I hear what you're saying, but many teams in P5 conferences have terrible football teams. They've just been terrible at the D-IA level longer than us. We may have a short FBS history, but it's not like we haven't made progress since moving up. Look at the last five or six seasons, which admittedly haven't been great for which everyone bags on us, but we've beaten football powerhouses such as Rutgers a couple of times, Maryland, Houston (last year), ND, Pitt, South Carolina, and Louisville, went to a Fiesta Bowl, and put a whole bunch of players in the NFL. Given the little amount of time and money we've had at this football level, there are certainly worse programs in the P5 conferences doing a lot less with a lot more. The reality is for most of the teams that are currently in P5 conferences, they are simply lucky to be grandfathered in, and I'll bet those same schools know they'd be screwed in a contraction scenario. From an overall athletics standpoint and academic standpoint, UConn easily holds its own against the P5 schools and would be in the top half of those schools not even counting its media market which is bigger than more than half of the P5 schools' markets. If conference commissioners could swap one of their teams for UConn, I'd bet they'd do it in a heartbeat.
And a feather boa. Geno though has to wear a Seersucker suit and a straw hat.She's admitted that she has absolutely no fashion sense at all, and that it is her friends that lay out her outfits for her. NOW...she may need to look into some of these "friends"...
Personally, I relish the idea of a NC game, UConn vs Baylor, with Mulkey wearing the Lamé jacket!
See my post
The concept of a NYC or NE market for CFB is a myth IMO. If you draw a 250 mile circle around NYC there is not a college football program (PSU?) that has perennially ranked in the top 20/25 of CFB or has figured in the National championship picture for how long? 30 years. 40 years. Never. If such a market exists it would have been highly exploited before now.
I get excoriated on this Board for making the same observation, every time this question is posed and this discussion results.
Your premise makes no sense, all of the P5 conferences had the opportunity to invite UConn and have not. Uconn's FB program just isn't very attractive and entry into the NY/NJ market was better effected by Rutgers, as the B1G has shown. Most P5 schools have a long history of conference affiliation, even the bad teams, i.e. Purdue, Illinois, and Minnesota. The B1G wouldn't trade any of those teams for UConn on any day, even in your contraction scenario. The driver of expansion/realignment is CFB and no matter how many CBB Natty's Connecticut wins, unless and until it vastly improves its football program it won't be a candidate for P5 expansion.
