i'm all ears NelsonMuntz

[whaler11]

#3 would generate a greater overall net loss than #1, so go with #1, but don't treat it as a loss, but rather treat it as an investment that staves off greater losses.

Killing football also takes any conference improvement of the table permanently.

I'm not sure how one concludes that no football is better than AAC football. It's not like it's really any different than the last decade in the Big East.

All for the incremental improvement of playing Georgetown and Villanova instead of Memphis and Temple. Nothing like being the only public school in a league dominated by Catholic schools. What a great fit.

 

[itgoeslike]

Killing football also takes any conference improvement of the table permanently.

I'm not sure how one concludes that no football is better than AAC football. It's not like it's really any different than the last decade in the Big East.

All for the incremental improvement of playing Georgetown and Villanova instead of Memphis and Temple. Nothing like being the only public school in a league dominated by Catholic schools. What a great fit.

Agreed. Ditching football is not going to make us more attractive to other conferences (accept maybe NBE, A10, etc.). Playing in the AAC is not desirable (no matter what ESPN says), but it is our best option at the moment. Plus, you have to look at where UCONN want's to go. $5M (if it is $5M), is still a drop in the bucket if we want grow our research expenditures to $500M, grow our endowment to $1B, become a top 10 public research university, etc. I think our athletics and our national brand is an important piece of the puzzle and worth investing in.

 

[nelsonmuntz]

Whaler keeps making the same argument about how turning down the ESPN deal was a bad idea for the Big East. For 14 of the 17 members of the league in 2011, turning down ESPN has looked like genius.

 

[Adios]

We are not cowards.

Apparently, there's at least one here.

 

[nelsonmuntz]

Killing football also takes any conference improvement of the table permanently.

I'm not sure how one concludes that no football is better than AAC football. It's not like it's really any different than the last decade in the Big East.

All for the incremental improvement of playing Georgetown and Villanova instead of Memphis and Temple. Nothing like being the only public school in a league dominated by Catholic schools. What a great fit.

This is a prototype of a Whaler post.

1) Conference improvement is on life support as is, and the school will have to fund millions in losses to find out that neither the B1G or ACC want them in 2018.

2) The last decade of Big East football was pretty amazing. The AAC is not awful as a football conference, but whereas the Big East was winning about half its games against major conference opponents (just about every year but 2010), the AAC will win about 1/3.

3) The difference in fan interest between the middle and bottom of the Big East and the middle and bottom of the AAC is enormous. ECU, Houston, SMU and Tulsa are bad programs that play in front of crickets.

4) We are a northern school in a southern mid major league where we have not been in a league with any program more than 8 years. I would say we are a pretty awful fit in the AAC.

 

[CAHUSKY]

This is a prototype of a Whaler post.



3) The difference in fan interest between the middle and bottom of the Big East and the middle and bottom of the AAC is enormous. ECU, Houston, SMU and Tulsa are bad programs that play in front of crickets.

ECU averages 47,000 (would have been third in big east)
Houston averages 27,000
That's better than "crickets"
SMU and Tulsa suck. About 21,000 each

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Conference_USA_football_season#Attendance

 

[zls44]

For 14 of the 17 members of the league in 2011, turning down ESPN has looked like genius.

Especially the part where the Catholic BB schools are making less now than the ESPN offer, on a smaller network AND lose games against Louisville, UConn, Cincinnati, Memphis, Syracuse, Notre Dame and Pittsburgh. Freaking genius.

 

[whaler11]

This is a prototype of a Whaler post.

1) Conference improvement is on life support as is, and the school will have to fund millions in losses to find out that neither the B1G or ACC want them in 2018.

2) The last decade of Big East football was pretty amazing. The AAC is not awful as a football conference, but whereas the Big East was winning about half its games against major conference opponents (just about every year but 2010), the AAC will win about 1/3.

3) The difference in fan interest between the middle and bottom of the Big East and the middle and bottom of the AAC is enormous. ECU, Houston, SMU and Tulsa are bad programs that play in front of crickets.

4) We are a northern school in a southern mid major league where we have not been in a league with any program more than 8 years. I would say we are a pretty awful fit in the AAC.

Yes my post is reasonable and makes sense.

Only you Waylon could possibly try to argue that UConn is a better fit with 10 tiny private schools, 9 of them Catholic.

The Big East football conference was pretty amazing? There is one person who has that opinion. You.

