I've never seen a team more overmatched. At any level. Ever. | Page 2 | The Boneyard

I've never seen a team more overmatched. At any level. Ever.

Chief00 said:
Now other schools may have passed us due to football - Houston, UCF , USF, Cincy and possibly Memphis.
Expand ...
Well then, you got no useful inside info.
 
Edsall 1.0 used to be able to sell kids on having a 12.5% chance of playing in a BCS bowl every season. We played schools in a similar geographical footprint to us.

Now with Edsall 2.0 we play in a Southern mid-major conference. You can't play a Northeast style of football and expect to be successful in a conference of teams from Texas and Florida. You have to score points and play fast, and we can't match that - will never be able to get the kids necessary to have an effective two-deep for a high-octane offense and speed-oriented defense. Temple and Cincy get to gobble up Big Ten leftovers. Houston, SMU, Memphis, UCF, and USF fight it out for the ACC, Big 12, and SEC leftovers. Navy can bring in a gazillion kids a year. We just can't complete with that. Connecticut has about 20 FBS prospects a year, a dozen or so going to competent football programs. UConn gets to fight it out with FCS and Ivy teams for whoever is left.

We can get back to a level where we can consistently be mediocre enough to contend for irrelevant bowl games and put a couple of late round picks a year into the NFL. But anything beyond that, I think we are fooling ourselves. We don't have the money, the conference, the recruiting grounds, or geographical rivals to be anything more.
 
I can't muster up the energy to care much about UConn football anymore. I watched the first half last night and it was essentially just me and my girlfriend sitting and alternately laughing and shaking our heads in disbelief at the state of the team. It's not that I expected them to do well at all, but from the start of the game they just looked like they really didn't want to be there because they knew they were going to get absolutely smoked by an infinitely more talented and well prepared opponent. There's no fight.

And their uniforms look like the generic video game options when you're creating a team, before you customize them. It's like Nike brought those in as blank slate prototypes to be designed and UConn was like "those are great!"

What's the point of any of this? These kids are the future of the program? Does Edsall actually see a brighter future with these players as upperclassmen? I think Husky football isn't long for this world, boys and girls. Dead program walking.
 
Chief00 said:
Suzie was partying in the Islands with Warde yet somehow he seems to be the fall guy for Louisville passing us.
I have always believed Conference Realignment is run by the University Presidents club and the sports networks not AD’s. She was very unpopular in that club - and that really explains what happened in addition to Blumenthal personally suing other Presidents in his fiasco.
Now other schools may have passed us due to football - Houston, UCF , USF, Cincy and possibly Memphis.
Expand ...
I wouldn’t exactly label Warde as the “fall guy”. Agreed he wasn’t the only one “partying in the Islands” but he certainly was a key participant. As far as Presidents rather than AD’s (possibly) having the greater influence on Conference Realignment —-reliable sources have it that there was at least one painful instance where that may not have been totally true:
Learning that Rutgers and Maryland were leaving the ACC for the Big Ten, “Louisville AD, Tom Jurich , cancelled his trip to the Bahamas and combed through the contact list he had gathered over 24 years as an Athletic Director”. He called and made progress with the Florida State AD and found allies in the Syracuse AD and in a North Carolina contact. We all know the rest of the story!
Quoting Jurich : “ We were definitely the underdogs, Jurich said, People had Connecticut not pencilled-in but penned-in”
( We also, of course, know of the more recent 2017 fate of the same Tom Jurich who, per Louisville management, was “retired” after the FBI Louisville basketball investigation .)
 
.-.
Husky pride said:
I wouldn’t exactly label Warde as the “fall guy”. Agreed he wasn’t the only one “partying in the Islands” but he certainly was a key participant. As far as Presidents rather than AD’s (possibly) having the greater influence on Conference Realignment —-reliable sources have it that there was at least one painful instance where that may not have been totally true:
Learning that Rutgers and Maryland were leaving the ACC for the Big Ten, “Louisville AD, Tom Jurich , cancelled his trip to the Bahamas and combed through the contact list he had gathered over 24 years as an Athletic Director”. He called and made progress with the Florida State AD and found allies in the Syracuse AD and in a North Carolina contact. We all know the rest of the story!
Quoting Jurich : “ We were definitely the underdogs, Jurich said, People had Connecticut not pencilled-in but penned-in”
( We also, of course, know of the more recent 2017 fate of the same Tom Jurich who, per Louisville management, was “retired” after the FBI Louisville basketball investigation .)
Expand ...

