He has been for a long time. The linked beauty below from 2012 is among my personal favorites.
www.cbssports.com
That's a good deal for every school in the conference not named UConn. No one else is trying to operate a competitive FBS Football Program as an independent no less. UConn has to pay for facilities, coaches, marketing/recruiting/travel expenses and scholarships for 85 Players along with 85 matching scholarships for female athletes. It's a tough spot for your AD to be in. UConn is a major state university. They deserve to be in a major conference.
They don't. They're forced to accept the fact that they're competing for a bid in The Beef O Brady's Poulan Weed Whacker Bowl being played on Dec 17 in Detroit. They're also forced to travel around the country in September to take beatings from SEC or B1G Teams in exchange for a check. The Big East might be a "money conference" for Depaul or Marquette, but they don't have your AD's Overhead. It is imperative that UConn aligns itself with one of the current P5 Conferences at whatever cost. They need to work every conceivable angle and fight like their AD's Life depends on it. The days of the haves and the have nots being able to compete with each other are coming to a close. There will be so many barriers to competition, real or otherwise, put in place that there will just be haves and no one else.
Except that we are in every manner other than being in a P5 conference.
If we were starting from scratch we would be. Of course if we were starting from scratch today in this dog eat dog every one out for themselves world, conferences as we know them likely wouldn't exist. You look at all the legacy dead weight schools in the P5 and even P2 conferences and you just shake your head at how lucky they got... and do they even realize it?
Considering the Rutgers AD is going around talking about what he thinks of next steps for Big 10 expansion (as if Rutgers has any say in any affairs of the conference)...no
Uneven revenue sharing is essentially the start of the unraveling of the conferences as we know them. Eventually the top 2-3 teams in the big conferences are going to realize they don't need the bottom 3/4 of the teams in the league. We're starting to hit a ceiling in terms of how much these media deals are worth, and one of the last routes left for the Ohio States and Alabamas of the world to greatly increase their revenue is by taking a bigger cut of the pie. The step after that will be schools wanting to just negotiate their own monster deals keeping all of the money for themselves. The media won't negotiate with dozens of schools individually, so they'll bundle the top 30 or so biggest brands into an informal breakaway league where they play each other and have their own tournaments and rake in max money.
The two best pro sports leagues are the NFL and NBA which have close to equal revenue sharing, and fan interest continues to grow. MLB is made up of the haves and the have nots and fan interest is not growing. College football could become like the MLB if they are not careful.
Equal sharing is fine so long as all members feel like all others are pulling their weight and contributing. With the way conferences are configured currently, that is not the case, and schools are starting to become vocal about this reality in the capitalistic battle for every last dollar. How long will Ohio State put up with carrying Northwestern? How long will Texas put up with carrying Vandy? Or Clemson carrying Wake Forest? Like any relationship, once you start fighting over money, it's over.
The reason they are favorites has nothing to do with equal revenue sharing and everything to do with gambling. Football and basketball are just better sports to gamble on.
No, it doesn’t. There is a reason the Harlem Globetrotters tour with the Washington Generals. Michigan isn’t Michigan without guaranteed wins against the Indianas and Northwesterns of the world. If you have a conference without deadbeats, then good teams struggle to finish above .500 and no one cares about them any more.
