In my opinion, I think this will happen, at some point, in the next 10-15 years. The NCAA Tourney is a $1B revenue generator...for the NCAA (not the conferences). If the P5 completely split from the NCAA (like they're moving towards anyway), how long will it take for them to figure out that a P5-only tournament that features their programs can generate the same kind of payout without giving it to the NCAA? The mega-fanbases in the P5 would drive ratings through the roof. And while the P5 hoops tourney would lose the "Cinderella appeal" charm of the NCAA Tourney, it wouldn't matter because the P5 has conquered just about every large DMA in the country. CR is all about money, not protecting the charm or true rivalry aspects that used to make college athletics so fun to watch.
The good news for UCONN is that if/when this hoops split happens, and the focus shifts from football to basketball, our P5 value skyrockets. The P5 can surely ink a lucrative TV deal without UCONN. But with UCONN in the mix, not only does the new P5 tourney gain penetration into the huge northeast markets that UCONN helps carry (NYC, Boston, Hartford/New Haven = ratings = $$$), but it also brings more credibility to the P5 tourney because UCONN is a national powerhouse and contender in most seasons. Let's say UNC wins the 2022 P5 championship going 22-8 that season and UCONN, while playing in a mid-major Big East conference, goes 28-2 and wins the NCAA Tourney. Because of UCONN's history and elite status as a basketball blue blood, there would potentially be quite a few pockets of fans in the country that would claim UCONN was better than UNC that year. The P5 would have to acquire as many "blue blood" elite names as possible for their tourney to bring validity to declaring its champion the "best". To gain access to this tournament, UCONN *has* to continue playing football to get a P5 invite.
I understand that UCONN is a basketball school and always will be. That's fine. There is a fit for that inside the P5 (look at Duke, UNC, Kentucky, Syracuse, Indiana, etc) as long as the football programs are competitive every now and again and the basketball programs continue to deliver ratings. I think UCONN can get back to that point - hell, we were at that point in 2011 when we had a BCS football team and 2 hoops national championships.
I also understand that our fanbase, for whatever odd reason, seems to be fragmented between basketball (and even men's vs. women's basketball) and football. I will never in 1,000 years understand the reason for this. But I do realize that the "hoops first" fans probably hold some sort of resentment towards the football program for its struggles and the idea that it is football holding us back from a P5 conference. I just don't, for the life of me, understand why our fans would want to dump football now and go back to playing in a mid-major Big East conference. The payout there is roughly $5M/yr. In other words, not even enough to cover paying our head coach's salaries. So what coach are we going to have to let go because we can't continue to fund that program, long-term? Ollie makes $3M/yr. Geno makes $2M/yr. One, or both, would have to go. And who would we bring in at for $1M/yr to coach in a mid-major conference? Further more, how long would we keep him until a P5 school with 4-10x more money than UCONN can come in and double/triple/quadruple their salary and lure them away? Imagine the ire of every UCONN fan of losing a Kevin Ollie type to Boston College or Syracuse or Rutgers simply because they can pay a salary that we can't even come close to matching. That's what will happen if we moved back to the Big East.
Stay the course. Sports are cyclical. Football will improve. When it does, our P5 value improves instantly. We already have shown we can really help deliver NYC/NJ. Hopefully we will show in 2016 that we can help deliver Boston with a strong fan showing at Gillette against UMASS. We just need football to win a few games and keep doing what we're doing by investing heavily in research. We are still in Year 2 of the 3-5 Year B1G Plan.
