UConn has beaten Louisville and Rutgers head to head within the last two years, so no, I don't think football is the driver unless you are a premier program like Nebraska. Market and politics are the biggest drivers. Our market is OK (Connecticut has the same population as Oklahoma, for example), and politically UConn has booted it all over the place. How our administration managed to let BCU box us out of the ACC is beyond me. Herbst should have locked down Tobacco Road until they would refuse to accept any alternative choices but Connecticut. Instead, they were mildly pro UConn until BCU had a tantrum, then we got boxed out.
I can see Syracuse being picked over UConn, but how Pitt and Louisville were selected ahead of us reflects how poorly UConn handled this. Pitt is in a dying city that is shrinking about 10% every 10 years, and Louisville is a freaking community college. The ACC should be running from Pittsburgh as a market as fast as it can, and Louisville is a joke. We can't blame the ACC for picking those two over UConn. UConn didn't make the sale.