The Big 12 already made a long term decision, based on short term results by adding TCU. I hope they do not make that mistake again. TCU is a private school with a limited fan base, that is one bad coaching hire away from being a disaster P5 addition. Does anyone believe Herman is going to stay at Houston, when someone like LSU comes calling?
TCU has worked out just fine because there is a huge alumni base in DFW from the rest of the conference that carries the attendance. I know it's hard to believe but little private schools like TCU, SMU, Rice, and Baylor have lots of wealthy alumni which gives them a huge financial advantage over some public schools such as CSU who struggle to generate income from ticket sales and donations. Pony Express 30 for 30 shows this, as does Baylor having a 100 million $ AD, new stadium, TCU has a new stadium as well. TCU works because of it's location and it's great as the conference gets spread out as a school can fly a team to DFW and play 4-5 games without flying anywhere. When you look at how concentrated he conference is in North Texas it's not the worst thing to have a few outliers so kids get a bit of travel. Essentially fly to KC for KU, KSU, and ISU. Fly to Pittsburgh for WVU. Fly to several airports to play UConn. It's really just not that much travel when it comes right down to it because 5 schools are so close and another 3 are close. Hell if it ends up being Houston, BYU, Cinci, and UConn a school like UConn could fly a team into Houston and bus thier way through most of the conference flying home from KC with nothing more than a couple of hour drive between most games.
Pretty much every team is a bad hire away from being a disaster. I lived in Norman during the 90's and got to see OU being down with hires. If OU can go down the tubes so can most of the country. TCU has the same advantage as Houston with lots of local talent which helps and now that they are a Big 12 member they will likely always be able to get 30k people to show up for a game no matter how bad they get because schools like TT, Baylor, UT, OU, OSU have so many alumni in the area.
I have a feeling that UConn will have the best presentation from a president's standpoint and will also get high marks from TV partners, especially if there is some sort of network involved. Hopefully educating the conference about the football facilites, NFL talent, commitment, etc.. will convince those who doubt the ability for UConn football to compete in the conference. Sounds like the airport issue will be addressed which should clear up any questions about travel time comparisons which should be a good thing looking at minutes instead of a map. I think the off campus stadium is going to be looked at as nobody else in the conference does that but overall I would think that the presentations will go really good for UConn as there is nothing to hide like will be the case with other like BYU (weird religious code of conduct, anti gay, etc), CSU (lack of $ and fan support), etc..
