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Message: [QUOTE="VAHuskyFan, post: 2954855, member: 1585"] Here’s a question - does maintaining the football program in its current state even help us get into a P5? We’ve known all along that we were never going to be invited BECAUSE OF football - it would be a combination of our basketball brand name, geography, TV market, etc. The thought was to keep football good enough to where it wouldn’t be a huge negative. Well, it is now a huge negative. And there are no signs of things turning around any time soon. We will need to hemorrage money just to maintain the status quo. Football’s operating margin in 2017 was -$13M. And that number is headed the wrong way. What does that money even do for us at this point? What if we pull the plug, join the Big East, and put some of the money we would have blown on 3+ years of losing football into a war chest for a UConn football “relaunch” in a P5. If another round of realignment arrives, we could commit to spending big immediately on football and have the cash saved up to do just that. Is this a good plan? No! It’s a bad plan. But it would be far better financially in the short term. It would be a thorn in the side of ESPN and the ACC, which would create value in dislodging us (vs the AAC, where everyone is happy to have us languish). And I’m not sure that a pile of earmarked funds and a “Football Relaunch!” PPT presentation are really any less attractive than where our actual football program is realistically likely to be in 3-4 years. [/QUOTE]

Verification: First name of men's bb coach