(04-29-2012 08:54 AM)ringmaster Wrote: (04-29-2012 12:32 AM)ClairtonPanther Wrote: I guess I'm going to have to write a blog on how bad an idea adding Rutgers and UConn is.
When you do send me a link Joey. I'm curious to see a Pitt or a Syracuse fan's perspective on UCONN and Rutgers since you shared a conference with them for so long. I'm surprised that SU fans don't want their rival UCONN though.
I can't speak for Clairton, but I can give you my own evaluation.
Rutgers is the proverbial sleeping giant. They have a great recruiting base but have never had serious support of their program until the last decade, and even now it has been a titantic struggle between the athletic and academic sides of the university, and that struggle doesn't look to be going away. Their most notable achievement in 130+ years was a their 2006 Texas Bowl season. They've never finished in the top 10 of any poll; they've only finished in the polls four different seasons in their entire history, and until the 1980s, really did not play a major Division 1 type of schedule (they played more of a FCS type of schedule). They have made the transition from awful to average, but their records have been padded on a extraordinarily weak non-conference schedules. And now that Schiano is gone, whether their program will continue to progress or regress is very much an open question. Their basketball program is awful, generally their entire athletic department is a mess, and to go back to the crux of the matter, is the internal political strife between the academic and athletic side. Rutgers is a good school academically, on par with many of the better state schools, but it has languished under the austerity and politics of New Jersey and has fallen in prestige over the past 30 years. Like many state schools it faces significant budget crunches recently, and that has only exacerbated the issue between athletics and academics. The RAC needs to be replaced, their stadium financing is $100 million in debt with attendance trending down, and they are looking at cutting sports. Bottom line, the athletic department at Rutgers has multiple issues, perhaps most importantly are those from the state legislature and within the university itself that are constantly looking to reign in their comparatively modest athletic spending.
UConn has almost the opposite problem. There are hardly more supportive states than Connecticut when it comes to financing their flagship's athletic endeavors. UConn also has one of the best run athletic departments in the nation. Although UConn has essentially no tradition prior to 1990 but they've built themselves into the Northeast's premier program in both men's and women's hoops and, intuitively, saw the writing on the wall with football and took advantage of the Big East's first offer back in the 90s to move their program up to FBS. They did this with the full support of the state in building them a stadium in Hartford, and across the board their athletic facilities and programs, including almost remarkably baseball, have all become among the top in the Big East. However, their issues is that they really have no natural recruiting territory. The problem with football is that they play in a small stadium 25 miles from their campus. With suspect facilities and no natural recruiting wealth, UConn football may have already plateaued. The other issue is what is to become of UConn's bread-and-butter men's basketball program post-NCAA sanctions and post-Calhoun. My guess is that they'll find a way to stay pretty competitive, but who knows if the level of current success will be maintained.
However, UConn getting in the ACC is BC's worst nightmare because UConn would outspend into oblivion on athletics and really could be (and actually is now) New England's team. The truth is Boston really doesn't care about college sports, but the state of Connecticut does care about UConn.
Really, if Rutgers had the administration and state support of UConn, it could be an a pretty substantial power. Right now, the only advantage of taking either of them really is to lock down the populous northeast media market even more, although neither will contribute to the reputation of ACC football in any substantial way as even their historic pedigrees are vapid. But right now, they are the best schools and athletic programs left outside of WVU and Louisville, but those two have market and academic issues that likely make them untenable for ACC expansion.
Also, keep your eye on Temple going forward. They are a large urban school and if they can keep the progress of their football program moving forward, they could leapfrog Rutgers. They have just as much of a natural recruiting base and may become
the basketball program in Philadelphia. It is absolutely Villanova's nightmare coming true that they are now in the Big East.
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So with ND apparently out of the expansion picture for the ACC ...