You are just lost. ECU plays in front of crickets?

For some reason you are hard for playing Providence and Seton Hall. Since you'd clearly prefer not having a football program to having one why don't you just stop paying attention and commenting now?

 

[whaler11]

Whaler keeps making the same argument about how turning down the ESPN deal was a bad idea for the Big East. For 14 of the 17 members of the league in 2011, turning down ESPN has looked like genius.

LOL you truly are just dim and will lie to support any ridiculous argument.

You were the staunchest supporter of the hybrid on the planet besides the dopes in Providence.

Now your angle is that taking it to the market was the right strategy because somehow your strategy was for each school maximizing it's individual standing - not what was best for the league? That's worse than half the crap you come up with in the Cesspool.

 

[djct1999]

Agreed. Ditching football is not going to make us more attractive to other conferences (accept maybe NBE, A10, etc.). Playing in the AAC is not desirable (no matter what ESPN says), but it is our best option at the moment. Plus, you have to look at where UCONN want's to go. $5M (if it is $5M), is still a drop in the bucket if we want grow our research expenditures to $500M, grow our endowment to $1B, become a top 10 public research university, etc. I think our athletics and our national brand is an important piece of the puzzle and worth investing in.

If preserving our athletic brand was so important, where was the administration when we had an acc invite all but lockedd up? Don't think for one minute this was about competition on the field. It was politics. And like lobbyists in politics, Warde and Herbst should have been in Tallahassee buying FSUs vote by assuring them an alliance and giving FSU the sense of power they coveted. Secondly, eliminating the football program is a last resort. We can win every game and sell out the Rent all we want, and that may help or may not, but in the end it comes down to one thing: money generated(or in UConns case in 4 years, money lost) primarily from our tv contract. The current AAC tv contract is unsustainable long term and the longer UConn remains in that conference, the more likely we all will see a major deterioration in the atheltic program trickle down and that elite national brand be a thing of the past. It comes down to money, nothing else. This idea that UConn will be less desirable to a major conference if we don't have football is a joke. UConn would only do this if it becomes very clear that an invite isn't coming!!!

 

[pj]

2) The last decade of Big East football was pretty amazing. The AAC is not awful as a football conference, but whereas the Big East was winning about half its games against major conference opponents (just about every year but 2010), the AAC will win about 1/3.

So what? We don't care about the AAC, we care about UConn.

The top half of the AAC is basically identical to the Big East. The Big East had great parity and that meant it was hard to stand out. The league champion could go to the Fiesta Bowl at 8-4.

The top teams in the AAC will be just as good and will beat up on weaker conference mates. Instead of 6-6 as a median record for UConn, it will be 8-4. 10-2 will be common.

If we can continue to win half our games against BCS opponents, it won't matter that weaker teams in the AAC are losing 80% of their BCS games. At 10-2 and with BCS wins, we'll be at least as respected as we were in the Big East.

 

[freescooter]

keep in mind that nelson doesn't care about football and he loved the old Big East basketball which colors his view. But in a funny way, I have a different view. I actually think football could really benefit from this situation. Not convinced that it will but it could. pj is right on that the old Big East was incredibly well balanced. Even the bad teams weren't that bad and the good ones were good but not dominant. As a result the league was underrated since there wasn't a go to team every year like there is in most leagues. But it made for very competetive games. I'm not so sure that that will be the case in the new league. There are a couple of real bottom dwellers coming on board and at least one program that I sort of think will be over matched over the long term. So 8-4 ought to be achievable pretty regularly, 9-3, 10-2 type years possible. If that happens top 25 rankings ought to follow pretty regulary. No matter the league, it is incredibly difficult to leave 9-3, 10-2 type teams out of the rankings.

Nelson is right about basketball though. It absolutely will take a hit in my estimation. Because a weak league, and after the top 4 this is a painfully weak league, means non-conference scheduling must be tougher and that means that you can't put up gaudy win-loss records as easily, have to play more road games and neutral site games with tougher opponents...which leads to fewer wins. Lower RPI is almost inevitable when you replace 6-8 games a year with good top 10-100 teams with teams hovering around. It isn't 175-200. add in a few more non-conference losses as a result of the tougher schedule there and suddenly a 3 seed becomes a 6, and a 5 becomes a 9 and the road to the final four becomes much much tougher. It is almost inevitable. If we're going to make a serious run, we had best make it in the next year or two, because after than the slow steady slide begins. Just to be clear, I don't expect the bottom to drop out, although it could if we have a very bad year this year (but that isn't something I expect). I expect we'll see a slow steady decline similar to what Louisville went though after their last national championship and the emergence of power conferences.They were still a good team,regularly made the tourney, even made it to the Elite 8 once in the mid-90s, just nobody's national championship threat. It took Pitino and the Big East to really bring them all the way back.