Quite frankly, it’s a Presidents level vote and decision. Can an AD’s lobby and try to influence a President of another school , typically through the AD of that school. - sure. However, it’s very unusual for an AD to directly contact a President of another school. I hope this clears up any confusion.

Just to be clear, I don’t believe Warde distinguished himself in that affair either - just that Susie being unpopular with some of her peers had a greater impact. Heck, some Presidents did not even return her phone calls - which is considered a professional curtesy within the Presidents club.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Chief00 said:
Quite frankly, it’s a Presidents level vote and decision. Can an AD’s lobby and try to influence a President of another school , typically through the AD of that school. - sure. However, it’s very unusual for an AD to directly contact a President of another school. I hope this clears up any confusion.
Expand ...

True, but Jurich was continually out in front on the effort to get the ACC invite. Maybe the president was active behind the scenes, but Jurich was the face. For that matter, Tim Pernetti was very visible and up front on Rutgers move to the B10. I think the presidents would rather work behind the scenes and put the ADs out front to deal with the media.
 
UConnNick said:
True, but Jurich was continually out in front on the effort to get the ACC invite. Maybe the president was active behind the scenes, but Jurich was the face. For that matter, Tim Pernetti was very visible and up front on Rutgers move to the B10. I think the presidents would rather work behind the scenes and put the ADs out front to deal with the media.
Expand ...

Don’t disagree with either post. The AD often do a lot of the preparation work. The Presidents have the vote.

While we are on the subject, we need to have a large corporate backer. UL has Yum Brands, Memphis has FedEx and UCF Disney. Look what happened to the GHO once Travelers got involved.
 
SubbaBub said:
Perhaps we look like a high school team because most of the players were in high school 6 months ago.

We were uncompetitive in a very Diaco looking way but for different reasons.

The is a full back to the trailers level rebuild, I just hope we don't become the Washington Generals along the way.
Expand ...
We may be. Dangerously close to being the Kansas of the AAC.
 
Alum86 said:
We may be. Dangerously close to being the Kansas of the AAC.
Expand ...
Except unlike Kansas, we don't win the AAC in men's basketball the way they win in the Big 12. So basically, even worse.
 
ibleedhuskyblue said:
I disagree. They could have upgraded. JH hired PP. Every decision after that sunk us further.
Expand ...

Hathaway hired pasqualoni in order to keep the best Connecticut recruits home, right? Will that also be starting in 20 minutes?
 
.-.
Chief00 said:
Don’t disagree with either post. The AD often do a lot of the preparation work. The Presidents have the vote.

While we are on the subject, we need to have a large corporate backer. UL has Yum Brands, Memphis has FedEx and UCF Disney. Look what happened to the GHO once Travelers got involved.
Expand ...

Chieftain Industries perhaps?
 
Chief00 said:
Suzie was partying in the Islands with Warde yet somehow he seems to be the fall guy for Louisville passing us.
I have always believed Conference Realignment is run by the University Presidents club and the sports networks not AD’s. She was very unpopular in that club - and that really explains what happened in addition to Blumenthal personally suing other Presidents in his fiasco.
Now other schools may have passed us due to football - Houston, UCF , USF, Cincy and possibly Memphis.
Expand ...

Unless we continue to fail in basketball, and are unable to improve in football, we're still the key school in an entire region for a conference that wants eyes on their conference's athletic product and media deals.
No one nationally (except for the few college hockey fans) gives a hoot (line from WW and the Dixie Dancekings, starred in by the dearly departed Burt) about BC. So, there's a chance if we have the right President going forward.
 
I have witnessed games worse, but it was at the high school level.

I am thankful it was a late game and not on during the middle of the day on the east coast.
 
willie99 said:
Everything about the school has made huge strides under Sue, she did an awesome job and I'm saddened she's leaving. She didn't hire, PP, but she quickly fired the man who did. Warde Manual and Dave Benedict and even Kevin Ollie were popular hires, I can't fault her for any of that. Manual is now AD at Michigan, not sure there's a bigger athletic department in the country. Benedict is pushing buttons too, doesn't change overnight.

