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Football Options

Guapo said:
To be fair, I think it's a bit more nuanced than "we played and beat West Virginia, once."

UConn, and it's fan base, never behaved or cared (as a collective, obviously I know there are die hard UConn football fans out there and I feel bad for them) as a power conference football school.

It's more than just wins and loses, it's culture.

Honestly, this isn't an insult to UConn fans. There's a lot about college football culture that is bad a toxic.

We do behave and care like a power college basketball school.
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Right, it would probably start winning a BCS Conference twice in four years before the whole league was turned on it's head.

It's bad enough there's enough BC, Cuse and national media want to discredit our football but we were right there with them, beating them, and filling the Rent before the carpet was pulled out from beneath us.
 
businesslawyer said:
Based on what? We filled a 40k seat stadium, made a heck of a lot of noise and intimidated opponents. Given the overall quality and location of the five bowls we played in, we did fine bringing people. Yes, the Fiesta Bowl didn't work well but that was for a whole host of reasons. We brought more people than organizers hoped for to crappy places like Detroit and Charlotte and Toronto (I know -- Toronto is not a crappy place, or anything near it, but for college football in January ....). We were nowhere near being Michigan or Alabama. But we were absolutely at a comfortable level within the power conferences as a whole. But not shockingly, we couldn't sustain it when we got thrown out. I'd like to see UVA or Illinois or Oregon State try it.
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I’m not saying it’s fair, and what the program accomplished in as short of a time as it did was nothing short of remarkable, however we did not have the luxury of being grandfathered in as some of these other schools did.

It is what it is and we made the right choice.

I actually think UConn does have a future as an independent and I’m certainly interested to see how that turns out.

I’ll be rooting for them hard, just like I do all UConn teams.
 
fleudslipcon said:
The momentum was just beginning to develop for football when the bottom dropped out. A few more years of success after the BCS bid and the conversation would be different now.

We’ve had three bad men’s bb seasons and look what has happened to attendance.

The one thing that hurts the region for football is the lack of football programs at the youth level in NY and New England. But people in those regions love watching the sport every bit as much as elsewhere in the country. They just needed the product to be better than what has happened these past six years.
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It makes sense to me that sports participation drives sports viewership. In other words, if more kids play football, more kids and adults will watch football. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen studies that verify this intuitive claim. For that reason, although winning seasons would put some fans back in PAWS ARF, I think that football will only decline in popularity in CT over time. As the evidence about the health risks of children playing football continues to mount, I envision more and more parents keeping their kids away from football in a state like CT. So I agree with your point about the lack of youth programs in New England and New York hurting football in the region, and I only see youth participation deceasing more over time.
 
Re:templefan1


1. Agree with you completely that our position as an independent is not as good as that of ND, BYU, or the service academies for the reasons you state. With that said, it is better than just about any other non-P5 school. Having SNY is huge. Being able to offer travel games with our MBB and WBB teams to secure FB scheduling is also a unique asset. And the ability to potentially offer a game in NYC as part of a larger deal is also something most non-P5s can’t offer.

2. Lack of bowl access is the least of our problems after the last two seasons we’ve had.

3. Re: scheduling P5s, I doubt being independent makes us any less attractive than we would be in the AAC. We’d offer value in two ways: (1) package deals involving MBB and WBB home-and-homes, and (2) being willing to take 2-for-1s (with payouts). I understand that we aren’t getting payouts for home-and-homes.

4. Re: SNY, they’re a cable network. They are looking for points of leverage with cable companies. They don’t need most people to watch, they just need enough people who will go nuts if their cable company tries to cut SNY from the lineup. UConn football fits that bill. As you point out, if the finances don’t work out, UConn may have to shut down football, so buying “cheap” would be short-sighted on the part of SNY. I sincerely hope the school has already worked something out here. If SNY isn’t interested or isn’t wiling to offer much, independence starts to look less good for sure.

5. It will not take much for us to be better off financially with Fox BB money plus SNY. The BE also figures to take in considerably more than the AAC in NCAA basketball tournament unit $$$ going forward, which offsets the CFP amount in the AAC.

6. We aren’t Notre Dame in terms of trying to schedule P5s, but we aren’t Liberty or New Mexico State either. (Most P5 fanbases can identify our mascot.). We’d only need to use basketball package deals to line up two or so football games a year. The rest I’d try to get done with football-only 2-for-1s. You bring up a good point regarding crowding out on basketball schedules, but we’ll have room enough to offer a few away games a year as part of multi-sport home-and-homes.

I’ll freely concede that independence doesn’t offer guaranteed success for us to turn things around. It’s risky and we could screw it up. You certainly highlight some of the challenges. My preference for independence has more to do with (a) how little value the AAC offers us in terms of revenue and fan interest, and (b) how difficult it would be to try to pull a turnaround in a conference against a lot of good teams that are spending way beyond their athletic revenues to chase the P5 dream. We don’t have the pockets for that arms race at the moment - particularly given where the team currently is - so we need to try something different that leverages our strengths.
 
Guapo said:
To be fair, I think it's a bit more nuanced than "we played and beat West Virginia, once."

UConn, and it's fan base, never behaved or cared (as a collective, obviously I know there are die hard UConn football fans out there and I feel bad for them) as a power conference football school.