 

[businesslawyer]

Don't think for one minute this was about competition on the field. It was politics. And like lobbyists in politics, Warde and Herbst should have been in Tallahassee buying FSUs vote by assuring them an alliance and giving FSU the sense of power they coveted.

Very strong language, given that it is 100% based on assumptions with zero actual evidence to back it up

 

[The Funster]

ECU averages 47,000 (would have been third in big east)
Houston averages 27,000
That's better than "crickets"
SMU and Tulsa suck. About 21,000 each

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Conference_USA_football_season#Attendance

I actually read Waylon's post even after he mentioned ECU. This is why Waylon cannot be taken seriously: all his arguments are inherently flawed.

 

[J187Money]

I actually read Waylon's post even after he mentioned ECU. This is why Waylon cannot be taken seriously: all his arguments are inherently flawed.

How is ECU in the Western part of South Carolina?

 

[geordi]

Nelson is right about basketball though. It absolutely will take a hit in my estimation. Because a weak league, and after the top 4 this is a painfully weak league, means non-conference scheduling must be tougher and that means that you can't put up gaudy win-loss records as easily, have to play more road games and neutral site games with tougher opponents...which leads to fewer wins. Lower RPI is almost inevitable when you replace 6-8 games a year with good top 10-100 teams with teams hovering around. It isn't 175-200. add in a few more non-conference losses as a result of the tougher schedule there and suddenly a 3 seed becomes a 6, and a 5 becomes a 9 and the road to the final four becomes much much tougher. It is almost inevitable. If we're going to make a serious run, we had best make it in the next year or two, because after than the slow steady slide begins. Just to be clear, I don't expect the bottom to drop out, although it could if we have a very bad year this year (but that isn't something I expect). I expect we'll see a slow steady decline similar to what Louisville went though after their last national championship and the emergence of power conferences.They were still a good team,regularly made the tourney, even made it to the Elite 8 once in the mid-90s, just nobody's national championship threat. It took Pitino and the Big East to really bring them all the way back.

Not totally right! Certainly we are going to have to beef up our OOC schedule. Everyone has been screaming for that for years. According to some, even when we were in the old Big East, we should have been scheduling Puke, UNC, Kansas, Texas, UCLA, Kentucky, Stanford, and Arizona every year instead of the locals...Hartford, Stony Brook, etc. Now we are going to have to schedule a few more than we did before (and still for some folks here it won't be enough).

But remember, in basketball, we will be playing each team twice. In the old Big East, we'd play Syracuse, Louisville, Georgetown, Notre Dame, Nova, Pitt, Marquette, and Cincy - usually once each. That was the top half of the 18 game schedule. We'd still have to play the dregs...Providence, Seton Hall, Rutgers, DePaul.

We're trading that for Temple, Memphis, Houston, and Cincinnati, but we'll play them twice. Same number of games against the top half of the league. Maybe a half click behind Cuse and LVille but not completely bad. We exchange dregs...Tulane for Providence, Tulsa for Seton Hall, etc. We're playing South Florida in either case and Central Florida beat us last year.

It's not as powerful a league as the Big East, but there has never been or likely never will be as powerful a league as the Big East. It's all we got right now for the moment. Still, winning cures everything.

 

[AZHuskiePop]

Not totally right! Certainly we are going to have to beef up our OOC schedule. Everyone has been screaming for that for years. According to some, even when we were in the old Big East, we should have been scheduling Puke, UNC, Kansas, Texas, UCLA, Kentucky, Stanford, and Arizona every year instead of the locals...Hartford, Stony Brook, etc. Now we are going to have to schedule a few more than we did before (and still for some folks here it won't be enough).

But remember, in basketball, we will be playing each team twice. In the old Big East, we'd play Syracuse, Louisville, Georgetown, Notre Dame, Nova, Pitt, Marquette, and Cincy - usually once each. That was the top half of the 18 game schedule. We'd still have to play the dregs...Providence, Seton Hall, Rutgers, DePaul.

