Report: UConn Going To Big East For 2020-2021 Season

[olehead]

P5'ers must know that college basketball as understood from an NCAA amateurism perspective has gone the way of the dodo. Just look at the same few schools consistently dominating the draft w/ a convenient smoketrail, but never quite a fire of violations.Getting caught is the cost of doing business big, final fours, draft choices, rinse repeat.

So, what I'm saying is don't hang your hat on the P5. Those guys in 5-10 years will no longer waste their time feigning amateurism and the cost of P5 admission will be more than a notion. Just watch Houston. Big time booster/owner, they draw, keep expenses low and they beat in-state P5 in football and basketball. They will be P5 players down the road.

 

[brasssbonanzaa]

Also can't be overlooked that this move is as much an indictment on the AAC for failing to build the conference in a sustainable way to position itself as a true power conference. While some additions were stong net positives (Houston, Memphis, UCF), the additions at the bottom of the league were so catastrophic and shortsighted (Tulane, ECU, Tulsa) that no one could take the league seriously as a power conference.

It also hamstrung the TV deal, added unnecessary travel for everyone, and watered down the overall product. The fact that removing those three schools from the conference would be seen as a HUGE step up for the league is all you need to know about how bad of an idea they were.

 

[CL82]

This is program saving move. Kudos to UConn for doing this now before it's too late.

Depends what happens to football. It may be surrender. That doesn't help any of our programs long term.

 

[uconngb]

The points he made are valid ones but the more I think about it - this sets us up to be a basketball powerhouse again !

Not so sure I agree w that. When I passed on what I heard from the Prov guy, who is very real and very connected, he damn near called me a fool.

Who’s the fool now?

 

[Pudge]

shrug … no one is going to walk away from the 100's of millions invested in Football.

If you find yourself wishing that … you are an idiot. Though, many of us have been reading that for a decade now from you.

 

[FrostyNuggets]

I do not see this as a great day, see it more as the culmination of 15 years of poor leadership. In that time, Louisville went from C-USA to the ACC. UConn, with a better hand, went from the Big East to the A10.

Wish I could see it differently, but I cannot.

 

[CL82]

Start buying up UConn/AAC gear; soon to be retro like UConn/Big East gear was.

Ya know.... I'm not so sure. You don't see people buying "Call of the Wild" helmets. Some things are better off forgotten.

 

[UconnU]

Thank god I can finally stop pretending to like this conference.

 

[JimHurley]

GREAT move for the program.

The P5 invite was never coming with the state of our football program. Houston, Cincy, and maybe even UCF were all getting the invite before us. Football rules all and we don’t have it.

I’m as big a fan as any and while I still attended every game, I couldn’t get excited for just about any matchup other than Cincy. It just wasn’t the same. Now I’ll be looking forward to every game, yes even Creighton, Butler, and DePaul. UConn is a basketball school and now we’re back in the conference we belong in.

 

[Madmannsucks]

They were almost there or have you not watched the worst team in FBS the last year.

I watched with diminishing optimism....

 

[Dooley]

Depends what happens to football. It may be surrender. That doesn't help any of our programs long term.

Sadly, college hoops (in general) is toast. Top recruits go play for whatever schools pay them. Only P5 schools have money. You can see the shift in top recruits already...garbage SEC programs sitting on mountains of cash are pulling in 5-stars that they never dreamed of a few years ago. Memphis has booster backing. UConn does not. And now that we're officially mid-major, we will never be able to recruit the top players. Also, now that we play on channels that nobody watches, we have far less recruiting exposure to those 3-star kids that don't hand their recruiting coaches a bill for their services.

And all that is before the NBA figures out what to do with one-and-done nonsense.

 

[InKembaITrust]

I'm sorry, but do we all forget how UConn went from a small regional school to a nationally recognized athletic powerhouse?.....Basketball.

We are not a top football school and probably never will be. Call it short-sighted if you want, but this move to the NBE Is enormous for basketball, and thus UConn Athletics as a whole. The timing is perfect with Hurley's early tenure.

Besides Football I doubt any other sports will be effected in a major way.

 

[CL82]

Is it too early to start drinking?

It's a Saturday, so is there really too early a time to start?

 

[husky429]

I know many people disagree with me. That's okay. I do hope that the remaining UConn fans will be happy. It was a fun ride while it was here. We almost made it to the P5 and athletic relevance. Heckuva shot.

