NYC is primarily a college basketball town thanks, in large part, to its Big East roots. I've said in other threads (or maybe this one...all of these threads seem to mirror one another, so I don't know where I said it) that NYC is a two-school town for hoops: UCONN and Syracuse. There is no interest in St John's unless St John's is ranked #1. Even then, interest is minimal. There is slight interest in Duke because of how heavily it recruits New Jersey. There are also various pockets of fans from B1G schools that hold a fair amount of alumni in the city. ND also has a fair alumni base in NYC. But of the college basketball fans in NYC, I'd say a good 85-90% of them are split between UCONN and Syracuse. So, no, the ACC doesn't have NYC on lockdown. Neither does the B1G. As of today, NYC marketshare is divided between the AAC, ACC, and B1G.
As for football, UCONN has won 3 bowl games since 2003 when we made the move up. 3 bowl wins is more than Northwestern has won (2) and the same amount of bowl games won as P5 schools Duke, Indiana and Iowa State. And UCONN has done it in a much shorter time span, as is well documented everywhere. Next up on the P5 bowl game win list is Vanderbilt (5), Minnesota (5) and our dear friends to the south, who have apparently been playing football since 78 B.C., Rutgers (5). UCONN has also made it to a BCS game in its short history. Say what you will about the 2011 Big East Conference, but every school had a chance to make this claim that year and UCONN was the team that stood up and took it. Not one of these schools that I just mentioned has 1 BCS game, but to be fair, there are many others who don't either. UCONN also has more players in the NFL today than Syracuse, Pitt, BC, and Louisville...a credit to its top-notch facilities. What UCONN has achieved in its short football history has been truly incredible. It's even more incredible when you begin to factor in the three Pasqualoni seasons that we just lost. So while UCONN doesn't have the long losing history of other programs, it certainly boasts very measurable football metrics as other P5 schools even with the lost Paul Pasqualoni era.
But let's call a spade a spade: UCONN is and will always be a basketball-first school. There is nothing wrong with that and there is value in that in the P5 model (especially conferences that are concerned with year-round content). Kentucky, Duke, UNC, Kansas, Indiana, and Syracuse have all carved out considerable value in being basketball-first schools within the P5 model. Syracuse was even added to the P5 model as a basketball school. The difference between UCONN and all of the other basketball schools is that UCONN offers valuable content across ALL demographics with elite championship winning men's and women's programs. UCONN has the same fervent following that Kentucky does. The difference in fan bases is that ALL Kentucky fans follow/support the men's team only. Our fanbase is partially segmented - some fans follow just the men's program, some fans follow just the women's program, and some fans follow both. If our fanbase (me included) ever learned the value of supporting ALL of UCONN's programs, then watch out.
UCONN has a very respected history of building very successful programs. Both basketball programs are at the top of the college basketball world. There's no doubting that. Football just needs to get back to the pre-Pasqualoni era when it got to bowl games fairly regularly (but not every year). Elite basketball and competitive football. That should be our niche and P5 value.