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Purple Stein
I like to sim things.
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Add the Fenway Bowl to that graphic and it's still true!
UConn Dan
Not HuskyFanDan; I lurk & I like
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The college football equivalent of UConn’s game-winner vs. Duke and more in Mandel’s Mailbag
Plus, in the spirit of UConn-Duke, a ranking of the top five postseason finishes in college football.
www.nytimes.com
Ughhhh I’m sure Mandel said it was stupid for UConn to leave the AAC back then, but now he’s saying why mess with a good thing? lol. Because it’s for the longterm survival dimwit.
With both UConn hoops teams in the Final Four (again) and with the football program’s recent resurgence (two straight nine-win seasons), will they ever get a Power 4 invite? Seems crazy that a school that supports its sports at a high level (both hockey teams made the NCAA tournament as well) has been on the outside looking in for a decade and a half now. — John L.
What Jim Mora (now at Colorado State) pulled off there the last couple of years was remarkable. Bob Diaco and Randy Edsall (the second time) drove the program into a ditch, at which point the school sent the football team to purgatory as the price to get the hoops teams back into the Big East. Hard to argue with that decision now, given Dan Hurley quickly turned UConn back into a behemoth, Geno Auriemma may have his most dominant team yet this season and football is no longer on life support.
Because of that, I’m not sure it’s a no-brainer decision for UConn to accept a Power 4 invite if it means ditching the Big East a second time.
This first came up a couple of years ago, when Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark had expansion conversations with UConn leadership. Having just added the four Pac-12 schools, he began eying UConn as a basketball power play. It never got off the ground, as the league’s football-minded schools wanted nothing to do with it.
Around that time, I asked UConn fans whether they’d even want to join that league if it meant leaving the Big East, and was surprised at the results. While they were split, more favored it than not, seeing it as a matter of survival in a world where Power 4 football revenue dwarfs everyone else’s anything. Football relevance would be nice, too.
The better alternative, if ever offered, is the ACC. The money is roughly the same, it would keep the school in a mostly East Coast conference and Hurley’s program would reunite with former Big East foes such as Syracuse, Boston College and Pitt. That Jim Phillips’ conference hasn’t even considered it, despite its current clunky 17-team football lineup, tells you those schools, like the Big 12’s, don’t have much confidence that UConn can field a consistent Power 4 football program.
Personally, if I were UConn, I’d stay where I am. Why mess with a good thing? But a Power 4 invite, especially from the ACC, would likely prove irresistible.