Hugh Bailey: What does UConn owe Hartford? Maybe nothing (Hearst Editorial)

[BPT2Storrs]

If the state lawmakers want UConn to play at the XL then those lawmakers need to come up with a plan to renovate the building.

 

[UConnDad]

You XL center fans - How does it feel to make UConn students subsidize your favorite watering hole because you're too effen lazy to drive 20 minutes out of the city?

You disgust me.

What a hole you are!

 

[Billy Jack]

Funny thing is only in CT would that drive be considered “ far”. That’s a trip to grocery store in Kansas

That’s because they don’t have Fairfield County traffic in Kansas.

 

[EROCK CONN]

Move closer to Storrs then. Why should UConn appease you just because you live far away?

This comment is myopic and straw man - no where in his comment did he suggest that the university should appease him because he lives far away.

His point is the drive out of Fairfield county on a weekday afternoon is some of the most brutal traffic and it’s extremely difficult to get to a uconn game on a weekday from lower FC. You have to leave around 2-3 to get to Hartford for a game between 6-7. If you leave after 4 , forget it - you’d be lucky to get to New Haven by 6. Getting to Gampel means leaving around 2ish and getting home around 10 or later…. extremely difficult to do on a consistent basis.

Playing games in Hartford makes the game more accessible to a larger population — it’s that simple and can’t be debated.

Also, are you suggesting that this person pick up his life - kids, spouse, job, and just move them close to Storrs solely tor the purpose of going to uconn games ? I’m not really sure thats savvy prioritizing.

 

[navery12]

This comment is myopic and straw man - no where in his comment did he suggest that the university should appease him because he lives far away.

His point is the drive out of Fairfield county on a weekday afternoon is some of the most brutal traffic and it’s extremely difficult to get to a uconn game on a weekday from lower FC. You have to leave around 2-3 to get to Hartford for a game between 6-7. If you leave after 4 , forget it - you’d be lucky to get to New Haven by 6.

Playing games in Hartford makes the game more accessible to a larger population — it’s that simple and can’t be debated.

Also, are you suggesting that this person pick up his life - kids, spouse, job, and just move them close to Storrs solely tor the purpose of going to uconn games ? I’m not really sure thats savvy prioritizing.

 

[FfldCntyFan]

I personally believe there is a larger issue here. UConn athletics cannot drive Hartford's recreation/hospitality/entertainment economy, it can only be a bonus to that economy. If Hartford doesn't find a way to get a large number of young professionals to spend money three-four nights a week whole experiencing Hartford's nightlife the businesses that want more UConn games will fail even if all UConn games are moved to Hartford.

 

[UCSouth]

Because UConn is a hobby, not my life.

Maybe you need a new hobby....we'll be ok without you.

 

[Waquoit]

Maybe you need a new hobby....we'll be ok without you.

Yet you snowflakes fell to pieces when called arrogant.

 

[UCSouth]

Yet you snowflakes fell to pieces when called arrogant.

And without you as well

 

[Hurleyman216]

The reality of this whole situation is ESPN is more than 50% to blame for our situation. They literally get tens of millions of dollars a year from the state to stay in CT. At the same time they actively lobbied against UConn during conference realignment which at a minimum cost the university athletics $200M+. If our politicians/UConn presidents were worth half of what they were paid they wouldn’t have been “outsmarted” by ESPN.

 

[zls44]

The university is in the woods in a lightly populated area of the state. Other Big East schools also play off campus (Villanova, Providence, St. John's, Seton Hall, Georgetown) so there is precedent.

Why doesn't UNC or Duke play in Charlotte instead?
Why doesn't KU move every game to Kansas City?
Why doesn't Indiana play in Indianapolis?

Almost every other major school doesn't worry about the stuff you're worrying about. Because the fans are fine with it.

 

[Scottobot]

You XL center fans - How does it feel to make UConn students subsidize your favorite watering hole because you're too effen lazy to drive 20 minutes out of the city?

You disgust me.

“You disgust me” is a pretty big overreaction. Preferring one venue to another is not something that should disgust someone.

Also claiming it is an only an extra 20 minutes to Storrs is a pretty big exaggeration.

The basketball program I would imagine is profitable, and it is the other sports that are a drain. Certainly losing the lawsuit to Kevin Ollie, didn’t help their financials.

They choose to play at Hartford because they determine that this generates the most revenue for them by improving alumni engagement and donations, expanding their audience and fan base.

With all that said I would like to see them play more games on campus, because I think the players prefer to play there.

 

[shizzle787]

Why doesn't UNC or Duke play in Charlotte instead?
Why doesn't KU move every game to Kansas City?
Why doesn't Indiana play in Indianapolis?

Almost every other major school doesn't worry about the stuff you're worrying about. Because the fans are fine with it.

