Irish fan on why UConn belongs in the ACC

[MSNDfan]

Every ND fan should be required to add this to their sig. It really helps in understanding where they are coming from.

Maybe so. There is no trust for the Big Ten from the ND camp. The last thing we want is to be at the mercy of the Big Ten, to have the Big Ten wielding any power over us.

 

[kibblesnbits]

Maybe so. There is no trust for the Big Ten from the ND camp. The last thing we want is to be at the mercy of the Big Ten, to have the Big Ten wielding any power over us.

Yet we should trust the ACC? My hope is that the ACC gets their way and the Big 10 says, "Hey that 15th member idea is a good one. Hello, Susan? Jim Delany. Let's talk."

 

[MSNDfan]

Ok. Notre Dame - you go first. You join the ACC first.

We already have. Including 5 football games a year. The ACC, not our AD, schedules those games for us.

We have to play each full member of ACC football at least once every 3 years. So if UConn joins the ACC, we will play you in football every 3rd year.

 

[SixRings]

That's garbage and anybody with sense knows it. In the ACC, your basketball with Syracuse would burn brighter than ever. Your games with Duke and North Carolina would quickly become almost as hot. Your games with us would intensify.

And then there is BC in all sports. The only New England rivalry would get red hot. It would matter down in your bones.

You have no idea how much animosity exists here towards the ACC and its members.
There is very little question that UConn is working for and will hopefully receive an invitation to the AAU and Big Ten. Again, I hope and trust that Herbst is a good poker player because many feel that we need the ACC to be interested in UConn for a Big Ten invite. BC, really? What kind of rivalry could exist when they could give a crap about athletics?
Unfortunately, most everything you have said makes sense, but a few years ago. The ACC should have picked UConn. We could have had a great conference. But we were blocked, sold out and stabbed in the back multiple times. So screw the ACC.
Really, this is the best thing that has happened to UConn. We are now heading in a better direction that is building the school and state with more research and science than ever before. As a resident and taxpayer I have never liked UConn as much as I do now.

 

[Seaa Blue]

We already have. Including 5 football games a year. The ACC, not our AD, schedules those games for us.

We have to play each full member of ACC football at least once every 3 years. So if UConn joins the ACC, we will play you in football every 3rd year.

Rutgers understands the principle well. "Sure we'll play you... At Met Life."

 

[RegisteredUconn]

From BE days, I have had respect for UConn fans. I may not have liked Calhoun, but I respected Huskies fans and what Calhoun accomplished. I also respected what Edsall did at a place few thought could ever win a bowl, any bowl.

From the selfish view, UConn in the ACC can be very good for ND. Same on your side. There is no football team you can play in Yankee Stadium that will have the impact of playing ND. And other than Syracuse or Duke and maybe North Carolina, there is no basketball team you can play in MSG that can have the impact of playing ND.

So why did the ACC take Louisville first? Immediate impact of football. It is that simple. Louisville has a brand new on campus 55,000 seat stadium. That and having won 3 different BCS bowls over the decades with 3 different coaches, including two within a decade, all but did the trick. Then there is football recruiting. UConn brings nobody a football recruiting hotbed. KY high school football is nothing compared to even AL but its much better than any New England state or NY. And KY borders OH, which is not even GA in football recruiting, and may no longer be better than NC, but still OH produces a lot of talent, which now is in the ACC's backyard.


Football does drive the bus. And UConn came up short in that to Louisville. It wasn't BC keeping UConn out - BC will never have that power. It wasn't Florida State and Clemson being unreasonably biased against UConn. It was looking at those football issues and agreeing they took precedence.

But what the ACC needed to replace hapless Maryland (South Rutgers, we can call it, in terms of finances and football support) is not the same thing the ACC wants and most needs for number 16.

Long term, the best thing for UConn is to be in the ACC. And the best thing for the ACC is to have UConn.

I could have agreed with you had the ACC taken a strategic approach to realignment. They didn't. They bounced from opportunity to opportunity like a kid running the aisles of Toys R Us. Had the ACC expanded right up the Atlantic coast with Rutgers, UConn, and BC as a first move in 2003 they would have created a solid base on which to build. They would have had the population of the northeast megalopolis to challenge the SEC in South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. They would have captured the strategic schools in New Jersey, Connecticut, and Massachusetts to prevent the Big Ten from expanding eastward. Who knows, maybe even Penn State could have been lured away from the mid-west.

The idea that UConn was ignored because we would always be available was ludicrously short-sighted. You know who was always going to be there? Miami, that's who. Syracuse, that's who. The thing that scares me about the ACC is they lack vision, they lack leadership, and they will likely fail to be anything more than an afterthought.

 

[MSNDfan]

Rutgers understands the principle well. "Sure we'll play you... At Met Life."

So you are a Rutgers fan? Or at least one who thinks like a Rutgers fan?

