Courant Columnist Colin McEnroe view on CR and UConn

[Husky25]

Most bowls are loss leaders, not so sure, but some certainly are. But the Fiesta was a real bleeder, both financially and image wise.

There is really not much room for opinion here. It's a topic about which has been written almost every year since the BCS began. Below are three examples.


http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/spor...8/bcs-bowl-games-cost-some-schools/50582512/1

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-...lose-as-bowl-game-expenses-exceed-payout.html

http://www.mndaily.com/2011/10/04/bcs-bill-how-bowl-games-cost-football-programs

 

[EdgewoodNHV]

I enjoy McEnroe's show on NPR from time to time and he's an alright guy, but it just reminds me why I don't listen to any sports reporting on NPR, etc. They just don't grasp the subject well enough to do good analysis any more than ESPN reporters do a terrific job reporting on politics.

 

[RS9999X]

Colin McEnroe replies to The Boneyard:

Colin's heard the feeble bleatings of the perpetually lost!

I assumed this was coming.

What really astonishes is the petulant emptiness of the comments.

For the record, I assumed, when approaching this topic, that somebody would be setting me straight, at some point, about something. It’s a complicated subject, and I didn’t know much about it going in. I decided to write about it mainly out of frustration. It seemed to me I hadn’t read a piece that satisfactorily explained (to me) how you UConn could go from such a dominating position in men’s and women’s basketball to being a school that no conference wanted.

I’m still operating on the assumption that there’s a lot about this that I still don’t understand. And I would relish an encounter with just about anybody who had a good handle on it and wanted to enlarge my thinking. Or even prove me wrong about something. That would be fine, because I really am genuinely curious.

What did I get here? The invective of peevish children. I’m a moron, I’m lazy, I went to Yale. One person claims I said UConn would have been better off if there had never been a Calhoun era. (For the record: I didn’t opine about Calhoun. I mentioned that Harvey Araton of the Times ascribed UConn’s current problem to Calhoun’s behavior.) A number of the commenters seem to be unfamiliar with $1.6 million bowl game shortfall, which was a front page story around here and made national news.

So I ask The Boneyard: Is there anybody there who actually knows anything? Anybody with facts that might shed a little light on anything? Because I really am curious. And for any Boneyard visitors, there’s more material here with some interesting links.

And if you don’t have any facts, at least lay out your own explanation of how this happened. I’m really trying to understand

http://courantblogs.com/colin-mcenroe/bones-to-pick/

 

[d1reality]

There is really not much room for opinion here. It's a topic about which has been written almost every year since the BCS began. Below are three examples.


http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/spor...8/bcs-bowl-games-cost-some-schools/50582512/1

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-...lose-as-bowl-game-expenses-exceed-payout.html

http://www.mndaily.com/2011/10/04/bcs-bill-how-bowl-games-cost-football-programs

""The University of Connecticut reported losing nearly $1.7 million in its trip to the 2011 Fiesta Bowl. That’s because the Huskies, who won the Big East championship that year, failed to resell 14,729 of the 17,500 tickets that the Fiesta Bowl required them to purchase.""

Holy Cow !!! Kudos to the 3,000 that antied up.

 

[Husky25]

""The University of Connecticut reported losing nearly $1.7 million in its trip to the 2011 Fiesta Bowl. That’s because the Huskies, who won the Big East championship that year, failed to resell 14,729 of the 17,500 tickets that the Fiesta Bowl required them to purchase.""

Holy Cow !!! Kudos to the 3,000 that antied up.

1) That's on the school, not the fans
2) There were far more than 3,000 UConn fans at that game.

Financial and familial constraints prohibited me from even thinking about a trip to Glendale over the New Year’s weekend that year, but many who will tell you that they got to Arizona with a comparable game ticket and lodging for a fraction of the cost offered by UConn.

It's a simple cost benefit analysis. I don’t know what else the School was offering, but I do remember the package(s) as a whole not being so cost conscience. Prices needed to be brought in line with what the individual fan could do on their own, especially in the economy of late 2010/early 2011. I do remember going out to Ann Arbor for a fraction of the School package as well.

 

[Waquoit]

It's nice to see there still is a platform for the aggressively stupid.

What's your answer to the question - How could UConn go from such a dominating position in men’s and women’s basketball to being a school that no conference wanted?

 

[whaler11]

What's your answer to the question - How could UConn go from such a dominating position in men’s and women’s basketball to being a school that no conference wanted?

