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Message: [QUOTE="champs99and04, post: 2726048, member: 488"] OK, I figured that was the case, I was just seeking clarification. What you say there is more in line with what I had heard previously. It's interesting you cite that particular anecdote, though, because I feel like branding has long been the school's biggest handicap. That's not to say it's necessarily anyone's fault, because it's an issue that long predated Herbst, but the athletic programs in general, for as successful as they are, have struggled to generate pull even on a regional level. The lone exception seems to be women's basketball - if you're a girl playing youth basketball, your first association with the game is often UConn. Same with their parents. A distant family member noticed my UConn sweatshirt at Easter and asked me what happened. I was a sentence or two into my reply before I realized he was talking about the women's game that had occurred a couple nights earlier. Stupid me, but that's a perfect illustration of my point - I think if the women's basketball program alone had been properly leveraged in conference realignment, it would have gone a long way. (And yes, I understand that, in a vacuum, women's basketball means 0% in those decisions, but from a macro standpoint, it's an opportunity to funnel eyeballs towards the school in a way that creates additional revenue indirectly.) Ultimately, I don't know enough about the situation to assess her legacy myself. I think some of the good she's done could be seen as false positives. I also think it's somewhat paradoxical to expect the president of any school to fully recognize the value of athletics in a holistic sense, which again brings us back to branding. You don't turn into Michigan overnight, but there's something to the idea that sentiment is what sustains the overarching mission of the institution. A lot of the time athletics and academics are separated when so many of the principles are interchangeable. In my opinion, you want to illuminate that commonality in a way that maximizes reach. Nobody bothers to differentiate between academics and athletics when it comes to Michigan because it hardly matters. I think what UConn has at times failed to realize is that a lot of their revenue comes either from alums or people who didn't attend the school at all. More importantly, they've failed to realize that building a fanbase and upping admission standards are not mutually exclusive. I can't imagine the transition from Connecticut to UConn has helped on this front and I wonder if the gains we've credited the current administration for aren't merely the returns of seeds planted by people who worked here 25 years ago. [/QUOTE]

Verification: First name of men's bb coach