Herbst inherited an athletic conference mess, that began a long, long time ago. Manuel, came on the job, last March, after the conference had gone well past, YEARS past, the point of no return. There is plenty of blame to throw around for where UCONN is at. It's most often, the case, in situations like that, where things have gone so wrong, for so long, regardless of scale or subject matter, that the most valueable way to identify the problem, is to realize that you, yourself is responsible.
ANd that indeed, is the case. Roy Kramer, commissioner of the SEC, the leader of the reorganization of the NCAA in the early 1990s around the bowl alliances, and indirectly, the creator of the Big East football conference himself, made it crystal clear, in 1996, to the presidential advisory committee on athletics, which was reviewing a report titled "Implementation Plan for the Upgrade of the University of Connecticut Football program to 1-A Status", a report in which Kramer was a subject for interview, a consultant and a writing contributor......Kramer made it crystal clear....
His report involved the following: UCONN holds a large number of similarities to SEC schools, and that the future secruity and health of the UConn football program, would be directly realted to our ability to maintain membership with a conference similar schools with similar athletic missions. He cautioned strongly against the future of the Big East - in 1996.
THe trouble with the Big East conference, began very soon after the very first actual big east football season in 1992. At the end of 1993, going into 1994 - Virginia Tech wanted full membership in the big east. THey were voted down. Notre Dame was having similar problems to Virginia Tech, at the time, in scheduling for all sports (after the realigment in the early 90s, and disappearance of some 28 different 1-A independant athletic departments, that Kramer had orchestrated by the early 1990s), and less than a week after Virgina Tech was denied full membership by the Big EAst membership, Tranghese was on the phone wiht the then AD at Notre Dame, and extended them an invite - the olive branch, to join the conference in everythign BUT football. The basketball membership quickly voted, and in 1995, Notre Dame was a member, while VTech, and others will still football only. Basketball schools, telling the football schools they don't matter, just like they did a decade earlier with Penn STate.
In the meantime, while UConn began winning championship after championship in men's and women's hoops, and were extended the invite to upgrade by the conference, and jerked that around for a few years, every other football program was already working on finding a way out of the conference, and when in 2003, somethign realistic could have been done, to preserve a northeastern league that we would have liked to be part of, UConn leadership sat quietly with their thumbs up their butts instead of aligning right away,vocally and adamantly, with the likes of Syracuse, Miami, BC, PItt, VTech, West Virginia and Rutgers.
I feel like kicking Temple out again, just because, it all makes me angry. Basketball, does not rule the roost. Basketball in big cities, on the east coast - is big time sports, and big business, and we need to remain part of that, and play round ball in teh big cities, but it does not rule intercollegiate athletics, football does, and always will, and it is the failure of uconn leadership for 16 years, that is the reason we find ourselves where we are now - only ourselves to blame for being the last ones without a ticket to leave. Fans too, too many basketball people around here, that don't understand football. Good lord when I think about what fans didn't know would happen when Teggart hit that kick against USF.
UCONN is at fault, for not recognizing that, and Herbst and Manuel, in my opinion, are the very first leaders, since the BOT officially approved the upgrade in 1997, that do get it. THey were left with a tty hand to play.
So study your history, and learn from it.
Here is the 186 page document that was presented to the UCONN BOT in 1997 and was agreed upon to move forward with, after all the feasibility and analysis that was done in the previous years. You can own your own hardbound copy.
http://books.google.com/books/about/Analysis_for_the_University_of_Connectic.html?id=fh9DHAAACAAJ