A combination of leadership with a lack of vision and ability, poor relationships with key decision makers, an inability to sell themselves, poor timing and bad luck.

Honestly poor timing and bad luck may be the biggest contributors.

 

[FAIRTIDES]

McEnroe is right. UConn would have been much better off if Calhoun never coached here.

Assume/hope that's "Tongue-in-cheek."

The occasional reference's to JC's recruiting are always puzzling to me. Aside from the Mile's thing (phone calls and a penniless booster), which proves that there is no fool like an old fool, I've never seen anything specific. In this State and the northeast in general, coaches are not generally dealing with a "homer" press/media. JC's relationship with the media only exacerbated the situation.

My point? If there had been something to find, the blood-sucking Pulitzer hounds that cover UCONN BB and JC would have found it. As much as many disliked/hated/despised the guy, all they could come up with were personality traits typical of uber-intensity and his dismissive treatment of their own kind. That's not much given the years involved.

 

[ruskin]

Colin trolling The Boneyard = another legacy media retread pissed that the time of "never argue with someone who buys ink by the barrel" is over. That peevish and childish enough for you, big guy? Certainly no more peevish and childish than someone who feels they need to get the last word in.

OK Colin, here's some help "understanding" the issue of why UConn is where it is. It's not the completely the failure of Harry Hartley, Phil Austin, Mike Hogan, and Herbst or Lew Perkins, or even Hathaway or Manuel. Their bosses -- governor, legislature, board of trustees -- have chosen not to get their hands dirty in this. (and BTW Blumenthal's lawsuit, while awkward and clumsy, is really not a factor why UConn hasn't landed in a better place. UConn's lawsuit has been succeeded by larger and larger lawsuits - hello WVU and Maryland).

Example No. 1 - the state's agreement with ESPN. Nowhere else in the country would a state do business on that level with a company who was directly/indirectly doing harm to its flagship university. There was a long thread on this when the TV contract numbers finally became known There are two schools of thought on this board - ESPN should help UConn find a home was one; ESPN employs a lot of people which is priority No. 1 and UConn's conference status is a completely separate issue (and let's not do anything to piss them off).

I'm not going to google to see if Colin wrote about First Five, but I'd find it hard to believe he's in favor of cutting sweetheart deals with large already-successful companies who didn't really need the help or were making noises about moving.

You want to go back to your investigative roots, Colin? - ring up John Skipper sometime and ask him why he thinks UConn isn't in a big conference yet or if ESPN has any special responsibility to help them find a home. Look into how ESPN drove conference realignment. Now that would be a story people would read.

And another thing - expand your reading about sports beyond the freaking NYT. Christ, if coaching behavior is keeping schools out of big conferences, the Big 10 would have retracted its invite to Rutgers yesterday.

 

[ruskin]

1) That's on the school, not the fans
2) There were far more than 3,000 UConn fans at that game.

Financial and familial constraints prohibited me from even thinking about a trip to Glendale over the New Year’s weekend that year, but many who will tell you that they got to Arizona with a comparable game ticket and lodging for a fraction of the cost offered by UConn.

It's a simple cost benefit analysis. I don’t know what else the School was offering, but I do remember the package(s) as a whole not being so cost conscience. Prices needed to be brought in line with what the individual fan could do on their own, especially in the economy of late 2010/early 2011. I do remember going out to Ann Arbor for a fraction of the School package as well.

This was one of the final failures of the Hatahway administration (followed of course by PP hiring and failure to get students to 2011 men's Final Four). Hathaway just expected people to buy the outrageously-high package seats because we'd never been to a BCS bowl before. When it became obvious the tickets were much cheaper on the secondary market, Hathaway should have been out front and touting the number of UConn fans who "unofficially" came. He didn't bother, and we're stuck with the unfair "UConn doesn't travel well" label because of Hathaway's dismal failure at PR (among many other things).

 

[Jimdish255]

Going back to the Fiesta Bowl - losses by other universities were in some cases covered by their conferences so they ended up not really being a story. Also with most bowls held in the South many of the participants were within driving distance of the games or at least had much shorter trips. Given the fact that we had a nice showing earlier in the season v Michigan, some fans didn't have the time or resources for a second major trip at prices out of line with the open market. Had we gotten a better draw, say VT in Miami (who got CRUSHED by Stanford) that may have been mitigated to some extent. Had we not gotten maybe the hottest team in the country peaking with a scary passing game and lightning receivers exploiting a lack of speed in the back it's possible we would have seen a much closer game. And maybe a little less of a flogging by the press for going 8-4 and losing to a top team at the end.