That ought to scare you.

ND was not in any sense a member of BE football. That means that when ND talked to Rutgers about a series, it did so exactly as it does with Northwestern or Arizona now. There are teams we will play only at neutral sites, at least for their 'home' game. That is not applicable to, say, our games versus ACC teams. We cannot refuse to play Wake Forest because it refuses to move its home game to the Charlotte Panthers stadium.

That said, the fact of the mater is that Wake Forest versus ND in Charlotte will have 75,000 in attendance, while only 35 or 40,000 can squeeze into Wake Forest's campus stadium. I have a friend who went to the game when we played there a coupe years ago, and he said it is well designed and cozy, but very small. WF would make more money from moving the ND game to Charlotte. But it would not have to to play ND as part of the ACC.

UConn football would gain more from playing ND at MetLife than at the Rent, but if UConn were in the ACC, ND would have to play UConn's home game where UConn says.

 

[Carl Spackler]

We already have. Including 5 football games a year. The ACC, not our AD, schedules those games for us.

We have to play each full member of ACC football at least once every 3 years. So if UConn joins the ACC, we will play you in football every 3rd year.

No, Notre Dame didn't join. They are enjoying the same leech arrangement they had with the Big East. They started out with an agreement to schedule Big East programs too. We'll see how long that lasts - they're already planting the seeds for changing the scheduling arrangement to whatever ND wants to do - they have for the past 24 years.

Notre Dame is just teasing the ACC with the tip, they're not in. They're either in with football or they're not in the conference and simply have a cozy scheduling arrangement for their other sports.

So I say again - NOtre Dame - you go first.

 

[Seaa Blue]

So you are a Rutgers fan? Or at least one who thinks like a Rutgers fan?
UConn football would gain more from playing ND at MetLife than at the Rent, but if UConn were in the ACC, ND would have to play UConn's home game where UConn says.

That is where your predisposition causes you to not see the other side of the coin. Met Life is going to take a significant percentage of the gate and play havoc with season ticket sales and season ticket holders. While they may make more money, teams generally want to see "home" games at their "home". When ND starts to dictate terms they solidify their reputation all the while singing "we just want the best for everyone. p.s. don't trust the Big Ten, we've been oppressed by them for years".

 

[Yawkey Way]

The minute we join the ACC Notre Dame will announce they are joining the Big Ten. . .

While the ACC would be my second choice provided they stay intact, the Big Ten conference better embodies UConn's long term objectives, which go beyond athletics.

ND is not going to pull their Hockey Program out of the Hockey East, and all their non football sports as well out of the ACC.. to join the BIG in football, and with its other sports programs. I would never say never, but it was clear to me that ND looked East, not Midwest, when it bypassed the new BIG Hockey League to ask for, and receive, admittance to Hockey East recently. ND is playing 5 football games each season in the ACC, where they know several of these schools for a very long time. If the day comes for ND to fully hitch its football program to a league, it does not appear to me that it'll be the BIG now... but who knows for sure anymore on these things.

 

[MSNDfan]

So you are a Rutgers fan? Or at least one who thinks like a Rutgers fan?

That ought to scare you.

ND was not in any sense a member of BE football. That means that when ND talked to Rutgers about a series, it did so exactly as it does with Northwestern or Arizona now. There are teams we will play only at neutral sites, at least for their 'home' game. That is not applicable to, say, our games versus ACC teams. We cannot refuse to play Wake Forest because it refuses to move its home game to the Charlotte Panthers stadium.

That said, the fact of the mater is that Wake Forest versus ND in Charlotte will have 75,000 in attendance, while only 35 or 40K can squeeze into Wake Forest's campus stadium. I have a friend who went to the game when we played there a coupe years ago, and he said it is well designed and cozy, but very small. WF would make more money from moving the ND game to Charlotte. But it would not have to to play ND as part of the ACC.

UConn football would gain more from playing ND at MetLife than at the Rent, but if UConn were in the ACC, ND would have to play UConn's home game where UConn says.

That is where your predisposition causes you to not see the other side of the coin. Met Life is going to take a significant percentage of the gate and play havoc with season ticket sales and season ticket holders. While they may make more money, teams generally want to see "home" games at their "home". When ND starts to dictate terms they solidify their reputation all the while singing "we just want the best for everyone. p.s. don't trust the Big Ten, we've been oppressed by them for years".

Some stadiums rip off college teams. I think Paul Brown in Cincinnati is bad about that. Some are very good at working with college teams for mutual benefit. The JerryDome is in that category.

If you have a large stadium and can fill it, do so. If you can gain from playing a game every year or two at a neutral site venue, you are crazy not too. That is how ND became ND.

