Politics and the media framed Louisville as the underdog. Makes no strategic sense, but they got the pop they wanted. Considering what has happened since then with that AD department inclusion in the ACC is embarassing.
Here are the three most important things to conference realignment:
KU's all-time record in football is 588-650-58 (.476). Since 1890, KU has won six (6) bowl games. They are Rutgers-level bad historically. Worse even.
Kansas Jayhawks football - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
A KU departure to the Big 10 (which I don't think would happen, you don't leak to the press you have a call to the Big 10 if it was legit being considered), would basically mean Big 12 is dead so Aresco and AAC leadership could rest easy. The AAC members obviously would have no where to go, though.
Are your last two sentences accurate? My guess is that would be hard to judge with UConn switching conferences and Kansas staying in the same conference. If in the same conference I would imagine UConn would bring more eyeballs considering CT. has a larger population and the NYC and Boston markets and Kansas has Kansas.
I went to the bowl game in Birmingham. The South Carolina fans were chanting "SEC!" in our hotel. I remember thinking we're not playing the SEC we're playing you guys.
Take off your blue tinted glasses. UConn football is the laughing stock of FBS level and has been for a decade. Kansas has at least been able to bring in big time brand name coaches, and while it didn’t work out it shows they are serious about trying to keep their football program alive.
yeah, because the tv markets in lawrence and morgantown have execs drooling at the mouth.
The UC regents would never let UCLA leave for the big12. PAC is also a much better football conference than big12 w/o Texas and OU. Don’t think adding any of the second tier big12 schools helps the PAC, let big12 absorb the best aac teams.
Also, I’ll add that UConn football went independent at the WORST possible time for this to happen. Now that the free market has decided that the media rights for UConn football are worth barely 7 figures (which includes r those big “draw” games against current P5 opponents you mentioned) every school president in the Big10 and ACC are going to ask why they would cut UConn football a $35 Million check each year when the market says the product is hardly worth $1M? The people in charge of realignment aren’t doing this for charity and they aren’t stupid either.
I mean, UConn didn't go independent right away. We tried to go B12 recently and definitely back channeled with ACC repeatedly. They didn't want us, because they already knew the football was worthless. We didn't mistakenly put a value on an unknown but possibly valuable property. Everyone knew it was shitake.
Do you guys not get this? TV markets aren’t important. Fan bases are. Everything is digital now. On a fall Saturday afternoon in the central CT tv market, I doubt UConn football even cracks the top 5 of CFB games watched...
Yeah, that's kind of my point. If we were in the AAC, we would have been left in an even more pathetic conference for both football and basketball.
What I get is that adding Kansas and/or WVU would be dilutive. Neither school adds any value. Although, maybe you should reach out to The Ohio State University and tell them WVU's reach is all the way to Nashville. That should be music to their ears.
