Desperate times call for desperate measures

[zls44]

Time for some kids to come under the reality tent because the fantasy s*** they've been feeding themselves to date has not worked out for 'em.

You can lead a horse to water...

 

[UCFBfan]

Like it or not, for better or for worse, Uconn is a big time basketball school looking to improve its football profile.

Like it or not, UConn's future is linked to its football success and it's future. The NBE will provide a competitive conference and allow us to continue to grow in football. If anything was learned from losing out to Louisville it's that basketball matters little in realignment. Football success will get us to greener pastures, not basketball. I'm not saying we should be happy with our situation basketball wise but it is what it is for now.

That's a hard reality for a lot of the basketball folks on this board to realize. However it's the reality of college athletics.

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[CL82]

We have not been anywhere close to the top and we are not going backwards. Compare the recruiting classes of ECU, Tulane, Houston and SMU to BCU and Syracuse and tell me which schools are recruiting better. The quality of our opponents in conference will be the same as it has been. You are letting dollar signs cloud your opinion of our new conference mates. Houston and SMU are superior to BC and Cuse on the field. If money is the only thing that matters we should look to schedule Yale, with that 16 billion endowment they must be awesome at football.

You can't compete in arms race without a viable economic base. Money is everything because without there is zero athletics. UConn's TV rights are being devalued (if the NBCsports rumor is true) by affliation, we need to buy them back (is that even possible?) and resell them. Without decent TV money all that UConn has achieved will wither on the vine.

If this is possible, ESPN better pony up 19 million for them or we should burn that place to the ground.

 

[metsfan2323]

You can't compete in arms race without a viable economic base. Money is everything because without there is zero athletics.

The football complex is already built and is state of the art. The basketball complex is under construction, The Rent is only 10 years old. Unless you think P needs a huge raise or players should start being paid for their services, I think UCONN's athletic finances will be fine for the foreseeable future. I think its comical that people stress about the finances of this very wealthy and well funded university.

 

[Marty Jackson]

Yeah, UConn should just make the math work out better. We should tell the networks what we want them to pay - that's how we think outside the box here.

Time for some kids to come under the reality tent because the fantasy s*** they've been feeding themselves to date has not worked out for 'em.

if it helps your psyche to denegrate anyone that still thinks uconn has some opportunities great.
but your suggestion that Uconn pay $8-10M for the right to play in the NBE is laughable. I dont expect the answers to come from a website administrator, but I would expect anyone named Warde or Susan to be coming up with options.
otherwise fire them, and bring in some order taker that will cost a lot less.

great captains ae not made sailing calm seas.

 

[upstater]

The football complex is already built and is state of the art. The basketball complex is under construction, The Rent is only 10 years old. Unless you think P needs a huge raise or players should start being paid for their services, I think UCONN's athletic finances will be fine for the foreseeable future. I think its comical that people stress about the finances of this very wealthy and well funded university.

UConn partially finances its athletics with student fees at a time when it is planning to raise tuition quite a bit to fund an academic hiring spree. I can't understand why these concerns would be diminished when UConn is already pretty expensive. If Herbst could have saved the school the $10-15 million she uses to subsidize sports right now, she would be able to either drop tuition & fees by $1,000 per student or else use that money to improve UConn. This is not an incosiderable amount of money. And it's a yearly bill. If you put it in terms of the endowment, and considered how much endowment money would be needed to generate $10-$15 million in yearly revenue, you'd need an amount equal to UConn's current endowment!

 

[Rumrunner]

Facilities don't remain state of the art forever. That's the problem. And to think donors, or even the public, are going to be more apt to pony up millions of dollars to a nonpower school is fanciful. Coaching staff salaries are commensurate with the conference. SEC coaches, Pac 12 coaches make considerably more than MAC and CUSA coaches. And soon NBE coaches. Big time athletics with big time athletic revenues already stress schools' budgets. Upstater makes a living pointing this out. But big time athletics with small time revenue is an impossibility.

