New Big East Deal Could Be Worth As Little As $60 Million A Year

[whaler11]

One of the frustrating things about this board is that two of the most frequent posters are not just negative, but are openly rooting for UConn to fail.

I'd say something a bit more frustrating is there are posters with the reading comprehension skills of a four year old who constantly intentionally misrepresent the opinions of others.

Here is a good example: Noting that San Diego State is never going to be a major player in college sports is not rooting for UConn to fail. It's really just pointing out what is obvious to anyone who isn't attempting to delude themselves into thinking UConn's situation isn't 5 levels beyond dire.

I guess when you are bashing the AD nonstop that isn't being negative - but when other schools are bashed that upsets you - as always you make perfect sense.

 

[Marty Jackson]

The Big East seems to be trying to be a poor man's B1G. They figure if they grab as many TV markets as they can the money will follow. The problem is nobody wants to watch Tulane/SDSU regardless of TV market. How can you expect a network to pay for this collection when there's always the underlying fact that at any time your only few valuable teams will be continually filing out the door?

Not now MattP, but in 2040 . think long term...

 

[junglehusky]

You simply cannot tell me that a UCF/USF with 50-60,000 students & massive Institutional growth/development is not going to be something when they grow up. And, then tell me that BC in that little bandbox is always going to be a player. In our years since 2003, we have watched several of our Programs grow tremendously in stature. Rutgers? Look how far those twerps have gone. What seems to bug the majority poster here is Tulane & Memphis types. I can't explain that at all. But, I did love the Pension Fund king who basically told Billionaire Mall Owners that they were lucky to get into the business when they did; but, they better watch their ass.

UConn has grown by leaps and bounds from where it was. But there's no guarantee that UConn or any school will "grow up" to full matuity (somewhere in the neighborhood of B1G per-school revenue). If you compare UConn and Louisville and as why they got the ACC's rose and we didn't there are two reasons - 1) they had Tom Jurich and we had Jeff Hathaway 2) look in the mirror - our fanbase issues are well-documented. There were a couple good years at the Rent, loud sellouts on ESPN, but the product needs to step up.

Here I agree with zls - thanks to Hathaway we really missed out on building a big time donor base specifically for football, at a time when we could have been investing in a stadium expansion and upgrading the football product. Like zls I admit in hindsight that would have been the right path. This is the main reason why we're not in a major conference whether that be the ACC or B1G (and let's be honest - we're probably going to wind up in the ACC despite any fan's personal feelings about that conference).

Getting back to the "growing up" question - you can look at historical trends, demographics, etc. But when it comes to football you can't project those out to the future because those institutions are not operating in a vacuum, they are operating in a competitive environment. Aresco is trying to sell a product that nobody wants and is getting less and less marketable, and you're pretending it's getting more and more marketable. If we were in a "buy and hold" position where we could hang on for 10 more years and wait for the value of the league to go up, that would be fine. We aren't. We need the payday now (admittedly, not as badly as Rutgers and Maryland need it). UConn just can't afford to wait 5 years for UCF and Tulane to become household names.

If the ACC is an old mall that's about to lose revenue because the trends are changing, the Big East is the strip mall filled with junk food and massage parlors. But no "happy endings".

 

[HuskyHawk]

And people have said the same thing about USF. Tens of thousands of students. Hundreds of thousands of local alumni. True attendance for the last game of season - 17,000.

Kids that go to schools like USF or San Diego State don't become lifelong fans of the program. It's no different than walking through a dorm at Central when the Blue Devils are at home and more kids are watching UConn on TV than at Detrick.

This is exactly the way it is. I spent time in San Jose, and have several friends who went to SJSU and Santa Clara. All of them are either Cal or Stanford fans, although the Santa Clara folks are pretty loyal Santa Clara fans for basketball. It's the same in Florida, and Ohio, and Missouri, and everywhere really.

People in the northeast don't always grasp this because our oldest and best institutions are all smaller private schools. The SUNY's don't even participate on a major level. So we argue about what schools from outside the state bring in the NYC audience. UMass has almost no reach in Boston. BC does have some, but it is nothing like the reach U Illinois has in Chicago (despite the presence of Northwestern). In almost all the states outside the northeast, most of the state pulls for the state U, or one of the two if there are two major ones. UConn is lucky, at least in basketball, men's and women's it has achieved that level of support...and no other northeastern public university, not Rutgers, can make that claim (unless you count PSU as northeast). There are tons of folks on this board who didn't go to UConn. Do you think anybody on the USF board isn't either student or alumni? Hell, most of their alumni probably go to and watch UF and FSU games first. Cinci is really no more popular statewide than Kent State, or Ohio, or whatever other MAC school.

To me that is why UConn is on a different level than every single remaining and proposed Big East school. And that's why I am so dissapointed.