Check this out for some of the prevailing wisdom going in and try to figure out what the real "story" should have been after the bowls: http://bleacherreport.com/articles/...views-and-predictions-on-all-5-of-them/page/5

 

[Waquoit]

Colin trolling The Boneyard = another legacy media retread pissed that the time of "never argue with someone who buys ink by the barrel" is over. That peevish and childish enough for you, big guy? Certainly no more peevish and childish than someone who feels they need to get the last word in.

You are way off here. The guy writes a column in good faith about a subject near to our hearts. He admits he doesn't know the answer and makes a few points based on his research and analysis. That's what good columnists do. And Colin is a good columnist. Read last weeks column on Tom Ritter, for example. Boneyard posters greet the column with lazy, personal attacks. Nothing approaching reasonable debate, peevish and childish was an accurate description. I guess it hit home for you.

 

[Husky25]

You are way off here. The guy writes a column in good faith about a subject near to our hearts. He admits he doesn't know the answer and makes a few points based on his research and analysis. That's what good columnists do. And Colin is a good columnist. Read last weeks column on Tom Ritter, for example. Boneyard posters greet the column with lazy, personal attacks. Nothing approaching reasonable debate, peevish and childish was an accurate description. I guess it hit home for you.

Maybe ruskin shouldn't have classified Mr. McEnroe as a troll, but what does he care about the opinions of some Internet tough guys (myself included) on the Boneyard? He is a columnist. Not everyone is going to agree. Calling out anonymous posters comes across just as peevish and childish. Jeff Jacobs embraces the controversy he stirs (Love him or hate him, you still gotta read him). The least Mr. McEnroe could do is grow some thicker skin. I'd love to break down his blog post Dr. Jack style, but the moderators have requested that we keep our copy/paste activities to a max of 2 graphs.

The $1.6 million loss incurred by playing in the Fiesta Bowl may be fact, but it is spun with the expertise of Rumpelstiltskin. At least three people (including myself) explained how this happened as well as pointed to numerous examples of other schools suffering a similar fate.

Secondly, schools with basketball as their only revenue generator seem to be stuck at the mid-major level at best. I've said a few occasions prior that no NCAA Mens Basketball Champion has been crowned whose conference also does not support Division 1 (oh sorry...FBS) football in 28 years, Curiously, same for the Women's side. Since then, only one team whose school also does not support FBS football has won the Men's National Championship (3 guess who, 1st 2 don't count). Maybe Wichita St. has the stones to do it this weekend, but I'm betting that the institutions with access to the resources provided by football will prevail. Besides, even if WSU does pull it off, it is merely a single outlier to a nearly three decade trend.

Now don't misunderstand me...I am not say the AAC is currently a power conference by any stretch. However the revenue and exposure made available to the conference, and the teams within, by FBS football seems to allow those schools a much larger margin for error. Going Div. 1A in football was a no-brainer. Staying FBS is an even greater no-brainer. Every "power -That-Be and their brother has indicated conference realignment is not over. It's a shame if it is, but I'm betting that UConn will soon be an institution with access to the greater resources.

 

[ruskin]

You are way off here. The guy writes a column in good faith about a subject near to our hearts. He admits he doesn't know the answer and makes a few points based on his research and analysis. That's what good columnists do. And Colin is a good columnist. Read last weeks column on Tom Ritter, for example. Boneyard posters greet the column with lazy, personal attacks. Nothing approaching reasonable debate, peevish and childish was an accurate description. I guess it hit home for you.

You can back him all you want 'quoit but it cuts a lot of ways on "lazy, personal attacks". Again no time to google but I'm sure I could back through his archives -- and yours -- and find some wonderful shining examples -- like this one. Note who used the word "you" first.

Sorry, McEnroe is a thin-skinned, pompous, overeducated ass who is way out of his league attempting to write about something illuminative about CR. What he wrote didn't even rise to the level of 'rehash'.

 

[Rumrunner]

For those in the press too lazy to do their own research (isn't that what they get paid to do??).


I wrote this a while ago. For free!

http://the-boneyard.com/threads/paul-doyle-on-uconn-vs-the-ville.29791/page-2


where to begin...where to begin.

if paul doyle actually did a modicum of research for his article, he would have informed his readers that:

the BCS has a contract with the bowls and the bowl that's double dipping by hosting the nat'l championship game. this contract has the terms and amount of tickets to be sold/distributed.

univ of phoenix holds 73,000. the allocation for fiesta is 17,000 tix for each school. the schools dole out the tickets, usually high level alums, donors, season ticket holders.

that accounts for 34,000 of the tickets.

