Key tweets, and it's all gone to Hell.

[John]

I know a long time Women's B-ball season ticket holder who hates when the Men's team is good. She thinks they get too, much attention and detract from the Women's team.

the women's fans are an entirely separate sub-species in an ecosystem that's on a different time/space continuum.

 

[John]

UConn is in a power conference in basketball and many other sports - just not football.
How many National Universities wouldn't pay big dollars to hang all the banners that UConn has .....all in the past 25 years!

The reality for football is that no one is showing up in Storrs with a 75million dollar blank check.....every year. The current model just does not and will not work for football.
I would rather see teams compete at a level of the service academies.

Basketball will continue to thrive and win but not football

Thank God you're not running our athletic department.

 

[FfldCntyFan]

If UConn had joined the Big East instead of the AAC when the old Big East came apart, it would be in a power conference right now.

It wasn't like we had that choice. The catholic seven from the then BE got up and left and invited Xavier, Creighton and Butler to join. They then purchased the name from the remaining five members (unpaid tournament credits and departure fees from ND, WVU, Pitt & Cuse given entirely to the football members).

There never was the option for us joining until a few years afterward.

 

[noeynox]

It wasn't like we had that choice. The catholic seven from the then BE got up and left and invited Xavier, Creighton and Butler to join. They then purchased the name from the remaining five members (unpaid tournament credits and departure fees from ND, WVU, Pitt & Cuse given entirely to the football members).

There never was the option for us joining until a few years afterward.

Was that money a net positive vs what they paid to leave the AAC snd join the Big East? By how much?

 

[Ha Who]

So we should have never gone to the AAC? Explain to me how remaining in the non-football rump Big East would play in P5 offices when they considered our commitment to football versus other programs. Especially when all of our football-playing former Big East conference mates went to a football conference.

Read history . Look at rule 1. The bar changed every round of realignment . Also, the AAC was the conference we had to go to. The Big East was not an option. I never was opposed to the AAC as a bridge to a P5 invitation. I continued season tickets for hoops and football all these crappy seasons. If you loud football fans were as loyal and filled the Rent, you wouldn’t have this straw man argument.

 

[John]

Read history . Look at rule 1. The bar changed every round of realignment . Also, the AAC was the conference we had to go to. The Big East was not an option. I never was opposed to the AAC as a bridge to a P5 invitation. I continued season tickets for hoops and football all these crappy seasons. If you loud football fans were as loyal and filled the Rent, you wouldn’t have this straw man argument.

you could have just said this and skipped the holier-than-thou fan part

the AAC was the conference we had to go to. The Big East was not an option. I never was opposed to the AAC as a bridge to a P5 invitation.

 

[coachcap]

Read history . Look at rule 1. The bar changed every round of realignment . Also, the AAC was the conference we had to go to. The Big East was not an option. I never was opposed to the AAC as a bridge to a P5 invitation. I continued season tickets for hoops and football all these crappy seasons. If you loud football fans were as loyal and filled the Rent, you wouldn’t have this straw man argument.

Um, I started buying 10 season football tickets after UConn announced it was moving up to Division 1-A, well before the RENT was even conceived. Over the years that allotment has increased to 12 ducats. I agree with John's last comment.

 

[UConnJim]

Oh, I get the argument, though I think it's misplaced, that people would rather see the money spent towards football applied to other programs.

UConn is pretty competitive with the P4/P5 in every sport at current spending with the exception of football. Sure, you could add a few dollars to softball, volleyball, swimming, and track and field to make them more competitive, but we are not talking about a large investment. A $5 million to $10 million per year investment increase in football would go a long way. You could double coaching salaries, increase recruiting budgets, ...

 

[Kolumbo]

So we should have never gone to the AAC? Explain to me how remaining in the non-football rump Big East would play in P5 offices when they considered our commitment to football versus other programs. Especially when all of our football-playing former Big East conference mates went to a football conference.

