Reply to thread

Message: [QUOTE="VAHuskyFan, post: 3194834, member: 1585"] 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. [/QUOTE]

Verification: First name of men's bb coach