I truly don't know.
This is an especially bad spot for UConn. The last two moves in realignment were murderous - the Big Ten expansion that ultimately caused Big East to implode and then the ACC's grant of rights. We lost our conference and then had the status quo frozen into place.
Most of the schools in the AAC and MWC are already used to not making any money and their athletic departments are scaled to size. We have a huge athletic department that will see dramatic increases in costs intersecting with dramatic decreases in revenue.
Eventually, we either get out or scale back.
Long-term, anyone not in the P5 is done. In a very short period of time, they've taken all of the television money, all of the bowls, most of the playoff money and are starting to build their own rules and enforcement. Anyone who thinks they won't eventually come for the hoop tourney cash isn't paying attention.
See, this is where I disagree, and I know I"ve asked before why you are so sure about this.
Alright, without a doubt 100% there is a HUGE gap in revenue streams annually going forward b/w the schools that make up the Pac12, SEC, Big 12, Big 10 and ACC as compared to the AAC, and the rest. The independants are plugging along with no changes really, except it getting harder to schedule for BYU, while Notre Dame jumped hosts from the now dead Big East, to the ACC. Can only hope that parasite kills them too......but I digress.
Huge gap - moving forward - no doubt.
But how does that affect UCONN? How much are we really losing? In television revenue dollars, we are making about a $1mill less per year - by my last reading/research - than we got out of the Big East contract. That's not a huge $ amount in the grand scheme. We are losing the share of the BCS we had - but the BCS no longer exists, and we only had that for 8 years of our entire existence.
I honestly don't know the numbers, no reason I should, but I don't see a huge change in the operating budget of the athletic department going forward. We will need to move tickets and expand the stadium, for real hard cash flow, but any athletic department needs that and it's about time we got serious about it.
So I think we won't have piles of cash to spend like schools in other conferences, but it's not like we're losing all this money we had. We never had any of it, and have gotten this far.
The thing that is the real problem, I see it, being outside the P5, is that we cannot afford to be bottom feeders and basement dwellers in the money maker sports. With winningn program, in men's, women's hoops and football, I think we're going to not just survive, but continue to thrive.
Without winning though, outside the P5, losing for an extended period of time, at UCONN, it will be a quick drop from thrive - to not being alive - skipping just surviving quickly. THere is no security blanket in revenue to come in, if you've got empty sports arenas and nothing to drive fund raising.
A school like Wake, or Rutgers, or any other, can plug along as a basement dweller and never be concerned. Not UCONN.
P---ssies anyway.
We'll do it, and we'll win more titles.