It would have been much worse than that. As it was, UConn remained in the Big East Football conference and the basketball programs bolted. UConn would have had to put its tail between its legs and chosen to leave the football conference which would have been devastating. Leave a conference with Cincy, Louisville, USF, Rutgers and run with the basketball teams. Game over.

 

[KryHavok]

Since we're adding non key tweets, I'll join. Going to the AAC was a forced move without much alternative. Overall, the move didn't work out despite the men's BB title. We were screwed both by the ACC and by our leadership in Suzy & Warde. The move back to Big East was a gambit...and it now seems to be paying off for MBB while perhaps stabilizing football. We're still on a precarious situation. Geno is Geno, but his time is growing considerably short, so then what happens to WBB, cuz other programs have caught up and are more physical. Despite being in a strong MBB conference, we're isolated, and this will choke us sooner than some want to believe

I saw another craptastic article this morning about whether we're a BB Bbueblood.

crappy loser puts down our status

Come on, again with this garbage!? Would any sane fan/writer not consider UConn as a BB blueblood if we were in the ACC or Big12? Instead, we're maligned cuz we're in the Big East, which is a great for one thing (tradition) but sucks for other reasons (namely lack of revenue income and growth). Or prior sports successes were undone by university leadership complacency. I hope there is time to right the ship before we crash and get left behind the way UCLA, Indiana, and Tennessee did for M/WBB. I loved the old Big East and glad they took us back so we could dress our wounds, but this, as others as noted, is not sustainable.

 

[NH Husky]

This was clear when Warde and Sue, told everyone that UConn fans needed to learn to support FB whether they were winning or losing. The losing had yet to really get rolling, but the crowds were starting to get smaller toward the end of Ps 2nd year.

Fans would be more likely to support FB if their rivals were regionally local. Rivalries carry outside of stadiums on Saturdays. Coworker fans of rivals, bars with rival fans, families with rival fans. All create a local buzz that fuels support.
“We may not have a winning season but at least we beat you!”
Born and raised in CT and New England. I never worked with or socialized with anyone from Tulsa, SMU, Houston, or any AAC school except Temple.
Warde and Sue undervalued the need for local rivalries.
Big reason why Cuse, BC, and Pitt are now floundering. I always knew Miami didn’t fit in the old Big East and would bolt first chance. Who was there Big East rival? The answer is they didn’t have one.

 

[CashewCrew]

The ACC needs to add UConn

Don't overthink this. A conference with a rich basketball history could bolster its hoops product and offer a lifeline to the Huskies' independent football program.

www.insidezonemf.com

 

[Drew]

The ACC needs to add UConn

Don't overthink this. A conference with a rich basketball history could bolster its hoops product and offer a lifeline to the Huskies' independent football program.

www.insidezonemf.com

This may be the first time I’ve ever seen a national media person actually put onto paper that UConn made infinitely more sense than Cal, Stanford, and SMU. Kudos to Matt.

 

[Rufus]

This may be the first time I’ve ever seen a national media person actually put onto paper that UConn made infinitely more sense than Cal, Stanford, and SMU. Kudos to Matt.

UConn is a better fit. UConn can either wait for the ACC to collapse or make the same deal SMU (or Stanford/Cal) made to join. SMU gave up a lot to get in and so did Stanford/Cal, just not quite as much, but they benefited from Notre Dame pulling for them. Making a deal and getting Notre Dame to pull some strings will get UConn into the ACC short of the collapse of the conference.

 

[Drew]

UConn is a better fit. UConn can either wait for the ACC to collapse or make the same deal SMU (or Stanford/Cal) made to join. SMU gave up a lot to get in and so did Stanford/Cal, just not quite as much, but they benefited from Notre Dame pulling for them. Making a deal and getting Notre Dame to pull some strings will get UConn into the ACC short of the collapse of the conference.