10,000 tickets are reserved for corp sponsors

the remaining 28,000 tickets are sold as a package for the host bowl game and the national championship ahead of time. you have to buy the host bowl game tickets, including parking tickets and meal tickets.

in 2011, it was auburn v. oregon in the nat'l chmpship.

oregon could have sent 50,000 fans to the game at face value. but they were limited by the 17k allocation. everyone at oregon knew if oregon made it, that chances were slim of getting tickets thru the school. so tons of oregon fans bought the double dipping tickets- ticket to the fiesta bowl and the nat'l championship. so they did what anyone would do, they dumped (to them) the useless fiesta bowl tickets on stubhub. again, the only tickets-28,000- of them available for purchase not thru the schools or corp sponsor required both fiesta bowl tickets and nat'l chmpship game tickets, parking and meals to be purchased as one unit.

uconn-and oklahoma fans- bought thru stubhub. oklahoma sold fewer than 10k of their allotment. and if you don't believe that uconn brought 15k, then get out a magnifier glass and start counting:

 

[TRest]

OK Colin, here's some help "understanding" the issue of why UConn is where it is. It's not the completely the failure of Harry Hartley, Phil Austin, Mike Hogan, and Herbst or Lew Perkins, or even Hathaway or Manuel. Their bosses -- governor, legislature, board of trustees -- have chosen not to get their hands dirty in this. (and BTW Blumenthal's lawsuit, while awkward and clumsy, is really not a factor why UConn hasn't landed in a better place. UConn's lawsuit has been succeeded by larger and larger lawsuits - hello WVU and Maryland).

Just responding to the idea our lawsuit couldn't have been a factor in later decisions: The examples you cite are of schools that have already been invited to another conference and suing over the terms of their exit. They are not schools who have sued former conference mates as well as members of another conference, because they have been harmed by others leaving. Huge difference.

I would suggest that Colin ask Hatheway, Warde and Herbst on the record what conversations were had with what schools and conferences in the past 5 years to illuminate how realignment took place to leave us on the outside looking in.

 

[Waquoit]

Calling out anonymous posters comes across just as peevish and childish.

Saying "calling out" has negative connotations. I don't think he was "calling out" at all. He admitted he didn't know the reason for UConn being stuck in limbo. He put his take out there and asked others for theirs. That's what message board debate should be about. All he received on this board in reply was personal attacks, not one reasoned reply. To say as much was just stating facts, not calling out. The Yard had a chance to engage in an exchange with an outsider of note and blew it. I feel bad about not getting involved earlier myself. All I can say is that I wasn't in the mood at the time for getting into it with the Husky Thought Police.

 

[ruskin]

Saying "calling out" has negative connotations. I don't think he was "calling out" at all. He admitted he didn't know the reason for UConn being stuck in limbo. He put his take out there and asked others for theirs. That's what message board debate should be about. All he received on this board in reply was personal attacks, not one reasoned reply. To say as much was just stating facts, not calling out. The Yard had a chance to engage in an exchange with an outsider of note and blew it. I feel bad about not getting involved earlier myself. All I can say is that I wasn't in the mood at the time for getting into it with the Husky Thought Police.

Please. He came here to see his opinion seconded and validated as you would expect anyone with an overinflated ego to do. Nothing is stopping you from emailing him and "apologizing" for those of us who have the temerity to disagree with him.

The "facts" you say he cited are highly in dispute. Sorry, I'm not going Simon Peter on Jim Calhoun like some here want to do. Calhoun's flaws are no worse than Nick Saban's, Coach K's, Boeheim, Pitino, etc. etc. and certainly not worse than Joe Paterno's. If not for Calhoun UConn would be a much worse place athletically and academically. Calhoun just doesn't have the PR the others do. Why? You think it might be because Syracuse is overrepresented in the media?

Blumenthal's lawsuit gets way too much credit. Yes, he pissed off Gene DiFilippo, and there's no question that harmed UConn. But frankly I don't want to be groveling at Flipper and BC's feet. BC's top athletic accomplishment in the last decade (besides firing competent football coaches) is keeping UConn out of the big boy club. Meanwhile, UConn was winning conference and national titles in "national" sports. (sorry, hockey doesn't count) There will come a day in our lifetime when UConn will be playing BC in football, because they will need us just as much as we need them. There's very few schools besides UConn (ND) that BC can guarantee a sellout for, even at Gillette for the first couple of years when the rivalry is renewed. As it will be.

