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Message: [QUOTE="junglehusky, post: 1849169, member: 61"] [URL='http://www.courant.com/sports/uconn-huskies/hc-jacobs-column-big-12-expansion-1018-20161017-story.html']Jeff Jacobs: A Big 12 Circus Freak Show [/URL] [I]So a giant state corporation, one that has received some substantial tax breaks, essentially has been working against the state flagship university in conference expansion. Business is business and this doesn't make ESPN the devil. Yet any attempts to paint itself as Switzerland are also disingenuous. ESPN has plenty of clout. Look, a corporation lives where it lives. And if UConn fans want to be angry at the Worldwide Leader of Bristol, I say anger away. The locals have every right to make ESPN squirm. ... This wasn't the intent when the NCAA Division I board of directors voted in 2014 to allow the five conferences to write their own rules, like cost-of-attendance stipends, recruiting, etc. The intent was to allow the schools with the resources to use them so they wouldn't bolt yet to keep Division I together by allowing the smaller schools to afford it. The rule helped Texas and Oklahoma. The rule helped Hartford and Quinnipiac. The unintended consequence is the rule kicks the hell out of UConn and Cincinnati and Houston. Autonomy didn't address the schools that had the budget to run with the Power Five in 2014 and won't have it in 2024. Does the NCAA have the courage to re-address this massive problem? "How do we find the mid-line?" Benedict said. "Right now there isn't one. For the programs not a part of the Power Five that have the desire to compete at that level and have the potential to produce similar revenues, it's certainly a conversation that needs to be had." "There is a lot of thinking and planning to do," Herbst said. "This is not our ideal world. We're trying to keep ourselves as strong as those schools. We already feel we're Power Five and it's odd that we're not in that group given we have all their attributes. "The landscape has changed so much in the past five years. I bet there is more fluidity to come." Just don't flow back to the Big 12. They're clowns, rich clowns, but still clowns.[/I] [/QUOTE]

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