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Message: [QUOTE="Stainmaster, post: 2488229, member: 5260"] It's the only logical take present on this board. The state and university are in dire financial straits, which greatly weakens our ability to compensate a high-caliber coach. The AD cannot afford to pay anyone what KO is making, especially due to the poor quality of our future TV deals and the increasingly wide gap between P5 and non-P5 programs in terms of revenue. We are coming off of a putrid three-year stretch that has completely destroyed what little "fan base" of non-frontrunners we had. No prospective coach will find our roster going forward to be attractive at all. The conference is a bigger drain on recruiting than most would like to admit, and the UConn name is worth little on the NE recruiting scene thanks to Ed Cooley's mudslinging. Rebuilding this program requires a gargantuan effort for which there is little reward, both monetary and in terms of postseason play - we have all seen how many seed lines teams in this conference are bumped down compared to P5 teams with near-identical resumes. Should I also mention that playing in this conference, coaches know they have absolutely zero margin for error in the non-conference portion of the schedule if they want an at-large? Now compare us to a P5 program that can pay more, garners far more positive media coverage inherently due to their position, and plays a conference schedule with plenty of opportunities to get quality wins (thereby lowering the heat during the months of November and December). That is a low-risk, high-reward scenario. Coaches don't want to enter situations where they are likely to fail; this is their livelihood we're talking about. Any lofty paeans appealing to "tradition and history" mean nothing outside of this forum. Your average college coach does not see Jim Calhoun and Rip Hamilton when he looks at the state of the program currently, and probably not even Kemba or Shabazz. The rest of the world moves on quickly. "What have you done for me lately?" Bottom line, the kind of coaches we need have other opportunities that are probably better long-term choices for their careers. [/QUOTE]

Verification: First name of men's bb coach

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