I think it will happen too -- sooner or later the conferences will have incentives to add UConn:
Carrot: The northeast is unexploited territory for college sports and UConn is the only public school that plays high level athletics. Its home state would be a top 20 media market nationally, and it has no P5 college team or pro sports team -- a huge hole. In addition to its home state, UConn gets some penetration into NYC and New England. There is a huge entrepreneurial opportunity here. UConn would pay its way in the B1G, perhaps with a higher carriage fee in Connecticut than other B1G states.
If UConn were to gain its own media rights and create a Husky network, it could plausibly get $1 per household per month from 1.4 mn Connecticut households, or $17 million, and with sales of national games in basketball and football for $2 mn each, could get $25 mn for media rights. This puts UConn in the same revenue range as the P5 conferences.
Stick: When you see how terrified the P5 are of antitrust lawsuits from players, you have to think they'd be even more terrified of antitrust lawsuits from their college competitors -- after all, those are their direct competitors and can show clear harm from a P5 cartel. You know these lawsuits are coming, too many schools and conferences are being harmed. UConn's many hundreds of millions of dollars of investments in sports could lose most of their value, and antitrust lawsuits allow treble damages as punitive remedy on top of compensatory damage. A $1 billion award to UConn would be about $15 mn per P5 school, or roughly the present value of $1 mn per year, which happens to be the cost to the ACC of bringing in UConn even if they got no increase at all in conference media revenue from ESPN.
The antitrust threat would be further supported if a Husky network was created successfully, since that would establish that UConn is an equal competitor with the P5 in fan interest and market support. It would give UConn an antitrust position to argue against the exclusion of UConn from competition through restricted scheduling and/or bowl/playoff access.
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The alternative is to make the AAC successful, to the point that there are once again 6 power conferences. Maybe that can happen, maybe it would happen on a level playing field. But the P5 conferences are doing their best to make it impossible.
However: once again antitrust threats might intervene. If the NCAA allows the P5 to have autonomy, it might have to allow an AAC/MWC group autonomy as well. Then we could start a bidding war for players: pay them a stipend of up to $20k per year. The AAC/MWC might then get the best players and have the best football. They create an alternative playoff for their semi-pro group. There is a contested national champion.
The B1G is already claiming they might have to drop sports if players in the revenue sports are paid; and that a professional sports ethic is unacceptable. Many of the P5 schools or conferences may drop out of a cut-throat competition. Not everyone wants to be the SEC.
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I'm not actually predicting either of these scenarios. The most likely outcome is for the G5 schools to slink off into oblivion with their tail between their legs, because their presidents etc hope to get jobs in the P5 and don't want to piss anyone off. But both are possible.
