This is such nonsense. Months ago when there was talk about the Big 12 expanding it was Cincinnati and UConn. We've heard Big 12 leaders talk about how they want to expand to the East. Now it really looks like expansion is going to happen and we are starting to look like an afterthought again, as we get passed by teams like Houston and Memphis. . . . . . .I'm so sick of the excuses. Everything isn't perfect for us or any other school but we offer way more than these schools. It's a joke comparing our resumes and yet it has the same feel as the other times we were passed over. You have to sell yourself and we never seem to do that, if anything we take the approach of downplaying everything we offer. I don't get it.
How exactly can we (or anyone for that matter) use the fact that adding UConn to the B-12 will be an opportunity for Fox to kick ESPN in the nuts when ESPN is one of the two television providers (along with Fox) in this deal?
True but the payout (equal money per school for additions of two or four new members) is within the current contract that both Fox & ESPN hold. Kicking ESPN as a selling point (as was suggested) won't work as % of that bill will be paid by ESPN. Where this hurts our chances (and it seems there is always some stray item lingering that hurts our chances) is that ESPN will not be eager to defray some of Fox's costs on a move that will benefit Fox (more eastern programming).
Dooley, you are honestly the one poster I go to with this. Did you not find what she said discouraging?
If President Herbst doesn't care about sports and is building up her resume for a "non-athletic" school, she will have a very hard time explaining the following in her next interview:
1. authorizing all of the money spent on hiring Mike Tranghese to lobby power conferences on our behalf;
2. marketing expenditures for "UConn 6th Borough";
3. hiring not 1, not 2, but 3 qualified Athletic Directors;
4. acquiring land (not money) in a stadium naming contract with the sole expectation that the stadium will require additional land to park additional cars carrying additional fans to said stadium;
5. proceeding with plans to upgrade baseball, soccer and hockey campus facilities, in addition to expanding the campus football training facility;
6. authorizing a move to partner with The Aspire Group to help handle an expected increase in volume of ticket sales in the coming year(s)
If President Herbst hates sports as much as this thread suggest, she sure has a very odd way of showing it.
Jim Calhoun and Geno Auriemma are both directly responsible for making UConn the institution it is today, both aesthetically and academically. Fact.
Oh nooooooooooooooooooooooo
Yea, and he's also not going out there and literally saying "We are making no active effort to join the Big 12, if they take us they take us". That's what people are upset about. It would have been 100x better had she stuck with the "quiet campaign" motif and stayed absolutely silent on the issue, but she went and basically confirmed the fears of many.
We could debate about the meaning of her comment, but if the Big12 presidents are reading the Courant to see that comment, then she was correct, they are actively pursuing UCONN and her process is working. If they don't read it, well who cares what she said then.
My point was that BYU is a "favorite" and you don't see their president saying anything, is their president an idiot too?
