If it weren't obvious enough, the Big East put the final nail in UConn's P5 coffin (at least for the ~2024 round of realignment) by requiring a "huge" buyout in the initial years, sliding down to "only" $10M well in the future . . .

@ManthonyCourant
I’m hearing the contract between UConn and the Big East that was just signed will be available for public to read later today on UConn website. Entry fee is $3.5 million. Exit fee is huge initially ... but slides down to as low as $10 million over time.
12:15 PM · Jun 26, 2019

Pretty clear that it's only a matter of time before UConn drops football to FCS at least, if not altogether. I give it 5 years.

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(06-26-2019 01:07 PM)CougarRed Wrote:  If it weren't obvious enough, the Big East put the final nail in UConn's P5 coffin (at least for the ~2024 round of realignment) by requiring a "huge" buyout in the initial years, sliding down to "only" $10M well in the future . . .

Likelihood of an invite aside (I'd argue that remaining in the AAC wasn't doing anything for UConn's resume, either), that wouldn't really impact things one way or another. If the B1G offered (which they won't) there really isn't an exit fee amount that wouldn't be offset by the long-term money. This does feel like step 1 in winding down the football program though, which would solve most of UConn's financial issues and set aside the need for a huge-revenue conference.

Look, UConn really didn't have a choice here. Sources are saying that the Big East wanted to match the power conferences by moving up to playing 20 conference games per season and was looking to offer a school their final slot NOW. UConn was told that they could take it now or that the Big East would find a different school to fill the final slot and that would essentially be it forever.

This wasn't a "let it ride" at the casino type of moment. UConn, wisely, was not willing to risk passing on their only guaranteed quality basketball landing spot with the flight risk of certain member schools that the AAC has. If the league lost Houston, Cincinnati, and possibly Memphis in the next round of realignment in 2023, it would have been the end of UConn hoop for our fan base. Temple and Wichita State are quality basketball schools, but only having those two as consistent basketball schools ensures that you are a 1-bid league and that your RPI will be terrible. We are a basketball school at heart and couldn't afford to risk it all on an expansion that may or may not happen and get stuck in a southern football league with the handful of decent basketball schools out the door.

Also, we wanted to maintain linear TV exposure and reduce our expenses as well. 40mm of debt is nothing you can ignore and 7mm per year isn't much when factoring in AAC travel from New England, upcoming school production costs for ESPN+, and the fact that 7mm per year will be worth less than 7mm down the road due to inflation as the years on this 12 year ESPN contract roll by.

So, UConn didn't "give up on the P5". UConn just decided that they needed guaranteed security for basketball. It will certainly be harder to pitch ourselves to P5 conferences as in Independent. All of this said, I don't think that another round of expansion is likely to happen anyway. The Big 12 and ACC don't need any AAC schools as they don't bring enough additional monetary value to the conferences as an additional mouth to feed (especially now that networks have less money to spend due to cord cutters). If anything, the P5 will contract to a P4. The best case scenario would likely have been some of the AAC banding together with the Big 12 remnants after their collapse, but they would have lost power status and would be making less money in that case anyway (and UConn would still be on a geographic island). In either scenario, UConn still would have wanted to stop sending student athletes on 1200 to 2000 mile flights in every sport, so we would have bailed for the Big East at that time anyway.

UConn is making the responsible decision here. Sometimes responsible decision are no fun, but you do what you need to do and move on. It's not personal, it's business.