The challenge here is many of the other programs grew their football spending in advance of getting an invite. In some cases they still may have only spent what UConn is spending, but when the football first teams look and see UConn is the only FBS program spending more on basketball than football they find it hard to believe UConn takes football seriously… thinking instead how they’d allocate the money and not that UConn is trying to match P4 program basketball spending without the resources.It's so weird to me that the big thing is "UConn needs to commit to spend more on football." Well, what do you think we would do if we had an extra $20 mil per year from our conference? In fact, the best way to quickly improve the football program is to give us a full or partial share up front.
Just another scenario where UConn is doing what is right for its unique situation, but because it’s different it takes more explaining to help it make sense to others. It’s part of why leaks (to mobilize football first opposition in the Big XII and Big East nostalgists in CT) can be so damaging, it just feeds into that narrative before the explanation/education process is done, giving detractors all the excuse they need.