If you could travel back in time and give one piece of advice to a UConn AD regarding Conference Realignment, when and what?

[Zerostatic]

If you could travel back in time and give one piece of advice to a UConn AD regarding Conference Realignment, what year would you travel to and what would you tell them to do?

 

[Drew]

Hire Dave Clawson, James Franklin or Joe Moorhead instead of Paul P in 2011

Spend way more money on the football team than we did. Like, WAY more. 2-3x.

 

[Dream Jobbed 2.0]

Whoever was the AD in the 1950s:

INVEST IN BIGTIME FOOTBALL

 

[gioff2323]

Anyone but Hathaway

 

[RioDog]

Change the paradigm to fund football to be a top shelf program, not nickel-and-dime it to be just good enough to protect hoops.

 

[TGW93]

Sign the Notre Dame deal….

 

[ZooCougar]

Don’t sue anyone.

Sign the Notre Dame deal.

 

[WrenchFan69]

Hire Dave Clawson, James Franklin or Joe Moorhead instead of Paul P in 2011

Spend way more money on the football team than we did. Like, WAY more. 2-3x.

Mike Leach

 

[noeynox]

He was during the Diaco hiring timeline.

 

[Kolumbo]

I'll go there. Let's rethink these 2 items

 

[RioDog]

I'll go there. Let's rethink these 2 items

View attachment 106351 this debate is

While I know this debate is a quagmire, I like this image because I think it's emblematic of the upside-down paradigm I mentioned above. Top notch hoops arena on campus. Built a football arena on the cheap 30 miles from campus.

 

[CL82]

"Don't hire a football coach because he has nice hair."

 

[JohnFSilver]

Since I was around and did a lot Of work and talk, on and off record, on this subject.

No. 1 is to be proactive and want to leave big east.

UConn under Hathaway had a “keep the Big East together view.” I shared the view.

That meant, if the acc ever contacted them about adding UConn to acc, UConn in 2008 would have rebuffed their attempts.

Hathaway and UConn should have come up with solutions to this and not “put football in its place and stuck head in the sand.”

Even today, though,UConn programs are more united than ever, the football team has to genuflectct to the hoops teams. It isn't nearly as bad as it once was, might not even be a problem anymore.

But the inability of Hathaway and those 3 programs to have a united front hurt them IMO market the university (they had, at one time, 3 different cultures, fan bases and even support staff).

I really think that the 2025 UConn operates along similar fanbases. I don't think we will see UConn men’s basketball “people” rooting for the women and football team to lose and vice versa.

I am not sure how many football, men’s basketball and women’s basketball “people” are still around.

One sentence sum up?

Better align key stakeholders as to UConn’s FBS goals, status, expectations and reasons for going FBS. It wasnta united front until then Huskies were in the AAC.

 

[Patman]

Don’t sue anyone.

Sign the Notre Dame deal.

why the hell are you people so obsessive over a disastrous Notre Dame deal. I've never understood such dramatic desire to harm yourself.

the worst thing of that deal was it went against the 1-1 deals we were achieving at the time... and all of the sudden we want a 0-6-1 deal.

 

[Patman]

Did you know there's a lot of other teams that play football? It was wholly unnecessary and made us look like simps. Which... honestly is correct for a lot of people involved.

We scheduled 1-1 against michigan, you do realize that?

 

[Duncan Idaho]

I'll go there. Let's rethink these 2 items

View attachment 106351

Not their call , had the perfect spot picked out behind Mansfield Supply. Lack of political will, killed it.

 

[nelsonmuntz]

I would go back in time to the 1980s, and implement a plan to move the entire Storrs campus to Hartford by 2010. Investing billions over the last few decades into a campus in the woods of eastern Connecticut that the locals do not even want there while also investing billions into a small city like Hartford was wasted investment dollars. If UConn was in the state capital, 1) it would be higher ranked academically, 2) it would be a more desirable conference partner, 3) Hartford would be a much nicer city, and 4) the state of Connecticut would have saved billions over the last 35 years.

I have been told that this was actually discussed in the late 80's and early 90's among state legislators, but after some rough budget cycles, the will to make a big change never developed.