I tend to agree with this…. If we go back to back you can offer a SMU/Cal/Stanford like deal to both the Big 12 and ACC and see if either has the balls to take you up on it

 

[CL82]

Was that money a net positive vs what they paid to leave the AAC snd join the Big East? By how much?

I'm not sure there's any relevancy between the events given how long they were apart and the fact that Connecticut was not invited when the Catholic seven left the conference.

 

[CL82]

If you loud football fans were as loyal and filled the Rent, you wouldn’t have this straw man argument.

If basketball won only one game of season there wouldn't be very many tickets sold for that either.

 

[CL82]

I tend to agree with this…. If we go back to back you can offer a SMU/Cal/Stanford like deal to both the Big 12 and ACC and see if either has the balls to take you up on it

If the ACC is hemorrhaging schools at the time, we may not have to offer not to take conference distributions.

 

[JMick]

If the ACC is hemorrhaging schools at the time, we may not have to offer not to take conference distributions.

If it gets as bad as it can get then they'll be giving teams extra incentives to join.

 

[GoConn]

very nice to see UConn to a power conference get some positive light. Thank you, Matt.

 

[ScottVib]

you could have just said this and skipped the holier-than-thou fan part

the AAC was the conference we had to go to. The Big East was not an option. I never was opposed to the AAC as a bridge to a P5 invitation.

This times a million

If you loud football fans were as loyal and filled the Rent, you wouldn’t have this straw man argument.

Of course the counter argument to this is maybe the basketball fan base should’ve been more loyal and showed up for the team when they struggled in the Ollie era, rather than forcing a nostalgia move and the expenses incurred to support it…

Neither argument is fair (and to be clear, I think the move has proven to be correct). Win and more fans show up, lose and less do, regardless of the team.

Case in point, this football season opened with some excitement and more than 30k were distributed for the opener, with the highest number actually in the stadium in close to a decade. Football had 14k season ticket holders in 2023, the most since 2017 (~16k in 2017). (For the curious, Men's Basketball has 8k season ticket holders counting students and the band at Gampel and nearly 11k at XL (5 thousand and 9 thousand for just the sold portion)).

 

[ZooCougar]

If UConn had joined the Big East instead of the AAC when the old Big East came apart, it would be in a power conference right now.

Yes. Shuttering the football program when we were still selling 30,000 season tickets would have been a brilliant manuever.

 

[ZooCougar]

Read history . Look at rule 1. The bar changed every round of realignment . Also, the AAC was the conference we had to go to. The Big East was not an option. I never was opposed to the AAC as a bridge to a P5 invitation. I continued season tickets for hoops and football all these crappy seasons. If you loud football fans were as loyal and filled the Rent, you wouldn’t have this straw man argument.

I don’t think you know what a straw man is. And literally men’s basketball fans were just as bad attendances wise in the AAC.

 

[shizzle787]

Yes. Shuttering the football program when we were still selling 30,000 season tickets would have been a brilliant manuever.

Going independent would not be shuttering the program.

 

[John]

This times a million


Of course the counter argument to this is maybe the basketball fan base should’ve been more loyal and showed up for the team when they struggled in the Ollie era, rather than forcing a nostalgia move and the expenses incurred to support it…

Neither argument is fair (and to be clear, I think the move has proven to be correct). Win and more fans show up, lose and less do, regardless of the team.

Case in point, this football season opened with some excitement and more than 30k were distributed for the opener, with the highest number actually in the stadium in close to a decade. Football had 14k season ticket holders in 2023, the most since 2017 (~16k in 2017). (For the curious, Men's Basketball has 8k season ticket holders counting students and the band at Gampel and nearly 11k at XL (5 thousand and 9 thousand for just the sold portion)).

there's some recent historical amnesia (or revisionist history) about the drawing power of UConn basketball in down times. While I'd guess the vast majority of us had season tickets throughout the Ollie era, there were TONS of empty seats in both XL and Gampel, and a virtually non-existent secondary market for even the best games. But it's the football fans who've failed the university.....