Nameless
1st String
Posts: 2,004
Joined: May 2019
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I Root For: UConn
Location: Florida
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RE: Home Sweet Home
(06-30-2019 03:32 PM)Golden Jedi Knight Wrote: (06-22-2019 09:42 PM)GoldenWarrior11 Wrote: (06-22-2019 03:23 PM)Golden Jedi Knight Wrote: If UConn and the Big East both determine that they should be together, great. My question is, do the benefits of moving to the Big East outweigh staying in the American? I understand UConn's football program is tanking, and they lost rivalries with programs like Georgetown after the conference split. But is it worth sending UConn football to C-USA, the MAC, or maybe a return to being independent, and ending hope that they might be part of a power conference again? I'm not convinced that this is a wise move for UConn in the long-term. Maybe some of the Big East or UConn fans here can make a case and point out something I'm missing.
While I would hardly label the move as a no-brainer, UConn Athletics was running out of borrowed time. They bought themselves an extra realignment cycle (2013-2019) by utilizing the Big East war chest funds to help finance their athletic department during this time. Now that it ended, and the new AAC TV deal wasn't as much as these payouts, they were going to lose even more money long term by continuing to commit a path that was simply unsustainable for football and for its Olympic sports.
I think one of the key pieces of information today is the decision by UConn to keep football at the FBS level, ideally in another conference. They do not wish to drop it, nor do they need to at this point. However, if UConn still has a P5 dream (which they should), they need to right football - and there was just no way that was going to happen in the American. UConn Football had been lapped and overtaken by a majority of the AAC in the past five years. UCF, USF, Houston, Memphis and Cincinnati have all risen their football programs to the top of the AAC (for which UConn was expected to be a top program when the league formed); they each are in fertile football recruiting areas (of which Connecticut is not); each AAC football program has attracted young, up-and-coming coaches to lead their programs - and several programs have reached sustained success through multiple head coaches (UConn failed miserably with Diaco and, now, Edsall 2.0). In the AAC East, the only program that has arguably under-performed as much is ECU (but ECU was still able to hire an experienced and successful head coach this past offseason). Couple that with the scheduled OOC games (with usually a P5 or two thrown in there), and it makes it very challenging to create a sustained and competitive football program year-to-year. From this standpoint, UConn Football has a better chance at beating other weaker programs until it can take another level again (not unlike Temple in the Big East years ago).
Financially, everyone wants to point to the $10 million exit fee. My guess is that Fox will gladly cover a majority of that to get UConn on board for next season (it makes way too much sense not to). UConn was running a substantial athletic budget deficit that was created mainly due to football. By moving Olympic sports back home to the Big East, it significantly cuts down travel costs, reignites geographic and historic rivalries (gets back fan interest), gets access to the BET at MSG, and (most importantly) probably gets its Tier 3 rights back - which the new AAC TV deal did not account for. The next argument many will make is the $7 million vs. $4 million annual payouts between conferences. Well, UConn was spending $7 million alone annually on travel costs being in the American; the costs clearly made any revenue irrelevant. Fox will most likely assist in getting them some exposure for their football programs (and the Big East has greater connections to the B1G and Big 12 than the AAC did). Additionally, our next TV deal will now undoubtedly be higher thanks to UConn coming on board (so they are not only making more money on Olympics, and cutting down costs from travel purposes, but they are also increasing the value of their new conference as well).
From an exposure standpoint, Fox has done a wonderful job building and promoting the Big East from Day 1. We don't have announcers openly ridiculing our status as "power conference", nor do they openly campaign for our members to go to other conferences (especially on a competitor's network). Fox isn't also pushing us to all of its secondary streaming platforms to fill up content. ESPN's AAC TV deal is locked-in until 2030's; when the AAC is making $7 million annually then, each of the power conferences will have gotten new deals and only widened the gap. We had over twenty games last year on Fox/CBS alone, and that number will only go up. As a side-note, if somebody told ESPN that the Big East would be as strong today in 2012, that it would still have UConn AND that its rights would be fully owned by Fox, I doubt anyone would have believed them.
I get that there are some hard feelings/ill-will from many AAC fans (and even some UConn fans) regarding this move. However, this was always a strong possibility for UConn ever since the C7 reorganized the Big East in 2013. They played their best hand at the P5 table but had to fold; however, they still get to come home with some winnings (which is a lot better than had they continued to play the game; they may not have had anything left).
It’s not ill-will, at least not from me. I admit I’m disappointed we’re losing UConn, but I’m trying to understand the benefits to them. Most of your arguments make sense. However, I’m not sure I buy in to what you said about Fox helping with football; sure, I get that Fox might help with the exit fee, but I don’t get what you said about the Big East’s connections with the Big 10 and Big 12. Are any schools in those conferences interested in playing UConn in football? How and why would they help?
At first I really didn't understand the move at all either, but the more I've taken the financial aspects into consideration the more it makes sense. As the worst football team in the conference, all of our home games would've been on ESPN+. The conservative estimates I've seen of what each of those games would cost to produce have been around 65-75k per game. So right off the bat you're looking at losing 390k/yr minimum from that TV deal just to produce your football games. For Olympic sports, I've seen the costs estimated at 10-25k/game. So if we only produced 50 games for + per year and once again took the conservative estimate of 10k/game, we're out another 500k/yr. That's almost $1million dollars for the conservative estimates, and I'm guessing we would've been expected to produce more than 50 games considering our field hockey, baseball, soccer and women's basketball teams have all been successful. Women's basketball alone would probably be forced to produce 10-20 games a year for +.
Now take into account the fact that our women's basketball team is worth more than the Tulane men's and women's basketball teams combined (we get over a million a year selling their games to SNY) and subtract that money as well. That's a $2million + hit. Our administration also said we'll save $2million on travel, so bring that up to $4 million. The Big East contract pays I think 4.25m/yr, the end of the AAC deal pays 6.97m/yr... So even by the end of the scaled AAC deal, once you account for all of the financials we're still making more money off of being in the Big East than we are the AAC.
We do lose the bowl and CFP payouts, which I think together is like $2m year. But we can also sell our football rights to SNY, likely for at least 2m. So that is probably a wash at worst. We'll probably need to do 1-2 buy games per year being an Indy, so that will probably add even more revenue to the budget.
It's not inconceivable that we can pull in 10m+/yr as soon as we start getting paid by the Big East. The AAC will be getting that much a decade from now, and that's only once you account for the bowls and CFP payouts.
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