 

[mavblues]

One of the frustrating things about this board is that two of the most frequent posters are not just negative, but are openly rooting for UConn to fail.

Oh, there are way more than two on this board...

But that's a topic for my "these people can suck it" ™ thread once this all shakes out.

 

[Marty Jackson]

This is exactly the way it is. I spent time in San Jose, and have several friends who went to SJSU and Santa Clara. All of them are either Cal or Stanford fans, although the Santa Clara folks are pretty loyal Santa Clara fans for basketball. It's the same in Florida, and Ohio, and Missouri, and everywhere really.

People in the northeast don't always grasp this because our oldest and best institutions are all smaller private schools. The SUNY's don't even participate on a major level. So we argue about what schools from outside the state bring in the NYC audience. UMass has almost no reach in Boston. BC does have some, but it is nothing like the reach U Illinois has in Chicago (despite the presence of Northwestern). In almost all the states outside the northeast, most of the state pulls for the state U, or one of the two if there are two major ones. UConn is lucky, at least in basketball, men's and women's it has achieved that level of support...and no other northeastern public university, not Rutgers, can make that claim (unless you count PSU as northeast). There are tons of folks on this board who didn't go to UConn. Do you think anybody on the USF board isn't either student or alumni? Hell, most of their alumni probably go to and watch UF and FSU games first. Cinci is really no more popular statewide than Kent State, or Ohio, or whatever other MAC school.

To me that is why UConn is on a different level than every single remaining and proposed Big East school. And that's why I am so dissapointed.

I would say that Umass would have a reach into Boston if they had something for their alumni to cheer about.
Being around boston during the Camby years showed how many Umass alums live in the eastern part of the state. Umass was the talk of the town. the majority of people finally had a chance to root for their school instead of having BC pushed down their throat.

But you can't sustain a healthy fan base with a once in a generation push at the national level.

What's very frustrating is that people outside the state, with little ties to Uconn want to turn the school into Central CT. Where Uconn students watch Ohio State play BC in their dorms while Uconn plays Tulane at Gampel. Where kids in CT grow up watching 'big boy' basketball on TV and thinking that Uconn is never going to be on that level. That's the future of Uconn if they don't get out of the Big East.

 

[UConnDan97]

It's become a hobby here - we grab the fifth or sixth best program in a given state and then set about polishing that turd.

Sit tight for next week's installment, "East Carolina, the Sleeping Giant of Pitt County".

2012 SDSU: 9-3, receiving votes in both the AP and Coaches' Polls. Co-champs of the MW along with Boise and Fresno.
2011 SDSU: 8-5, went to a bowl
2010 SDSU: 9-4, went to a bowl

When analyzing all the acquisitions that we've made for the Big East in the past year or so, I'll take this promising "shiny turd" any day of the week...

(For those of you that haven't figured it out yet, SDSU isn't the problem...Memphis and Tulane are the problems...)

 

[nelsonmuntz]

This is exactly the way it is. I spent time in San Jose, and have several friends who went to SJSU and Santa Clara. All of them are either Cal or Stanford fans, although the Santa Clara folks are pretty loyal Santa Clara fans for basketball. It's the same in Florida, and Ohio, and Missouri, and everywhere really.

People in the northeast don't always grasp this because our oldest and best institutions are all smaller private schools. The SUNY's don't even participate on a major level. So we argue about what schools from outside the state bring in the NYC audience. UMass has almost no reach in Boston. BC does have some, but it is nothing like the reach U Illinois has in Chicago (despite the presence of Northwestern). In almost all the states outside the northeast, most of the state pulls for the state U, or one of the two if there are two major ones. UConn is lucky, at least in basketball, men's and women's it has achieved that level of support...and no other northeastern public university, not Rutgers, can make that claim (unless you count PSU as northeast). There are tons of folks on this board who didn't go to UConn. Do you think anybody on the USF board isn't either student or alumni? Hell, most of their alumni probably go to and watch UF and FSU games first. Cinci is really no more popular statewide than Kent State, or Ohio, or whatever other MAC school.

To me that is why UConn is on a different level than every single remaining and proposed Big East school. And that's why I am so dissapointed.

This is true until it isn't. San Jose State can and should be a mid-major powerhouse. It is located in one of the most important areas of the country economically, culturally and technologically. While Stanford is about 20 miles away and Cal is not that much further, that is a huge region of the country and Stanford and Cal's distinctive cultures don't exactly appeal to a very broad population, as evidenced by the dismal attendance at the UCLA/Stanford Pac 12 title game.

I agree with your points about state schools. This is the argument I always make about UMass. If UMass was brought into any semi-credible conference, its appeal in Massachusetts would dwarf that of BCU.

 

[UConnDan97]

One of the frustrating things about this board is that two of the most frequent posters are not just negative, but are openly rooting for UConn to fail.

