Podcast with John Silver of The UConn Daily

[gwhuskyfan]

Hi everyone - latest episode of my podcast, The Connecticut Scoreboard Podcast is up! This episode features an interview with John Silver of The UConn Daily - the daily newsletter highlighting all things UConn athletics. John and I talk about how he thought of the idea for starting a newsletter, the feedback he's gotten on it, and take a deep dive into the future of UConn athletics. John also talks about his time on the football beat and shares a Diaco story or two.

Check it out:

 

[JohnFSilver]

Thanks!

 

[noeynox]

This one was a really good listen with some insightful stuff on Diaco, Warde, and just how unprepared the administration was for the changing landscape in conference realignment.

 

[JohnFSilver]

This one was a really good listen with some insightful stuff on Diaco, Warde, and just how unprepared the administration was for the changing landscape in conference realignment.

Thanks. That sounds good I might take a listen. LOL. Can you write my teasers?

 

[freescooter]

This one was a really good listen with some insightful stuff on Diaco, Warde, and just how unprepared the administration was for the changing landscape in conference realignment.

Imagine my surprise. Warde Manuel was a huge disaster as UConn AD. And his hiring traces back to the APR ban. If he had not been given an NCAA award for dealing with APR at Buffalo he would never have even gotten through the door. Just awful.

 

[JohnFSilver]

Imagine my surprise. Warde Manuel was a huge disaster as UConn AD. And his hiring traces back to the APR ban. If he had not been given an NCAA award for dealing with APR at Buffalo he would never have even gotten through the door. Just awful.

I thought Warde did a good job though. Missed on Diaco. There is a story there too, we didn't have time to get into it.

 

[gwhuskyfan]

I thought Warde did a good job though. Missed on Diaco. There is a story there too, we didn't have time to get into it.

Looks like we need to already get you booked to come back on!

 

[freescooter]

John

I’m sorry but if you are the AD and you have an ACC invite in your pocket and get out manuevered by Louisville the only way you can claim to have “ done a good job” is in comparison to the Captain of the Titanic or the pilot of the Hindenburg. Then you follow it up by hiring Bob Diaco and Kevin Ollie!!! You lose in the matchup with the Captain

 

[noeynox]

John

I’m sorry but if you are the AD and you have an ACC invite in your pocket and get out manuevered by Louisville the only way you can claim to have “ done a good job” is in comparison to the Captain of the Titanic or the pilot of the Hindenburg. Then you follow it up by hiring Bob Diaco and Kevin Ollie!!! You lose in the matchup with the Captain

Why is this on Ward and not Sue Herbst?

 

[Bongo Fury]

KO is a national championship coach! JC hired him Warde was hesitant to give him a contract at first. He was very successful early on.

 

[Colt house75]

Why is this on Ward and not Sue Herbst?

Agree, IMO she has never been held accountable for the decisions made by an individual reporting to her. (Warde).... and she will never face any degree of consternation because she was savvy to ensure the changes in UCONN football had the blessings of B of T...
Go back and watch the press conferences and you will repeatedly see it.

 

[buddy]

John

I’m sorry but if you are the AD and you have an ACC invite in your pocket and get out manuevered by Louisville the only way you can claim to have “ done a good job” is in comparison to the Captain of the Titanic or the pilot of the Hindenburg. Then you follow it up by hiring Bob Diaco and Kevin Ollie!!! You lose in the matchup with the Captain

Thank you for this post. It is so true!

 

[buddy]

Why is this on Ward and not Sue Herbst?

It was Jurich the AD that got Louisville to the ACC over UConn, not their President. Thus it was Warde who failed to get UConn to the ACC, not Suzie.

 

[Hoophound]

Jurich was a strong AD, Warde was not. Susan did not empower him to dig in deep on CR. Jurich was the most powerful man at UL.

 

[noeynox]

It was Jurich the AD that got Louisville to the ACC over UConn, not their President. Thus it was Warde who failed to get UConn to the ACC, not Suzie.

Silly. Jurich had been at Louisville how long? Jurich pretty much ran the entire School around the athletics program. Warde had been here how long? Was told to stand down by Sue and had Pendergast at the helm when titanic plates started shifting. Warde is a side note to the story.