And finally if you're writing about conference realignment -- and relate to people interested in the subject -- maybe you should go without the John Milton and Ezra Pound references. I almost burst out laughing when I saw the Milton "quote" -- all I could think of was Donald Sutherland in Animal House.

 

[Waquoit]

Please. He came here to see his opinion seconded and validated as you would expect anyone with an overinflated ego to do....

Textbook example of projection.

 

[ruskin]

Textbook example of projection.

Yes, CM coming here was. I'm sure the psychological case study of your man crush on CMac would also make wonderful reading.

The point of freaking journalism is to ASK questions that haven't been asked and GET answers to them. It was extremely lazy for CM to fall back on the Calhoun-Blumenthal reasons of why UConn has been shut out. Tell me something I don't know.

Hell, if he wanted to go retro his rip into Rowland (and everyone else involved) for approving the $150 million in football infrastructure that could become white elephants he should have done that. If he wanted to come out and say upgrading to I-A football was a mistake and we'd be better off with the Catholic 7, go ahead. But he just wanted to flash his Milton/Pound familiarity with us great unwashed. Doesn't work for me. Sorry I'm not falling into line.

 

[upstater]

I can't believe this is still going on. Louisville is on probation for APR right now for football. Syracuse was on probation for APR for basketball a year ago. If APR was an issue, how come it wasn't held against Cuse and Ville? All that other stuff is total BS as well. Seriously, McEnroe needs to get some facts.

 

[upstater]

Colin McEnroe replies to The Boneyard:

Colin's heard the feeble bleatings of the perpetually lost!

I assumed this was coming.

What really astonishes is the petulant emptiness of the comments.

For the record, I assumed, when approaching this topic, that somebody would be setting me straight, at some point, about something. It’s a complicated subject, and I didn’t know much about it going in. I decided to write about it mainly out of frustration. It seemed to me I hadn’t read a piece that satisfactorily explained (to me) how you UConn could go from such a dominating position in men’s and women’s basketball to being a school that no conference wanted.

I’m still operating on the assumption that there’s a lot about this that I still don’t understand. And I would relish an encounter with just about anybody who had a good handle on it and wanted to enlarge my thinking. Or even prove me wrong about something. That would be fine, because I really am genuinely curious.

What did I get here? The invective of peevish children. I’m a moron, I’m lazy, I went to Yale. One person claims I said UConn would have been better off if there had never been a Calhoun era. (For the record: I didn’t opine about Calhoun. I mentioned that Harvey Araton of the Times ascribed UConn’s current problem to Calhoun’s behavior.) A number of the commenters seem to be unfamiliar with $1.6 million bowl game shortfall, which was a front page story around here and made national news.

So I ask The Boneyard: Is there anybody there who actually knows anything? Anybody with facts that might shed a little light on anything? Because I really am curious. And for any Boneyard visitors, there’s more material here with some interesting links.

And if you don’t have any facts, at least lay out your own explanation of how this happened. I’m really trying to understand

http://courantblogs.com/colin-mcenroe/bones-to-pick/

We're writing on our message board. It's not our job to do research. It's McEnroe's job. he gets paid. I claimed there were other schools that were on probation with APR that were admitted. Do some research. Others mentioned that many schools didn't buy tix through the school--including Oklahoma. Do the research. Still other mentioned that Syracuse had an even more contentious and insulting relationship with BC than UConn did. A Cuse BOT member reported a meeting with the BC Prez at an event of colleagues, in which he was upbraided openly. Do some research. Pitt was a vital part of the the lawsuit. Do some research. What am I missing here?

 

[CL82]

Meh, I see no point in entering into a dialog that will generate hits for him and be cherry picked to support his point. (Eg, Nelson was reflecting CM's opinion when he wrote his "better off " comment but CM treats it as if it independent.

Colin, if you' actually like to have a dialog, we'll set up a separate thread for you to do it here.

 

[HuskyDogArt]

McEnroe is right. UConn would have been much better off if Calhoun never coached here.

WTF, I knew Colin's Stupid, but that takes the cake.

 

[Waquoit]

WTF, I knew Colin's Stupid, but that takes the cake.

FWIW, he never said anything remotely approaching that quote. What he did about JC was "The New York Times ran a piece earlier this month quoting unnamed sources who said Calhoun's recruiting violations, lousy graduation rate and loud criticisms of other departing programs poisoned the waters." I thought Muntz was better than that.