OK. Understood.
I just get annoyed when I think that people believe that a BC, Maryland, Syracuse, Pitt, RU etc. are somehow better than UCONN and thats why they are in the ACC or B10.
Decision was almost entirely all football and demographics related and NOT related to academic or on field excellence/ success. UCONN has been TOP 20-25 Public University for some time now with sports excellence in MANY areas. If the decision was based on sports or academics, UCONN would have been in.
The schools that made it in to ACC/B10 were NOTHING MORE THAN 1000% LUCKY!
There's a reason for it. Would be a fun project to figure out how and why things have been arranged the way they are. Good primary source document project for my HS students. There's a reason that I do not think of UConn as a "power 5 school". (of course they are WCBB)
School population is less than UMD but not by much, about the same as UNC, appreciably more than Duke.
I understand the shuffling around the last few years with the power 5. I think this thinking happened a while ago.
The ACC was formed in 1953, the Big 10 1896. Forgot to echo your football, football, football thoughts. 100%.
Apparently UConn played football in the Yankee Conference from 1946-1996. That's 50 years. That's how dumb-clucks like me think of UConn in that ilk. So I think I see some of the dynamics of how things came about. The greatest basketball conference bar none, no debate, forever and ever was the Big East of the late 70's and 80's. Every game was WWIII. Historically, did it hurt UConn's chances of ever being in what we think of as a "power 5", to play basketball in the Big East back in the day? Some of those schools were DIII in football- Georgetown for one. Villanova gave up football for a while. Long story short, without living in CT, did UConn have a real chance to build up that football infrastructure historically? How long, disregarding perceptions and what people may think, does it take to build up football like that? Some ramblings...