Sadly, we have a collective mentality among most of our fanbase, even some of those who support all sports, not just BB, that the sport James Naismith invented still means something in major collegiate athletics. It doesn't. It hasn't since the presidents took over the NCAA, the CFA was formed in the early 1990's, and college football started making zillions for the Michigans, USC's and Alabamas of the college sports world.
Each year we weren't a member of the CFA and later the BCS club put us further behind the major powers. When we finally woke up in the late 1990's and did sonething about it, maybe it was already too late.
John Toner envisioned us being a IA football program when he was the architect of splitting Division I into two levels, IA and IAA, in 1978. It took another 26 years to make that dream into a reality. We missed the opportunity to be in a CFA and later BCS conference for more than half of the 28 years those associations existed. Even if we had joined the BCS by the late 1990's (we had an open Big East invite for many years), things might have been dramatically different for us when conference realignment came and went.
If Tranghese and Marinatto had ever come to terms with the notion that their precious catholic schools were riding in a tiny little red wagon being pulled by the locomotive called the BCS toward the 21st Century, maybe they wouldn't have been as asleep at the wheel while they watched their precious BB conference torn to pieces, thanks to their indecisiveness.
Without dwelling on the mistakes of the past, the simple reality of the present is this: you can argue the economics of exit fees, TV payouts, streaming video production costs, NCAA shares, bowl revenue shares, travel costs, etc. until you're blue in the face, but we have just condemned our athletic program to permanent second tier status forever, barring a miracle greater than Moses parting of the Red Sea.
Also, don't forget that the AAC is by far the best G5 conference in the country. It stands a chance at becoming the one G5 league worthy of inclusion as a possible CFP worthy player if the playoff expands to eight teams in the near future.
Ask yourself this question. In future years, if the AAC produces a national champion in football or basketball, how will it make you feel?
We chose to step back in time for purely nostalgic, parochial and provincial, not practical reasons, and to seal our fate as a second tier player in collegiate athletics, likely forever. Think about that for one minute. A school with the most combined BB championships in NCAA DI basketball history vs. the Dukes, Kentuckys, UNC's and UCLA's of the world, has voluntarily chosen a path which will likely lead to permanent second tier status in collegiate athletics.
We have hitched our wagon to CBB, an irrelevant sport that will take us nowhere, just so our basketball only fans can feel good about beating Providence, St. John's and Seton Hall again. Oh yeah, I almost forgot. We've also killed the only sport that matters in college sports, a sport UCONN has played since 1896, five years longer than basketball. Anybody interested in buying a slightly used 40,000 seat stadium in E. Hartford, CT?