This has been my problem lately also. It is beyond frustrating when I have to defend UConn against "UConn fans". The negativity on this board reeks. What's worse is that those posters will not allow anyone to even imagine the prospect of a decent future, because if you do, they immediately go after your supposed lack of intelligence. Half the time, I feel like I'm trolling the BC board and just forgot that I typed in the wrong webpage...

 

[CL82]

You know, I'm not going to act like Pudge and say I'm perfect. I was in the "why expand the stadium when it isn't consistently selling out" camp until all this. Now? Nope. Expand the bastard to 55,000. Who's paying for it, is my main concern- but make no mistake, I am full-on the other way and in favor of expansion. Absolutely willing to admit I was wrong on that.

I may be on the other side of this flip. Until we have a new head coach and the program is generating some excitement it makes zero sense to expand. We'll see how season ticket sales are this coming year. I suspect it will be a blood bath.

 

[ZooCougar]

The thing at frustrates me the most out of this place, is the absurd and ignorant optimism. Memphis is not UConn, it's not even a Cincy. Schools got better in the Big East because the Big East was truly a step up.

It's not that big of a step up, and the schools we are getting to now are not as well off as Louisville and Cincy were to begin with.

SDSU and Boise, I doubt they will ever play a down in this conference. UCF could do something, ECU definitely could, but that's probably it.

 

[HuskyHawk]

This is true until it isn't. San Jose State can and should be a mid-major powerhouse. It is located in one of the most important areas of the country economically, culturally and technologically. While Stanford is about 20 miles away and Cal is not that much further, that is a huge region of the country and Stanford and Cal's distinctive cultures don't exactly appeal to a very broad population, as evidenced by the dismal attendance at the UCLA/Stanford Pac 12 title game.

I agree with your points about state schools. This is the argument I always make about UMass. If UMass was brought into any semi-credible conference, its appeal in Massachusetts would dwarf that of BCU.

Abe (new avatar), it won't happen at that school. Half the students are recent immigrants who don't care about college sports at all. The rest grew up in the Bay Area and are already Cal or Stanford fans before they go to SJSU. They pull for the team while they are there, but not really after. I think SDSU and Fresno have better prospects, due to isolation from other Pac 12 schools, and different student bodies. And both have been more successful as well.

 

[ZooCougar]

San Jose State people are like Memphis people. They are all fans of something else other than their schools.

 

[UConnDan97]

The thing at frustrates me the most out of this place, is the absurd and ignorant optimism. Memphis is not UConn, it's not even a Cincy.

Translation: Happy people piss you off.

By the way, I have yet to see even the most staunch supporter of the NBE defend the Memphis acquisition. I think it was so remarkably bad that even the world's biggest optimist would say, "Yeah, that was f#$ked up..."

 

[zls44]

Translation: Happy people piss you off.

Not happy people- blindly optimistic people who have no sense of reality.

 

[UConnDan97]

Not happy people- blindly optimistic people who have no sense of reality.

Translation: Happy people who don't think like you piss you off.

Thanks for the correction!

 

[ZooCougar]

Translation: Happy people piss you off.

By the way, I have yet to see even the most staunch supporter of the NBE defend the Memphis acquisition. I think it was so remarkably bad that even the world's biggest optimist would say, "Yeah, that was f#$ked up..."

That's because we shut them up months ago.

 

[UConnDan97]

That's because we shut them up months ago.

Did you really have to shut someone up on Memphis? Really??? I'd love to know who, just for posterity's sake. It would mean that I am actually NOT the most optimistic person on the board, in which case, I'll have to start working harder...

 

[whaler11]

Translation: Happy people who don't think like you piss you off.

Thanks for the correction!

Good to see Nelson isn't the only one who can continually directly misrepresent something. They are saying what they are saying it doesn't need translation.

At least you aren't negative. Nelson is constantly negative but yet complains about negativity.

 

[UConnDan97]

Good to see Nelson isn't the only one who can continually directly misrepresent something. They are saying what they are saying it doesn't need translation.

At least you aren't negative. Nelson is constantly negative but yet complains about negativity.

The translations are not misrepresentations, unfortunately. But thanks for the compliment on positivity (seriously). That's how I want to come off when I'm posting, because I'm a "glass half full" kind of guy, even when it's a quarter full. I didn't turn the tv off when we were down by one and Scottie Burrell was ready to inbounds from the baseline...

 

[ZooCougar]

Did you really have to shut someone up on Memphis? Really??? I'd love to know who, just for posterity's sake. It would mean that I am actually NOT the most optimistic person on the board, in which case, I'll have to start working harder...

Memphis has enjoyed a cadre of supporters here over the years. Mostly by people who know nothing about Memphis.

 

[UConnDan97]

Memphis has enjoyed a cadre of supporters here over the years. Mostly by people who know nothing about Memphis.

So you're saying that you know what Rick Pitino's Boneyard handle is, then? Sweet...