 

[cellocgg]

I would go back in time to the 1980s, and implement a plan to move the entire Storrs campus to Hartford by 2010. Investing billions over the last few decades into a campus in the woods of eastern Connecticut that the locals do not even want there while also investing billions into a small city like Hartford was wasted investment dollars. If UConn was in the state capital, 1) it would be higher ranked academically, 2) it would be a more desirable conference partner, 3) Hartford would be a much nicer city, and 4) the state of Connecticut would have saved billions over the last 35 years.

I have been told that this was actually discussed in the late 80's and early 90's among state legislators, but after some rough budget cycles, the will to make a big change never developed.

I would actually move UConn to Stamford so we could be in the B1G over Rutgers

 

[nelsonmuntz]

I would actually move UConn to Stamford so we could be in the B1G over Rutgers

That would have been fun, but it was not remotely realistic financially or politically. Where would you put a major university in Stamford? The downtown is packed, and the northern half of Stamford is traditional Fairfield County, with no avenue to get enough land to build a university. Hartford, on the other hand, had lots of dead land and dozens of empty buildings that could be purchased for the back taxes, and the writing was on the wall in the 90's for the decline of a small northern city that was not on the ocean. One could argue that Hartford has outperformed expectations from 30 years ago.

Moving the university to Hartford over time, then making Storrs a branch and shutting down or moving ECSU to Storrs would have been a smart, if very long-term move in the early 90's. That school would have been a much more attractive expansion candidate by the early 2000's, even if nothing else had changed. Beyond just sports, the rural campus that is difficult to get to is not exactly an advantage in a much more highly competitive higher education industry of the future.

 

[Zerostatic]

Interesting responses. As a UConn alum I shudder at all the moving campus suggestions. Hartford, Stamford, Yuck! I made too many memories in Storrs to ever entertain that idea.

I like the suggestions about traveling back to the 1950's and suggesting that we invest heavily in football. At that time it would've been so affordable and we would've definitely had become a football power. However the butterfly effect that this would have had worries me. I feel like something would have gone differently in the basketball realm where our dominance in women's and men's basketball would not have played out.

I think simply going back to the 2007 season when we first tasted football success under Randy Edsall and were making bowl games and getting ranked and tell the AD what was going to happen down the road to the Big East and about the whole P2 and P4 dynamic could have changed things big time. I would've suggested approaching the big 10 with some crazy multi-year 0 share offer that was too good to refuse to get membership. If that didn't work, I would've gotten out ahead of the Big East exodus and offered another absurdly generous reduced share pitch to the ACC.

 

[KryHavok]

That would have been fun, but it was not remotely realistic financially or politically. Where would you put a major university in Stamford? The downtown is packed, and the northern half of Stamford is traditional Fairfield County, with no avenue to get enough land to build a university. Hartford, on the other hand, had lots of dead land and dozens of empty buildings that could be purchased for the back taxes, and the writing was on the wall in the 90's for the decline of a small northern city that was not on the ocean. One could argue that Hartford has outperformed expectations from 30 years ago.

Moving the university to Hartford over time, then making Storrs a branch and shutting down or moving ECSU to Storrs would have been a smart, if very long-term move in the early 90's. That school would have been a much more attractive expansion candidate by the early 2000's, even if nothing else had changed. Beyond just sports, the rural campus that is difficult to get to is not exactly an advantage in a much more highly competitive higher education industry of the future.

I understand your point and see some logic in it. Storrs is a nice quiet area. At the uni where I did my undergrad, some putz said all there was to do at UConn was cow tipping. Like what?!!? Still, that idiotic sentiment gives way to the thought that UConn main campus is located nowhere. When I went to UConn for my doctorate, I was commuting and it took a lot of backroads to get there. That said, if they want to expand, the land is there. Now had they opted to expand in Hartford, well, it would be located more closely to highways and be a shorter trot to Bradley International...major uni near a (mid)major city...and closer to its medical school campus, kinda begins to make a stronger case for cough cough AAU status? OK, maybe not, but gotta have dreams.