Duke and UNC aren't anywhere near Charlotte.
Kansas is nowhere near Kansas City (which is in Missouri btw).
Indiana plays in Bloomington (which is a sizable city in the state).

 

[Kemba Time]

I know everyone jumped immediately into arguing about Gampel/XL because it this board's favorite past time, but WTF is this story even saying?

First we get a story intro about our moving rivalries that features this gem:
UConn has moved conferences a bit, and over the years the likes of Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Miami and even Southern Methodist University could claim to be Connecticut’s top rival. All have faded into the past. These days you get fans trying to gin up a rivalry with Creighton, but though they’re both good teams, it feels like forcing things a bit. (Omaha? C’mon.)

Someone please enlighten me to the point in time when Miami could claim being UConn's top rival. Oh wait, you can't because that isn't true for even a single day. And then a random line about trying to gin up a rivalry with Creighton, but that can't be possible because of, ummm, Omaha. OK, thanks for your input. If only UConn had recently moved to a conference with natural geographic rivalries that would make this entire first half of this column useless.

Then we get to, I guess, the actual point attempted to be made and get this line, split into two paragraphs: "The XL Center also has thousands more seats. But those thousands of extra seats don’t pay off for UConn."

Really? Mind looking into that a little more before putting it down as fact. The XL Center sold out 5 of 8 games this year -- and our AD is on record saying that we are not operating at a loss on a per game basis when the XL is 'well north of 10,000 in fans." If the average ticket is say $50 and we have 5,000 more fans in the XL Center than a sold out Gampel, that's 1.25 million for the 5 Big East sellouts alone -- and that's before we get into things like seat licensing. It's almost like there's a follow-up question to ask about if that $4 million he throws around is a total or before revenue instead of just printing it.

But instead of doing that, we get this line "UConn pays for the privilege of playing off campus, either in Hartford or, for the football team, at Rentschler Field in East Hartford. A university spokeswoman told the school newspaper that UConn spent about $4 million playing in these arenas in the last academic year."

Well, since the story is about the XL Center, can we go ahead and find out how much of that money is Rentschler Field rent and how much is for playing in Hartford? It's kind of an important detail that he just sort of chose not to parcel out in anyway.

Then instead of digging any further into real facts, we quickly turn the $4 million number and morphed it into the $53 million shortcoming because why exactly? We made a bowl game? Women's basketball keeps churning along? The president got research grants for science?

And then there's the grand finale, let's appeal to the non-sports fan by throwing in there that "part of your $30,000-plus annual cost to attend the school is going toward boosting business for Hartford bars and restaurants."

What part exactly? Even if we take your absolutely absurd number of $4,000,000 being the total loss, pretend UConn doesn't bring in a cent from these games at the XL Center and ignore the part that a very sizeable chunk of that number is about Rentschler Field ... We're taking about $4 million divided by 20,000 students so we'd get a total of $200 per student. Considering everything Hugh has chosen to look past, we're talking about a fraction of that, if anything, coming from UConn tuition "going toward boosting business for Hartford bars and restaurants."

I'm honestly all played out on taking a side in the Gampel-XL/Hartford-Storrs argument, but can we at least save having the same discussion over and over for when somebody writes something that isn't, well, this?

 

[UCSouth]

Duke and UNC aren't anywhere near Charlotte.
Kansas is nowhere near Kansas City (which is in Missouri btw).
Indiana plays in Bloomington (which is a sizable city in the state).

Lawrence, KS is 38 minutes East of Kansas City, KS (btw)

 

[TRUCONN76]

I like how it’s the XL Center’s fault that the school is operating at a year to year 50M deficit.

Any freshman in accounting can tell you that is asinine.

Any senior in accounting could tell you that 75% of the deficit are costs allocated to it that have nothing to do with the programs themselves. With the exception of the one off Ollie fiasco which should have resulted in attorney change.

If you eliminated the programs those costs remain and are just reallocated elsewhere.

 

[Mr. Wonderful]

What a hole you are!

You're the one who seems to be comfortable ripping off thousands of college kids, friend.

 

[Drame]

Says somebody who doesn't know what it's like to drive from Fairfield County to Storrs.

Me too. I drive from Brooklyn. Would rather drive the extra bit to Gampel and have a better atmosphere. Hang out at Teds. Hartford blows. Only play in Hartford during holidays when students are gone.

 

[HuskyHawk]

This comment is myopic and straw man - no where in his comment did he suggest that the university should appease him because he lives far away.

His point is the drive out of Fairfield county on a weekday afternoon is some of the most brutal traffic and it’s extremely difficult to get to a uconn game on a weekday from lower FC. You have to leave around 2-3 to get to Hartford for a game between 6-7. If you leave after 4 , forget it - you’d be lucky to get to New Haven by 6. Getting to Gampel means leaving around 2ish and getting home around 10 or later…. extremely difficult to do on a consistent basis.