We're trading that for Temple, Memphis, Houston, and Cincinnati, but we'll play them twice. Same number of games against the top half of the league. Maybe a half click behind Cuse and LVille but not completely bad. We exchange dregs...Tulane for Providence, Tulsa for Seton Hall, etc. We're playing South Florida in either case and Central Florida beat us last year.

It's not as powerful a league as the Big East, but there has never been or likely never will be as powerful a league as the Big East. It's all we got right now for the moment. Still, winning cures everything.

one more good team an its an excellent conference.
Whether Houston and or UCF step up(okay Whaler) or by adding VCU.
Houston is best positioned to get back to national prominence.
basketball will be damn good.


Sent from my Kindle Fire using Tapatalk 2

 

[itgoeslike]

This idea that UConn will be less desirable to a major conference if we don't have football is a joke.

I have to disagree. All major conferences that generate real TV money play football, and they would want to add a program that plays football. There may be an associate member that doesn't, but there isn't a single revenue sharing school that doesn't have a D1 football program.

 

[Marty Jackson]

Reading the football preview magazines is incredibly depressing. Next football season is going to feel like a wake. I do not see any way to compete in football with the revenue disadvantage that UConn currently has. Our next coach is a second tier assistant that has already been passed over for major jobs. In case you are wondering whether to drink the hemlock or not, I don't think we will even get another HC with a resume as strong as Pasqualoni's.

Ollie will hang around for a while, until he sees how hard it is to recruit in the big cities in the north without conference opponents in those same cities. He also isn't going to enjoy non-stop travel to the south to play mid-major programs that draw 100 fans. Then he will be the next USC coach or some other random Pac 12 program that doesn't care about basketball and the 500 fans that show up are baked out of their minds but the school can afford to pay $3MM a year for coaches to go .500. Auriemma is not going to fall on his sword. La Tech was once a powerhouse in women's hoop, and they just went 9-9 in the WAC. Auriemma will not ride the roller coaster to the bottom, because there is no track back up, just a brick wall. I think Auriemma takes a mid-major men's job before he coaches a mid-major UConn women's team back to mediocrity.

Conference affiliation is painful. The lack of revenue is fatal.

it's posts like this that suggest you add zero value to this board.
in fact, I would actually say your comments are a drain and a complete waste of time...

 

[MilliniumPrince]

How is ECU in the Western part of South Carolina?

Because ECU is located in Greenville, NC (eastern NC), but the geographically challenged often as think it is located in Greenville, SC....which is western SC.

For what it is worth, a night game at ECU is great time!

 

[J187Money]

Because ECU is located in Greenville, NC (eastern NC), but the geographically challenged often as think it is located in Greenville, SC....which is western SC.

For what it is worth, a night game at ECU is great time!

Lol. That answers that. When i typed it in google maps SC came up first and I was too lazy to cross reference.

 

[mikejays]

Lol. That answers that. When i typed it in google maps SC came up first and I was too lazy to cross reference.

Reminds of the story when, as the new NC State coach, Jim Valvano went to Greenville to speak at an alumni event. No one showed. Actually everyone showed, but Jimmy V. He was in the wrong Greenville.

 

[junglehusky]

Very strong language, given that it is 100% based on assumptions with zero actual evidence to back it up

When has a lack of evidence ever stopped that line of attack?

 

[nelsonmuntz]

ECU averages 47,000 (would have been third in big east)
Houston averages 27,000
That's better than "crickets"
SMU and Tulsa suck. About 21,000 each

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Conference_USA_football_season#Attendance

I meant basketball for #3 which I think everyone else figured out, but that was a good "gotcha" post on your part.

 

[nelsonmuntz]

So what? We don't care about the AAC, we care about UConn.

The top half of the AAC is basically identical to the Big East. The Big East had great parity and that meant it was hard to stand out. The league champion could go to the Fiesta Bowl at 8-4.

The top teams in the AAC will be just as good and will beat up on weaker conference mates. Instead of 6-6 as a median record for UConn, it will be 8-4. 10-2 will be common.

If we can continue to win half our games against BCS opponents, it won't matter that weaker teams in the AAC are losing 80% of their BCS games. At 10-2 and with BCS wins, we'll be at least as respected as we were in the Big East.

Of course we care about the AAC, because that is our schedule. If we are playing nobodies that suck and are located 1,000+ miles away, attendance is going to suffer.