 

[JohnFSilver]

It was Jurich the AD that got Louisville to the ACC over UConn, not their President. Thus it was Warde who failed to get UConn to the ACC, not Suzie.

The myth of Jurich, created by Jurich, is amazing. He somehow crafted like he alone pulled Louisville out of the fire. It was incredible myth building, and had a lot of help from his “buddy” national writers at the time.

Louisville was taken to keep Clemson and Florida State around. It was a dumb strategic move that looks silly now. It also destroyed UConn sports, unintentionally for that matter, and made them even owning the eastern seaboard impossible. Maryland, Rutgers were big ten and the acc goes west? Pure reaction to fear Clemson and FSU would leave. Also, Syracuse, BC and Pitt weren’t keen on UConn. That was a red flag for acc. Why didn’t those schools insist on UConn?

Jurich had so many media members eating out of the palm of his hand it was nauseating. Purely transactional. they pushed Louisville because Jurich gave them scoops, and UConn was notoriously difficult to report on.

On UConn: From my memory of talking to people through the years, looking back nearly 10 years out, UConn was always difficult to partner with.

Auriemma and Calhoun had such outsized personalities and i always got the sense from other administrators that the institution was difficult to work with. It was never anything specific. Maybe the other schools were jealous of the success. No idea.

I can tell you that many national media hated coming to storrs and East Hartford because they told me so.

 

[The Viking]

To me the simple answer regarding our neighbors not wanting us to join was that Syracuse, BC and Pitt didn't want UConn to be competing for the same recruits and likely feared what an already successful UConn AD would look like when getting tens of millions of dollars a year to take what they had already accomplished and multiply it, especially in football.

I have no idea what spin those 3 schools put on it behind closed doors - It certainly wouldn't have been what I just listed.

I'll always remember when the UConn/Louisville thing was up in the air, Andy Katz (I believe) writing an article and within it, an ACC president said "In the end, academics will matter". Whoops. Clearly a Duke, UNC, VA type of President.

 

[Duncan Idaho]

The myth of Jurich, created by Jurich, is amazing. He somehow crafted like he alone pulled Louisville out of the fire. It was incredible myth building, and had a lot of help from his “buddy” national writers at the time.

Louisville was taken to keep Clemson and Florida State around. It was a dumb strategic move that looks silly now. It also destroyed UConn sports, unintentionally for that matter, and made them even owning the eastern seaboard impossible. Maryland, Rutgers were big ten and the acc goes west? Pure reaction to fear Clemson and FSU would leave. Also, Syracuse, BC and Pitt weren’t keen on UConn. That was a red flag for acc. Why didn’t those schools insist on UConn?

Jurich had so many media members eating out of the palm of his hand it was nauseating. Purely transactional. they pushed Louisville because Jurich gave them scoops, and UConn was notoriously difficult to report on.

On UConn: From my memory of talking to people through the years, looking back nearly 10 years out, UConn was always difficult to partner with.

Auriemma and Calhoun had such outsized personalities and i always got the sense from other administrators that the institution was difficult to work with. It was never anything specific. Maybe the other schools were jealous of the success. No idea.

I can tell you that many national media hated coming to storrs and East Hartford because they told me so.

I'd imagine that difficulty had its roots under Lew Perkins. Dont remember him having a "Huggy Bear" personality either. Hathaway? I always think of the two bit carny hypnotist in The Natural. Read in these forums Herbst was not well liked among her peers? Hogan was a mess.

 

[ScottVib]

Ultimately it was a failure of the school administration to manage and repair the relationship with BC and the other ACC schools after they departed. (Blumenthal's lawsuit didn't help there...) The damaged relationship provided the vehicle for BC to throw up the reported road-block for what was initially supposed to be (Again, if you believe the reporting) a Syracuse - UConn add to the ACC (the move that blew up the repaired Big East). When the numbers for 'Cuse - Pitt were similar, it was an easy move to go to 'Cuse - Pitt and avoid upsetting current partners.

The damage started long before Warde's action/inaction on the last life-raft (Louisville) off the sinking ship. Beyond that though, let's face it the hoop-fans hatred of the AAC starts and stops with UConn's lack of success. It became an easy scapegoat when the men's hoop team started to struggle (oh we can't recruit in this conference..); and the football program's existence in forcing the move made it a target. If UConn had followed up the national title run, with a couple of conference titles and regular NCAA tournament/sweet 16 appearances that the men's hoop base was accustomed too, the narrative and AAC hate would've been significantly lessen and much easier to ignore by the school.