It's more than just wins and loses, it's culture.

Honestly, this isn't an insult to UConn fans. There's a lot about college football culture that is bad a toxic.

We do behave and care like a power college basketball school.
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There are 65 schools deemed P5 schools.

We regularly beat them - Big 12, Big Ten, Notre Dame, ACC, Big East.

There’s no nuance needed - we played with those schools, successfully.
 
KSC94 said:
They'll just stay with 11 when they can't get Army/Boise/BYU
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Maybe we can go back Temple-style in time, since we'd still be the only school that adds value.
 
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bendm said:
no, we aren't a P5 level school for football. never were, never could, never will be.

but we can actually claim to be in a P6 basketball conference now. trying to say that with a straight face in the AAC, aka the G5 dregs, was embarrassing.
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Total bull. We were beating solid teams not long ago. Beat a ranked Houston 4 years ago.

Short memories? So excited about the Big East?
 
zmart said:
The following schools could be interested in joining a league in the next few years:

UConn
UMASS
Temple
Army
Buffalo
Cincinnati
Navy
Marshall
Liberty
Old Dominion
East Carolina
Coastal Carolina
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Basketball will dominate this league!!
 
“There is also a plan being discussed that UConn and UMass become part of the Eastern Division of Conference USA, which would then split apart and become its league (9 teams) and the West would also be a 9 team conference by going after schools such as BYU and New Mexico State in football only.”

Hahahaha, just kidding apparently about this being a well-thought-out plan to leverage our strengths as a football independent!

If there’s any truth to this hysterically bad CUSA idea, there is definitely no plan for football at the moment. And if the AD’s office thinks this beats going independent, football is screwed.
 
VAHuskyFan said:
“There is also a plan being discussed that UConn and UMass become part of the Eastern Division of Conference USA, which would then split apart and become its league (9 teams) and the West would also be a 9 team conference by going after schools such as BYU and New Mexico State in football only.”

Hahahaha, just kidding apparently about this being a well-thought-out plan to leverage our strengths as a football independent!

If there’s any truth to this hysterically bad CUSA idea, there is definitely no plan for football at the moment. And if the AD’s office thinks this beats going independent, football is screwed.
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There is no plan for football.

If there is a plan it's a much better secret than moving to the NBE.
 
VAHuskyFan said:
“There is also a plan being discussed that UConn and UMass become part of the Eastern Division of Conference USA, which would then split apart and become its league (9 teams) and the West would also be a 9 team conference by going after schools such as BYU and New Mexico State in football only.”

Hahahaha, just kidding apparently about this being a well-thought-out plan to leverage our strengths as a football independent!

If there’s any truth to this hysterically bad CUSA idea, there is definitely no plan for football at the moment. And if the AD’s office thinks this beats going independent, football is screwed.
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I'm always naive enough to think we have a plan when things don't make much sense. And we never do.
 
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superjohn said:
Geezus, that jackwagon should just stick to reviewing pizza. That's some kind of journalism, a bunch of tweets from teenagers and YouTube clips.
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That teenager is a UConn football fan who works for Barstool. He does their general CFB stuff. He compiled the blog in this case.
 
adimeback.com

Meghan Goes Full Lawyer on the Big East Contract - A Dime Back

It’s official! The Board of Trustees has voted and UConn has signed the contract to join the Big East. I’ve done a quick initial perusal of the agreement, and here are the highlights: UConn will pay $3.5M to join the Big East. The university will not be entitled to any tournament shares earned...
adimeback.com adimeback.com
 


HT @Guapo in another thread. In this thread someone brings up that, unless they add another team, the AAC would have to play 10 league games to keep a Conference Championship Game. No way they sign on to that. So...either keep UConn with some careful negotiations or welcome Old Dominion or Buffalo for all sports...
 
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In case anyone missed my post on the football board talked with Brett McMurphy on my podcast about the future of UConn Football and its landing options. Check it out:
 
huskymedic said:
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LOL. That's just spite. He's so dumb he probably doesn't realize they need 12 teams or else they're going to need a 10 game conference.

They ain't getting BYU or Army. So (A) add a lower-upside program, (B) play 10 conference games and hope you don't lose Navy, or (C) keep UConn and work out something in our "main sport."

Knowing Aresco, they'll do (A).
 
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Aresco can go Spartacus himself. SNY will get us on TV in the biggest media market in the country and enable syndication for football. He will look like a bigger idiot than usual when UConn is playing on SNY at noon on a Saturday in October and there isn't a single AAC game on live television in the New York market that day.
 
nelsonmuntz said:
Aresco can go Spartacus himself. SNY will get us on TV in the biggest media market in the country and enable syndication for football. He will look like a bigger idiot than usual when UConn is playing on SNY at noon on a Saturday in October and there isn't a single AAC game on live television in the New York market that day.
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Especially when that game is vs Iowa State, Texas Tech, or Baylor.
 
If Fox could get us some B12 or BiG games
Indy could turn out to be interesting
Also Aresco is a football commissioner first he almost destroyed basketball in the AAC.
We also received little compensation in the media contract for men’s basketball and zero. for women’s. Even though UConn WBB games were among the highest ratings received by the conference.
If he wants to throw us out of his football conference I would think that s detrimental to his exit fee negotiation.
This could get interesting.
 
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