Playing games in Hartford makes the game more accessible to a larger population — it’s that simple and can’t be debated.

Also, are you suggesting that this person pick up his life - kids, spouse, job, and just move them close to Storrs solely tor the purpose of going to uconn games ? I’m not really sure thats savvy prioritizing.

So you are saying Fairfield County is an overcrowded traffic nightmare? Agree. Certainly get more house for the $ by moving to Coventry or Ellington or whatever.

UConn should play on campus except the games during winter break. They shouldn‘t pay a dime to play at XL. Without UConn it would cease to exist. But we all know legislators strong arm the university with funding, which is why Gampel was too small, the Rent is in East Hartford (another bad rent deal for UConn) and now Toscana is too small as well.

 

[uconnfan68]

The university is in the woods in a lightly populated area of the state. Other Big East schools also play off campus (Villanova, Providence, St. John's, Seton Hall, Georgetown) so there is precedent.

** Add Xavier, DePaul, Marquette, and Creighton.

To be fair, all of the non-campus locations for those schools are much closer and/or more convenient that the arrangement for UConn. In most cases they are located in the same city, or easy to get to for students (ie. train line for Villanova, subway for St John's).

 

[HuskyHawk]

Lawrence, KS is 38 minutes East of Kansas City, KS (btw)

East? Umm, no, west. And KCK isn‘t relevant to anything, you don’t want to go there. It’s roughly 45 minutes to an hour from downtown KC or the Plaza. It’s less than that to Overland Park and the KS side suburbs (which have a lot of people). Two highways run to Lawrence from KC. I-70 and K10. Topeka is about 30 minutes the other way.

But it doesn’t matter. People know on game day you take a half day and go in, get dinner and a beer or two, check out your old college haunts, then go to the game. If Storrs had more going on this wouldn’t be an issue.

 

[BPT2Storrs]

** Add Xavier, DePaul, Marquette, and Creighton.

To be fair, all of the non-campus locations for those schools are much closer and/or more convenient that the arrangement for UConn. In most cases they are located in the same city, or easy to get to for students (ie. train line for Villanova, subway for St John's).

Those schools are not playing there to prop up the local economy either.

 

[UCSouth]

East? Umm, no, west. And KCK isn‘t relevant to anything, you don’t want to go there. It’s roughly 45 minutes to an hour from downtown KC or the Plaza. It’s less than that to Overland Park and the KS side suburbs (which have a lot of people). Two highways run to Lawrence from KC. I-70 and K10. Topeka is about 30 minutes the other way.

But it doesn’t matter. People know on game day you take a half day and go in, get dinner and a beer or two, check out your old college haunts, then go to the game. If Storrs had more going on this wouldn’t be an issue.

I knew it was West...brain fart. I'm familiar with the area.

 

[Rico444]

This comment is myopic and straw man - no where in his comment did he suggest that the university should appease him because he lives far away.

His point is the drive out of Fairfield county on a weekday afternoon is some of the most brutal traffic and it’s extremely difficult to get to a uconn game on a weekday from lower FC. You have to leave around 2-3 to get to Hartford for a game between 6-7. If you leave after 4 , forget it - you’d be lucky to get to New Haven by 6. Getting to Gampel means leaving around 2ish and getting home around 10 or later…. extremely difficult to do on a consistent basis.

Playing games in Hartford makes the game more accessible to a larger population — it’s that simple and can’t be debated.

Also, are you suggesting that this person pick up his life - kids, spouse, job, and just move them close to Storrs solely tor the purpose of going to uconn games ? I’m not really sure thats savvy prioritizing.

Realistically, if you have to plan to leave 4 hours before tip to have a chance to make it to Storrs, then have to leave 3.5 hours early to get to Hartford. You sit in the same Fairfield county traffic no matter which venue you're going to.

Allocating an extra 30 minutes of driving shouldn't be enough to stop people from going to games.

 

[EROCK CONN]

So you are saying Fairfield County is an overcrowded traffic nightmare? Agree. Certainly get more house for the $ by moving to Coventry or Ellington or whatever.

UConn should play on campus except the games during winter break. They shouldn‘t pay a dime to play at XL. Without UConn it would cease to exist. But we all know legislators strong arm the university with funding, which is why Gampel was too small, the Rent is in East Hartford (another bad rent deal for UConn) and now Toscana is too small as well.

Well there’s no question about that housing is less expensive outside of FC, I’m not really sure why there’s even a need to say a well known established fact.

I disagree on the XL - I think the current setup allows more people access to games which is beneficial for the fan base.