Agreed. Athletic prominence and success plays a huge role in the success of a university (unless you're Yale, Harvard, MIT...) Just look at the application numbers UCONN gets now compared to prior to the success of the UCONN men's and women's hoops teams. It's astounding. Also, the academic standards are so much higher than before. Just look at the average SAT scores and the lower percentage of applicants admitted.
When I was in high school, you never saw one of the top ten graduating seniors going to UCONN, now about half do. Sad to say but although I was accepted to UCONN 20+ years ago, I doubt I'd get in today.....
I could have guessed that!
emoticon means just razzing you.
There is a certain credibility to the argument academics supports athletics and vice versa. UConn has, imo, benefitted from the athletic success of both the men's and women's bb programs. But there were factors outside of athletics that contributed to the academic success and I'm not certain athletic success should be given so much weight. Otherwise the SEC would be the poster child for academic achievement in the U.S.
One of the biggest fears our forum members (people who are invested in college sports) have is that the monies won't be there for coaches if the universities are on the outside looking in. And that is true to some extent. But I'm not so sure this matters as much as people are thinking. A lot of big time programs are paying big time monies for coaches without positive results. In fact the over whelming majority are. So all the monies gained by joining big time media deals is being pushed into facilities, coaching staffs, and ADs, without it translating into success. Its just another form of irrational exuberance.
And no one predicted that JC or GA would put UConn on the map at the time of their respective hires. They certainly didn't start out with the types of monies that people are conditioned to believe are necessary for athletic success.
Whatever net positives that are gained $$ wise from these contracts it can be argued that many, if not most universities, are mismanaging their handling of these $$. The BOT at a lot of universities have a lot of agendas that don't necessarily put academic success at the forefront of their decision making. I would love to observe an investigation of PSU that followed the money trail of the politicos and BOT's surrounding the University during all the Sandusky events. Won't happen. Curley, Schultz, Spanier and the deceased Paterno will take all the hits. They were guilty but probably there were just as many members of the BOT's and outside business interests/politicians who insisted on covering things up to protect their ability to make profits off of state tax $$$.
Continued athletic success can be beneficial to UConn's academic success. But that is not etched in stone.