As far as putting a pillow over our heads and claiming there is nothing to be done, defeatist thinking leads to defeat. Maybe nothing could be done, but I'll be darned if I put one more nickel towards a program that doesn't at least try. Ideas are what leaders are supposed to come up with, not excuses.

 

[CL82]

The football complex is already built and is state of the art. The basketball complex is under construction, The Rent is only 10 years old. Unless you think P needs a huge raise or players should start being paid for their services, I think UCONN's athletic finances will be fine for the foreseeable future. I think its comical that people stress about the finances of this very wealthy and well funded university.

That's okay I find your naivete cute. UConn is neither well funded nor wealthy by the standards by which universities are judged. Our endowment is woefully underfunded compared to our peer institutions and even more so when compared to the institutions to which we aspire to become peers. Yes Shankman/Burton are first class facilities. The Rent needs to be expanded if we are to be competitive we the big boys. We are building a bball practice facility, but the cieling at Gampel is falling apart. (BTW, I wasn't aware that started on the baseball facility. If you get a chance, send me link? I took a quick look and couldn't find it.) We need to expand Freitas. We need to improve Marrone. I'm sure others can come up with more. But even if that were it, for capital improvements in the near term, we'll need to keep them up and improve them as they age, or as the "state of the art", always a moving target, changes.

But capital improvements are not the entire nut when comes to athletics. You have feed and house, and theoretically make up for lost tuition for all the the scholarship athletes and not for just the marquee sports, but all the olympics for men and for women. Again, that's just an enormous amount of money.

Now take Rutgers, which in many ways is a peer institution with a similar academic standing. Assuming that they'll receive say $25 million a year from TV revenue while we, and I'll be generous here, make $4 million, that's $21 million a year that they will have access to that we do not. In five years that's over $100 million, even without considering the time value of money. You seriously believe that University of Connecticut has adequate resources to make up this number? How about when it doubles in a decade?

I don't think we can, or even should rely on the state to make up for the difference. The state of Connecticut is looking a tough time for the foreseeable future. It can't, and frankly should not, make up this difference.

Either we fix this shortfall, or we rollback our athletics dramatically. Those are the options. That's why money is important. Without access to capital, enterprises die. I personally don't see that outcome as comical.

 

[Rumrunner]

Or when Rutgers is making $40m a year 5 years from now. How is UConn to maintain a budget that will be light years behind its present day peers in 5 years? Some here think that $36m a year extra won't cause further separation of the haves??? And as for bb, it's only a matter of time before any program not affilated with the emerging power conferences will be tagged as mid major, no matter the historical pedigree.

 

[HuskyHawk]

Like it or not, UConn's future is linked to its football success and it's future. The NBE will provide a competitive conference and allow us to continue to grow in football. If anything was learned from losing out to Louisville it's that basketball matters little in realignment. Football success will get us to greener pastures, not basketball. I'm not saying we should be happy with our situation basketball wise but it is what it is for now.

That's a hard reality for a lot of the basketball folks on this board to realize. However it's the reality of college athletics.

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Not true at all. What we learned from Louisville is that when a conference has an internal power play going on, logic sometimes goes out the window. Do you think Louisville gets into the ACC if the basketball isn't perceived as on par with UConn? No chance. Similar basketball, both with strong brands and they had better football.

What else did we learn? That Big East basketball was more valuable than Big East football all along. The recent ACC moves just shored up ACC basketball, not football. Cuse, Pitt, ND and Louisville upgrade the ACC immensely in basketball.

I think there will be more changes. I think UConn is currently an outlier, with an athletic budget twice that of any other school not in a major conference. That situation won't last forever. That doesn't mean we'll be in with the big boys...what it means is that we may be back with some of our old conference mates, and won't be so alone in being left out.

 

[UCFBfan]

Not true at all. What we learned from Louisville is that when a conference has an internal power play going on, logic sometimes goes out the window. Do you think Louisville gets into the ACC if the basketball isn't perceived as on par with UConn? No chance. Similar basketball, both with strong brands and they had better football

Who supposedly blocked UConn and why? Football schools. UConn's perceived weak football program is what got Louisville picked. I would think that even if Louisville bball was not as strong they still would have been taken over UConn.


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