I'm not one who likes to claim UConn is NY's team or anything like that but its astonishing how people just don't get that, as a state flagship, the entire state of CT is UConn's market and that includes Fairfield County, which is part of the NYC DMA. What is so hard to understand about this?
I think because it's kind of a unique dynamic. No other state has one MAJOR university that the entire state pulls for and treats like the only show in town. Almost every other P5 program has another P5 school or even G5 school competing with it for an audience. No other school can really call the entire state their market like UConn can. Part of that is due to the small size of Connecticut, but a lot of it is the mentality of those born and raised here.
Coming to UConn, from living my whole life in NJ, it was a big change of culture in terms of everyone growing up wanting to go to UConn because they rooted for them. Rutgers never pulled the entire state even though they were the only college show in town. No one even had interest in GOING to Rutgers. Even now they don't pull as well. Penn State and ND were huge draws and still are.
People who don't live in CT and are just looking for where Storrs is on a map and just makes the assumption that we are all crazy because the main campus is so far from NYC. Unless folks live here or know the area well, they will always claim that UConn doesn't pull the NYC market like we know it does. They'll ignore the fact that SNY was nowhere to be found in CT until they signed their deal with UConn. They'll ignore the fact that UConn basketball takes over the Garden when we play there. All those things don't get looked at when you simply look at a map and allow geography to dictate your thoughtless commentary like these journalists are doing. It's why Jacobs and others need to keep publishing those articles and why Dooley and others need to keep fighting the good fight through social media.
In the end, any research firm worth anything should be able to easily see that UConn pulls all of CT, including Fairfield county.