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Message: [QUOTE="upstater, post: 1995487, member: 153"] You're missing a whole slew of things. UConn's so-called place has always been about its ability to draw people to men's and women's basketball games, and win national championships in both. That is one factor. The second factor is that UConn is the state's athletic brand since there is no pro team in the state, and when it comes to cable boxes, UConn is in a very wealthy state with the highest tier 3 sports monthly premiums in the entire country. Couple that with undivided access to 3.6 million residents (i.e. there is no other D1 school in the state), and you have a much more lucrative P5 option than those who were somehow grandfathered in but didn't deserve it, and who blackballed us (BC), and of course there's the fact that UConn was twice the ACC's top option to join. So UConn not landing in the P5 is not a matter of an assessment of UConn's "place," as you put it, but rather a collection of circumstances (esp. BC's blackballing). The reasons UConn isn't in the B1G or B12 are obvious. It doesn't fit into the B12, and it doesn't have the credentials (AAU) that the B1G pushes for in most cases. The stumbling block has always been the jealousy of our former rivals. Second, Edsall had a really successful run at UConn. The school quickly surpassed our local rivals like Pitt and Syracuse while in the Big East. It sent more players to the NFL than most P5 schools, and was the top producer for the BE, even over schools like West Virginia and Louisville. People were actually quite happy here to win the conference, or to go to a southern bowl and beat a good SEC team thoroughly, or to even just go to the Fiesta Bowl. This is a good record, especially when you consider Edsall created this from scratch, AND that it is better than what most of the P5 schools do. No one here should have expectations beyond that. The biggest reason why the BE isn't so attractive though is that the money isn't better (not when you factor in football playoff money) and the BE schools are buried on Fox where no one ever watches. So far, UConn basketball has been shown on ESPN/CBS 13-16 times a year for the last 4 years, drawing more eyeballs than all the BE schools. [/QUOTE]

Verification: First name of men's bb coach

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