They just hired Dan Hurley, arguably the best candidate on the market.

The one horrible decision that was made under their watch was BD, but even he just won an assistant coach of the year award while at ND.
Expand ...

I can give her a pass on a lot of things for the reasons you just mentioned. I'm also not as intimately familiar with the good things she's done as others are, so I don't want to shortchange her out my own ignorance.

But both basketball and football objectively turned to ruin on her watch, and if not for the fact that she enabled Benedict to essentially rob everyone blind in order to make money for the new coach, it is quite possible that - given the conference situation - both programs would have incurred irreparable damages.

People love to ignore the way these things are intertwined. The Diaco hiring - and perhaps more importantly, the Diaco extension - led directly to our current predicament, where cutting football entirely is legitimately in play. Since that was too huge an investment to risk exposing to another year of Diaco, we had to swallow his buyout and in the process dry up all our other funds. That meant we couldn't afford the Kevin Ollie buyout, something Benedict also negotiated, thus putting us between a rock and a hard place with respect to our basketball program. We simply did not have the money to pay Ollie his full buyout, and yet we could not afford to risk another year of incompetence while Hurley went elsewhere. So what does the school do? They try to steal money, plain and simple, from a man whose buyout was prompted by his increasing market value, knowing that the fans will largely back them out of convenience.

I'm happy to cut them slack for all that due to the extenuating circumstances, but it is inarguably their mess and I have no respect for the way they've handled it.
 
We didn’t get chosen for a reason. Redding had it right. The culture for CT sucks and it’s competion with NY and Boston.

I know lots of folks who blow tons of money on Yankees Red Sox Pats and Giants and don’t know that the Rent exists. I know tons of Alum who have never gone to a game. Win a National Championship and maybe I’ll buy a ticket.

Supporting football is about making it an Alum thing. We can’t have a HS stadium and expect other conferences to be serious about us.

You think that the heads of these conferences don’t see it????
 
.-.
Chief00 said:
Suzie was partying in the Islands with Warde yet somehow he seems to be the fall guy for Louisville passing us.
I have always believed Conference Realignment is run by the University Presidents club and the sports networks not AD’s. She was very unpopular in that club - and that really explains what happened in addition to Blumenthal personally suing other Presidents in his fiasco.
Now other schools may have passed us due to football - Houston, UCF , USF, Cincy and possibly Memphis.
Expand ...
Chief, we've gone over this, unless you think Suzy could somehow charm DeFilipp0 into not want BCU to "be the only New England school" none of this matters.

"We didn't want them in,'' DeFilippo told the Globe. It was a matter of turf. We wanted to be the New England team.''
 
zls44 said:
The seminal moment, the inflection point on when the program went entirely into the trashcan, was Randy leaving.

That act completely doomed the program forever.

And they brought him back!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Expand ...

If the seminal point that destroys your program is a coach leaving after the end of a season at a time when he was one of the longer tenured coaches in the country, that's on your program -- not the coach.

Edsall didn't owe us staying forever. The people above him had the ability to keep this going, and they failed with two straight hires.
 
CL82 said:
Chief, we've gone over this, unless you think Suzy could somehow charm DeFilipp0 into not want BCU to "be the only New England school" none of this matters.

"We didn't want them in,'' DeFilippo told the Globe. It was a matter of turf. We wanted to be the New England team.''
Expand ...
Is that why Shalala wouldn’t return Herbst’s calls?
 
.-.
Sigh, let's look at UConn's shots at expansion one at a time:

1. For the Cuse and Pitt addition to the ACC the prime factor was ESPN's desire to destabilize the Old Big East and shore up a then shaky ACC. The original targets were Syracuse and UConn. BC was on the expansion committee and, effectively, black balled UConn because the (BC) wanted to be the only New England team in the ACC. That's documented. Defilippo bragged about it to Blauds while he was at the Boston Globe. It should be noted that Pitt was a plaintiff in the Big East suit with UConn.