As UConn does not have a campus stadium and requires the NYC tv market, wouldn't UConn football gain from playing big name teams in MetLife? Isn't there 3 or 4 times more football talent in NJ than in all New England and wouldn't UConn get a boost in recruiting NJ by playing brand name teams in MetLife?

 

[RegisteredUconn]

Who says UConn cannot have the ACC?

You seem to think that UConn's very late arrival to the party of D1 football did not mean major obstacles. That late starting point for the sport that drives the bus of all conference realignment means that once UConn was looking, it was in a line that had formed when it was playing 1AA football. Even Louisville was D1 back when Johnny U played for the Cards.

UConn started too late to be near the top of the list anytime before maybe 4 years ago. And the 3 ACC additions in that time all make sense, in the order they were taken, considering football as the number 1 factor. Syracuse and Pitt both have a Heisman winner and multiple Hall of Famers. Louisville has Johnny U and 2 BCS bowl wins over the past decade. UConn football moved up far too late in the game to better any of those.

I don't want to be part of any conference making membership decisions based on where Unitas went to college.

 

[MSNDfan]

I could have agreed with you had the ACC taken a strategic approach to realignment. They didn't. They bounced from opportunity to opportunity like a kid running the aisles of Toys R Us. Had the ACC expanded right up the Atlantic coast with Rutgers, UConn, and BC as a first move in 2003 they would have created a solid base on which to build. They would have had the population of the northeast megalopolis to challenge the SEC in South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. They would have captured the strategic schools in New Jersey, Connecticut, and Massachusetts to prevent the Big Ten from expanding eastward. Who knows, maybe even Penn State could have been lured away from the mid-west.

The idea that UConn was ignored because we would always be available was ludicrously short-sighted. You know who was always going to be there? Miami, that's who. Syracuse, that's who. The thing that scares me about the ACC is they lack vision, they lack leadership, and they will likely fail to be anything more than an afterthought.

Take Rutgers in 2003? Why? Rutgers football then was no better off than UConn football, which had just moved up to FBS from FCS. If the ASCC had taken Rutgers in 2003, the BE would have celebrated.

Miami was the school the ACC had to take then. First, Miami was a major football power. Second Florida State wanted Miami in the ACC so its rivalry would be a conference game. Take Rutgers and tick off Florida State, which joins Miami in the BE? That would have led to the death of ACC football.

 

[MSNDfan]

ND is not going to pull their Hockey Program out of the Hockey East, and all their non football sports as well out of the ACC.. to join the BIG in football, and with its other sports programs. I would never say never, but it was clear to me that ND looked East, not Midwest, when it bypassed the new BIG Hockey League to ask for, and receive, admittance to Hockey East recently. ND is playing 5 football games each season in the ACC, where they know several of these schools for a very long time. If the day comes for ND to fully hitch its football program to a league, it does not appear to me that it'll be the BIG now... but who knows for sure anymore on these things.

Yes, the hockey decision ought to be understood as fitting with the ACC decision. The ND die is cast permanently with the east coast.

 

[HuskyFan16]

Take Rutgers in 2003? Why? Rutgers football then was no better off than UConn football, which had just moved up to FBS from FCS. If the ASCC had taken Rutgers in 2003, the BE would have celebrated.

In what way is Rutgers football now better than UConn football?

 

[RegisteredUconn]

Take Rutgers in 2003? Why? Rutgers football then was no better off than UConn football, which had just moved up to FBS from FCS. If the ASCC had taken Rutgers in 2003, the BE would have celebrated.

Miami was the school the ACC had to take then. First, Miami was a major football power. Second Florida State wanted Miami in the ACC so its rivalry would be a conference game. Take Rutgers and tick off Florida State, which joins Miami in the BE? That would have led to the death of ACC football.

When you lack vision, you're conclusions make a lot of sense. When you play the realignment game on a tactical level, those are exactly the moves you make.

 

[MSNDfan]

I don't want to be part of any conference making membership decisions based on where Unitas went to college.

Would you also not want to be part of a conference that makes membership decisions on other football reasons? Or is this just a Johnny Unitas aversion?

The most powerful reasons Louisville football got the nod over UConn football are: newly renovated state of the art on campus 55,000 seat stadium and three major bowl championships, two of them within the past decade.

 

[itgoeslike]

ND is not going to pull their Hockey Program out of the Hockey East, and all their non football sports as well out of the ACC.. to join the BIG in football, and with its other sports programs. I would never say never, but it was clear to me that ND looked East, not Midwest, when it bypassed the new BIG Hockey League to ask for, and receive, admittance to Hockey East recently. ND is playing 5 football games each season in the ACC, where they know several of these schools for a very long time. If the day comes for ND to fully hitch its football program to a league, it does not appear to me that it'll be the BIG now... but who knows for sure anymore on these things.

My comment was tainted with a bit of sarcasm. After all, ND was leading the Big East expansion committee at one point. . .

