I think Geno is favors ACC probably a little better league, especially with Louisville and ND. I also believes Geno has UVA ties.
Geno could have easily said bad football hires, years or negative press surrounding the men's team. The litigation was a safer alternative.
My take on the law suit as a Connecticut resident and taxpayer, at the was it was absolutely necessary. The taxpayers of Connecticut just spent 100's of millions to upgrade from FCS to FSB status. With future games with Miami,VT,and regional rival BC. The future status of the league was unknown.,and it possibly could have completly disintegrated. Some attribute the suit or fear of future litigation ,enabled the Big East to maintain BCS status which attracted Louisville ,Cinn, and USF.
The alternative would be a quasi independent status or a return to FCS.
Hindsight may be 20/20 but without a fair accessment of the alternate outcomes all your doing is speculating.
In my mind the real problem was the mindset of the University leadership who learned nothing from the brush with near death. Especially when Perkins was warning everyone about the future roll of football in determining conference stature.
I completely disagree that the lawsuit was necessary. The concept that CT taxpayers had been harmed by the construction of Rentschler field and the investment in the upgrade to 1-A football with facilities and infrastructure on campus - is foolish.
I'm no lawyer, but I ask myself - what was the purpose of filing those lawsuits? The lawsuits had zero effect on keeping the Big East conference together - it was the uncertainty around maintaining BCS status, that kept the conference together - if the remaing football schools in 2002-2003 after Miami, VT left had been given a guarantee that they would maintain BCS status - they would have split the conference then. UCONN would have had a choice - go with and stay with the BCS - or stop the upgrade.
edit: just re-read this - yeah, I re-read my posts - admit it - you do too. but this isn't correct, by the time the lawsuits were in place - everything about the upgrade was already complete. We had the stadium, we had donors in place and money to build on campus facilities. The only danger UCONN faced - was losing out on BCS money - that we had not even tasted yet - and wouldn't until 2005!!!
We were suing, for damages, when the only real danger we faced - was losing out on football revenue from the BCS - that we had not yet even collected.
Very few people, and Lew Perkins (and a few others, inicluding me, and I have no influence over anything, understood this - while very powerful personalities at UCONN, were all for the lawsuit)
That was the real damage and risk - we were in no man's land with regards to BCS status - we weren't supposed to join the BCS until 2005. Had the Big East split then and maintained the BCS status, we would have had to convince the football schools to maintain their promise to include us. When the leadership of Syracuse, Pitt, BC, Rutgers, WVU et.al - realized that they could not get a promise to maintain BCS status if they separated from the BIg EAst - there was no danger of a split....but what happened, is every single one of the schools - started then - to look elsewhere for a conference home as TV contracts evolved - other than UCONN under new AD - Hathaway.
By 2012 - every single one of those schools, had found a new home. Blumenthal made himself a lot of publicity, made a few million dollars in a lawsuit, and got eaten for lunch eventually by Shalala. The leadership of the other schools were happy to let it happen and ride in the background - for simple spite and ego, I think - no way would the leadership of Syracuse, Pitt, WVU allowed those suits to happen in their own states, naming all the people that were named.
That's it - won't write any more about it. IT's all there in the history to read.
What we do now, is make sure that everybody knows what happened, learns from it, and when the next time a vote happens that would affect change in the intercollegiate world - that we have accumulated the votes that would help us.