite a golden ticket is, to channel most other UConn fans, UConn never actually left the Big East. The conference they're currently in is the same conference you're calling a golden ticket, which I think is my problem - the current P5/G5 split makes G5 football a losing proposition.

(04-13-2018 07:06 PM)McKinney Wrote:  I don't know how it's bankrupted your department either. Unless I'm mistaken y'all had a decade of major conference football TV money and leased The Rent from the state for dirt cheap.

I mean, strictly speaking I suppose UConn can do this indefinitely, as they're State U with no equivalent competition, so they'll still be the cheapest research university for CT students even with massive subsidies. However, I believe they have the most heavily-subsidized athletic department in the NCAA and are about to see reduced funding from the state.

(04-13-2018 07:06 PM)McKinney Wrote:  Y'all really think you'd be "better off" if none of that happened? You think you'd be better off if you were playing FCS football in that dump of a venue Memorial Stadium? Well but at least you'd be in Big East basketball!

I do think that if UConn was in some sort of Big East/CAAF alignment they'd have a politically viable route to fixing their budget mess by dropping football entirely, along with the equivalent programs/scholarships on the women's side, and get to a much more fiscally viable place while still competing at a high level in sports they have a shot at being nationally relevant in.

I don't buy that the conference UConn is now a part of is the same one they were invited to join in 1979. It's akin to the farmer bragging about the fact he's had the same axe for 40 years. It's had 15 new heads and 10 new handles, but it's still the same one he started out with.

UConn had the good fortune to be well positioned geographically to fill a hole in the fledgling Big East's roster of schools. They already had a member in Massachusetts, one in Rhode Island, one in New York state and one in New York City. They had one in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Washington. They didn't have one in Connecticut, and there was only one choice if Gavitt was looking for one.

It wasn't UConn's fault that league broke apart. It was bad luck for them, just like it was a measure of good luck that they were in the BE in the first place. That happens. Things change - and the landscape of college football changed dramatically in ways that were beyond the Big East's power to control or greatly influence. So UConn had a bad outcome, just like Houston did when the SWC broke up.

All they can do now is make decisions that give them the best chance for success in the future, not the past. Even if some - or even many - of their fans don't like them.

Or acting like today's Southern Conference is similar in prestige to the league Alabama and Duke were members of.

I get the whole "well we've not changed leagues so it's the same league" thing but of the 9 schools that made the Big East such a respected basketball power, three are in the ACC and five are in the NBE.

The oldest internal league series in hoops are UConn-USF-Cincinnati that date back to the 2005-06 season. That is six years younger than the remaining charter members of MWC. That's a decade younger than UAB-USM in CUSA. It's 14 years younger than South Alabama-AState-UALR-Louisiana in the Sun Belt.

In football the UConn-USF-Cincinnati football games as league games date to 2005, AState-Louisiana-ULM in Sun Belt goes back to 2001, UAB-USF to 2000 as a league game, and the MWC charter schools back to 1999. If we disqualify UAB-USM for UAB's drop football interruption, then USM-Marshall-Rice-UTEP takes us to 2005 same as the AAC's oldest three.