The Big Ten is going to be much more stable in the long run. UConn's fans never want to have to endure this crap ever again.

 

[MSNDfan]

In what way is Rutgers football now better than UConn football?

Its not, which is part of the reason I am amazed anyone other than a Rutgers fan would think the ACC should have added Rutgers in 2003.

 

[MSNDfan]

My comment was tainted with a bit of sarcasm. After all, ND was leading the Big East expansion committee at one point. . .

The Big Ten is going to be much more stable in the long run. UConn's fans never want to have to endure this crap ever again.

Well, there are at least 4 conferences that are fully stable, meaning they will lose no one - ACC, Big Ten, Pac, and SEC. The Big 12 is stable as long as Texas does not get itchy feet.

 

[AZHuskiePop]

That's garbage and anybody with sense knows it. In the ACC, your basketball with Syracuse would burn brighter than ever. Your games with Duke and North Carolina would quickly become almost as hot. Your games with us would intensify.

And then there is BC in all sports. The only New England rivalry would get red hot. It would matter down in your bones.

I'm not a advocate of the UConn to the ACC ,I've been trumpeting UConn to the B1G ,since I was a lonely voice crying out in the desert.
The majority of the the posters here couldn't see the huge advantage a school in a compact densely populated state ,whose residents identify with in huge numbers,and located next to two large and accessible markets would bring to a conference.
It's was easier for an expatriate living in the vast western expanse to visualize.
Having said that:
I completely under stood the selection of Louisville. That decision was made at a time the future of the conference was at stake and FSU,and Clemson leaving was a real concern, I think BC's input hurt but it certainly wasn't the cause. BC's position if they were a strong advocate of our cause which was in their best interest might have had some impact.
I'm sure the better ACC Academic institutions weren't happy with Louisville but given the options had little choice.

 

[UCHuskies08]

From BE days, I have had respect for UConn fans. I may not have liked Calhoun, but I respected Huskies fans and what Calhoun accomplished. I also respected what Edsall did at a place few thought could ever win a bowl, any bowl.

From the selfish view, UConn in the ACC can be very good for ND. Same on your side. There is no football team you can play in Yankee Stadium that will have the impact of playing ND. And other than Syracuse or Duke and maybe North Carolina, there is no basketball team you can play in MSG that can have the impact of playing ND.

So why did the ACC take Louisville first? Immediate impact of football. It is that simple. Louisville has a brand new on campus 55,000 seat stadium. That and having won 3 different BCS bowls over the decades with 3 different coaches, including two within a decade, all but did the trick. Then there is football recruiting. UConn brings nobody a football recruiting hotbed. KY high school football is nothing compared to even AL but its much better than any New England state or NY. And KY borders OH, which is not even GA in football recruiting, and may no longer be better than NC, but still OH produces a lot of talent, which now is in the ACC's backyard.


Football does drive the bus. And UConn came up short in that to Louisville. It wasn't BC keeping UConn out - BC will never have that power. It wasn't Florida State and Clemson being unreasonably biased against UConn. It was looking at those football issues and agreeing they took precedence.

But what the ACC needed to replace hapless Maryland (South Rutgers, we can call it, in terms of finances and football support) is not the same thing the ACC wants and most needs for number 16.

Long term, the best thing for UConn is to be in the ACC. And the best thing for the ACC is to have UConn.

Any port during a storm as far as I'm concerned...

 

[Yawkey Way]

My comment was tainted with a bit of sarcasm. After all, ND was leading the Big East expansion committee at one point. . .

.

Yes, I hear you. ND does have much more clout in league alignments than wins and losses in sports should allow them to have, imo. Life's not always fair.. expecially when it comes to the big biz we call major college football. ND does a superb job of protecting their school's self interests in this crazy world of league realignments and its undeniable, imo

 

[MSNDfan]

Any port during a storm as far as I'm concerned...

That sounds good, but do you watch the Walking Dead? They have reached Terminus, which may be run by cannibals. Some ports are worse than storms, certainly the ones that may be ridden out.


UConn needs a port that looks south, not to the midwest, for football recruiting. It needs a port that pairs it back with Syracuse basketball and with BC. BC left the BE before we could see how hot BC-UConn could become in football. UConn needs a port with football teams that average more along the lines of 50,000 per game than 65,00o or 70,000.

 

[RegisteredUconn]

Would you also not want to be part of a conference that makes membership decisions on other football reasons? Or is this just a Johnny Unitas aversion? I mean you're making a sales pitch using the equivalent of Jay Berwanger and I don't think you get many sales using examples perched on a half century time horizon.

The most powerful reasons Louisville football got the nod over UConn football are: newly renovated state of the art on campus 55,000 seat stadium and three major bowl championships, two of them within the past decade. Tactical rationale. Tactics without a strategy invites disjointed, uncoordinated activites that lack a common goal and waste energy.