Jurich acted like Louisville had a chance and, as it turned out, they did. Maybe it's revisionist but my understanding is that UConn was close but never had a chance of getting to 75% between the southern football bloc and BC.
Just because something "seems" obvious doesn't make it so. Everybody looked at the ACC opening and thought, 'Huh, UConn makes the most sense.' Except the people who really mattered -- the ACC football schools like Clemson and FSU. Just because a bunch of people speculate wildly in the media about something that seems obvious doesn't mean the underlying facts aren't totally different.
It's interesting to look back on that period after Maryland left the ACC to re-examine just where the perception came from that UConn was a shoe-in. My recollection is that in the first week afterwards, the media brought up UConn as the most likely fit, primarily because our academics and research profile matching the ACC schools like UNC, UVA, and with the ACC having just added a bunch of northern schools. So over the course of a few days, with some back and forth over twitter and op-ed pieces being published, it sort of snowballed from "it COULD be UConn" into a consensus that "it WILL be UConn".
But this was without any examination of the actual political power to decide that move, which is namely what the ACC presidents were thinking. We initially heard positive things from (ugh) Duke's Krzyzewsi. At that time we did not hear about FSU's or Clemson's reservations. This solidified the initial UConn-to-the-ACC narrative in the media and on social media. If there was an error on UConn's part, it may have been that the administration didn't dig deep enough into ACC politics. We know Herbst has contacts at Duke and probably UNC, and we know that Manuel was talking to Wake Forest's AD in the Bahamas. We didn't know at the time we were talking to the wrong people. Perhaps there was an error in thinking that Cuse and Pitt might support UConn, or at least not c*ckblock us. Either way, UConn's people had the perception that we had it in the bag (I got forwarded a PM that we were in about a week before the decision, I assume some of you guys got that too).
Now, if the above is true, does it mean WM is a *ty AD? No. That's actually not his domain. It's Herbst's and the trustees. And a little bit on the media for not digging into the ACC politics. But mostly, you have to give some credit to Jurich for A) the job he was doing for YEARS at UL while Hathaway was twiddling his thumbs, positioning UL for the opportunity B) knowing how to play ACC politics. But in the end, I don't think you can overstate the simplicity of UL's football perception driving the decision, coupled with geography. It was a long game, that Jurich won because he was on the job for a long time and UConn had a guy in a dunce cap who wound up failing down to Hofstra. We needed a Manuel type to succeed Perkins, and we needed an even bigger head start, that's the only way we could have beat out UL.