2. For the Rutgers addition to the Big 10, RU was simply a better choice. It gave them entry to the NYC DMA (which would have as well) but NJ 9M people are more than CT's 3M. Add to that that RU was AAU and contiguous with PA and it becomes a clear choice.
We know that there are no lawsuit bad feelings here because, no one in the B1G was sued.

3. For the Louisville to the ACC, it is well documented that FSU resented the extent of Tobacco Road's sway in conference. The last addition was, in its view, basketball centered and it made it clear that the failure to go with a strong football school would make FSU consider leaving the conference. Clemson and our old friends BC backed this play. The rest of the conference prudently went along. Now here I feel like Warde and Herbst had a puncher's chance to change minds but they would have had to flown back to the States and worked their butts off. Would it have worked? Unlikely, but possible. Here, Herbst's relationships may have cost her but not in the way some people think. She relied on a Duke connection, who gave her the Tobacco Road view that UConn would be in. It end up being wrong because FSU's power play wasn't expected.

4. The Big 12 expansion probably failed with with the BYU homosexual policy scandal (d0n't ask, don't hold hands.) They were the big football school in that expansion. Once they became tainted, expansion was less attractive. That said under the Big 12 contract they could have added 2-4 schools and were guaranteed a media boost. (Methinks ESPN quietly reminded them of what happened to the Big East when they crossed ESPN. I say that tongue in cheek... sort of.)​

None of those needed Herbst's lack of social skills or people being butt hurt about the lawsuit for UConn to be eliminated.
 
CL82 said:
Sigh, let's look at UConn's shots at expansion one at a time:

1. For the Cuse and Pitt addition to the ACC the prime factor was ESPN's desire to destabilize the Old Big East and shore up a then shaky ACC. The original targets were Syracuse and UConn. BC was on the expansion committee and, effectively, black balled UConn because the (BC) wanted to be the only New England team in the ACC. That's documented. Defilippo bragged about it to Blauds while he was at the Boston Globe. It should be noted that Pitt was a plaintiff in the Big East suit with UConn.

2. For the Rutgers addition to the Big 10, RU was simply a better choice. It gave them entry to the NYC DMA (which would have as well) but NJ 9M people are more than CT's 3M. Add to that that RU was AAU and contiguous with PA and it becomes a clear choice.
We know that there are no lawsuit bad feelings here because, no one in the B1G was sued.

3. For the Louisville to the ACC, it is well documented that FSU resented the extent of Tobacco Road's sway in conference. The last addition was, in its view, basketball centered and it made it clear that the failure to go with a strong football school would make FSU consider leaving the conference. Clemson and our old friends BC backed this play. The rest of the conference prudently went along. Now here I feel like Warde and Herbst had a puncher's chance to change minds but they would have had to flown back to the States and worked their butts off. Would it have worked? Unlikely, but possible. Here, Herbst's relationships may have cost her but not in the way some people think. She relied on a Duke connection, who gave her the Tobacco Road view that UConn would be in. It end up being wrong because FSU's power play wasn't expected.

4. The Big 12 expansion probably failed with with the BYU homosexual policy scandal (d0n't ask, don't hold hands.) They were the big football school in that expansion. Once they became tainted, expansion was less attractive. That said under the Big 12 contract they could have added 2-4 schools and were guaranteed a media boost. (Methinks ESPN quietly reminded them of what happened to the Big East when they crossed ESPN. I say that tongue in cheek... sort of.)​

None of those needed Herbst's lack of social skills or people being butt hurt about the lawsuit for UConn to be eliminated.
Expand ...


It's easy to blame BC because of the comments made....but BC didn't really have any pull....but FSU, Clemson, GT, Miami, and VT in concert, did. Particularly so when there was a threat of some football scholls breaking away.
 
Why does everyone forget herbsts brother is vp of Broadcasting and global marketing strategy for Nascar.

Literally has an expert in the family.
 
huskyinfl said:
Why does everyone forget herbsts brother is vp of Broadcasting and global marketing strategy for Nascar.

Literally has an expert in the family.
Expand ...

Oh the only sports organization that has fallen as far and quickly as UConn football.

Is this a Butch burner?
 
.-.
You must log in or register to reply here.

Forum statistics

Threads
168,160
Messages
4,555,233
Members
10,438
Latest member
UConnheart


Top Bottom