I've come around on the Independent Football status.. as ultimately I do think the school should be able to at least balance out the money they were making from the AAC. The key for the football program is to come up with a schedule that is both interesting and winnable. The attendance woes go away when you can start to come to the majority of the games and feel like the school has a chance to win (and those they don't are against interesting/well known opponents). The sad fact, is the best part of last season is the people I would attend the games with had reason to want to stay into the second half for the Illinois, Houston and ECU games, all of which were games that traditionally the folks I go to would've been pushing to leave by half-time. Flip those "hey were in this" games into wins next year and you start to have a narrative that this can work and you begin to repair the narrative that has taken hold on the program.

 

[noeynox]

Don't underestimate the meager AAC 2nd TV contract. It was a non starter for UConn. Way worse for UConn than the last Big East contract. If those numbers were more palatable and they weren't going to bury a ton of our content behind the ESPN+ paywall the AAC could have worked. UConn and schools like Memphis and Houston are not looking at that deal through the same lens because we got here from different starting points.

 

[Duncan Idaho]

We've had working relationships with area schools since CR. None with Rutgers not even baseball to my recollection.

 

[Exit 4]

Nice pod by Jared and John.

I love hearing any insight on the bizarre world of Disastro.

As for the ACC invite, I will always argue that it was never really in the bag for UConn and that had it not been Louisville they would have stalled the process to find someone else. Why? Because the ESPN tv money was crunching the numbers and felt a new market had to be added to make this work and whether we agree or not, the bean counters felt UConn didn’t deliver enough new cable boxes. In short, it was about cable boxes as much as it was about anything else like bad blood and football quality.

 

[noeynox]

Nice pod by Jared and John.

I love hearing any insight on the bizarre world of Disastro.

As for the ACC invite, I will always argue that it was never really in the bag for UConn and that had it not been Louisville they would have stalled the process to find someone else. Why? Because the ESPN tv money was crunching the numbers and felt a new market had to be added to make this work and whether we agree or not, the bean counters felt UConn didn’t deliver enough new cable boxes. In short, it was about cable boxes as much as it was about anything else like bad blood and football quality.

But what does Louisville offer that they didn't already have with Kentucky in the SEC? UConn admin fubared it.

 

[Exit 4]

But what does Louisville offer that they didn't already have with Kentucky in the SEC? UConn admin fubared it.

But Kentucky is in the SEC And I’m thinking that it was about creating a distribution to prepare for the eventual creation of an ACC channel. Now in the subsequent years the creation of such a channel has been slowed by Raycom and a changing cable market- but that was as important a consideration as anything else including football quality.

 

[Hoophound]

UConn got outmaneuvered, plain and simple. We had it in the bag. Tobacco Road was on our side and all we had to do was act serious about football and schmooze FSU and Clemson. Instead we hired a retread in Pasqualoni, let our sports clueless president do all the talking (embarrassing) and waited patiently. Jurich got out there, showed that UL was financially and culturally committed to athletics and lobbied the northern schools to push against UConn because it was best for them while lobbying the southern schools not to give Tobacco Road another vote.

It wasn’t that hard a sell for Jurich but it should have never happened. We should have hired a name coach after the Fiesta Bowl and taken our AD to a whole new level. It was clearly our fault sitting on our hands while Jurich was out lobbying. It’s been published a million times, he worked the phones, he visited ACC schools. He did it all, not just for UL but for himself. He was aggressive about achieving excellence in athletics AT UL. We seem to hire people looking to make the jump to the very highest tier of academics or athletics. Career administrators. We have long needed to hire people with a deep passion for winning AT UConn. I want people with a love for the school and an internal fire to win for our school and state. Do you see Danny Hurley’s passion and pride from admiring UConn from afar for years? He loves the passion in the state, he pounds the logo at center court the other day as a signal of unbridled passion. This guy has the determination that Jurich had at UL. A charismatic and powerful motor to get things done.

I think an empowered Dave Benedict could have gotten us into the ACC. I blame this on Susan Herbst, the best president in UConn history was weak on sports. Just the way it was.