Wow. Won't miss this melodrama.

 

[Pudge]

Also can't be overlooked that this move is as much an indictment on the AAC for failing to build the conference in a sustainable way to position itself as a true power conference. While some additions were stong net positives (Houston, Memphis, UCF), the additions at the bottom of the league were so catastrophic and shortsighted (Tulane, ECU, Tulsa) that no one could take the league seriously as a power conference.

It also hamstrung the TV deal, added unnecessary travel for everyone, and watered down the overall product. The fact that removing those three schools from the conference would be seen as a HUGE step up for the league is all you need to know about how bad of an idea they were.

Football should be regional. WE should be able to bump into our conference opponents. Not internet anger.

Buffalo & UMASS & TEMPLE & ARMY & NAVY & even Old Dominion … sound better than flying over a lot of stuff to Play Tulsa or Tulane or SMU. Florida always makes sense for Northeast people.

This, ultimately, is about the poor reception of the new AAC TV contract.

 

[Stinger92860]

Can we pump the breaks? As I said in the other thread, we have two sources -- a "sports marketer" whose Twitter bio says he is an "entrepreneur." And @Chief00.

God bless chief and his briefs, but I'm gonna need more than these two jabronis...

Incorrect. @uconngb broke this first

UConn to the NBE?

I know I'll get crucified for this thread, but just passing along something I heard today, because it came from a very credible source. Largest private donor at Providence, directly involved in their athletic department and knows Tranghese well (who he says UConn hired as a consultant at some...

the-boneyard.com

 

[Lefty2one]

Football did not hurt our athletic department - the head in the sand attitude people had about the reality of football driving the bus caused us to upgrade a decade later than we should have.

I don't think even that was that big of a deal. The football program made amazing strides in its first decade in D1. We were a fringe Top 25 program and made a BCS bowl and were putting a healthy amount of guys into the NFL. We were a respectable program; we just botched the ever living out of realignment. Someone had to get left out when the music stopped and it was us.

I still think it all boils down to the 2005 mess and Boston College blocking us. If we played nice back then, we'd be in the ACC right now. Hell, it was written by several outlets that during the 2013 alignment there wasn't a "more ACC school out there" than UConn.

 

[Waquoit]

Not true - and actually, ridiculously dumb.

Football did not hurt our athletic department - the head in the sand attitude people had about the reality of football driving the bus caused us to upgrade a decade later than we should have.

You mean football isn't the reason we're in a silly conference?

 

[Jaker]

This is a positive for every Uconn sport, except football

 

[mdkhusky]

Well said. I've always enjoyed your posts Fishy.

Can you please deactivate my Dooley Boneyard account? I'm going back to casual lurking for the interim and eventual disconnect from all things UConn. Thanks!

How bad do you want attention

 

[Husk04ies]

Jim Boeheim: UConn Returning To Big East 'Great' For School And League

UConn's return to the Big East for basketball and other sports would be "great" for the school and the league, Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim said.

www.forbes.com

 

[skies88]

Yeah, because going to Greenville, Tulsa, and Texas twice is a lot better.

So you're rebutting 3 far away mediocre programs with 3 different mediocre programs - 1 being driving distance in greenville, 1 being an smu team that beats us every year, 1 being a tulsa team we've beaten twice in 5 years, and 1 being houston. I love this program and want to see progress, not a lateral move to satisfy nostalgia.

 

[CL82]

The American definitely hurt basketball. It didn't have the ability to hurt it as badly as Kevin Ollie did, but it definitely hurt.

But this is bad for football and baseball - really bad.

It also slams the door on ever joining a revenue conference. I think we will live to regret this.

This is my great fear. Let's see if they can pull a rabbit out of the hat for football. If Fox gives us some broadcast games and maybe encourages scheduling alliances, and SNY pick up the broadcast rights to everything not on one of the Fox networks and does so for a decent nut... maybe we position ourselves as a unique brand different than the rest of of the G5. There's a whole lot of ifs in there. I know that.

 

[UConnStats]

Sadly, college hoops (in general) is toast. Top recruits go play for whatever schools pay them. Only P5 schools have money. You can see the shift in top recruits already...garbage SEC programs sitting on mountains of cash are pulling in 5-stars that they never dreamed of a few years ago. Memphis has booster backing. UConn does not. And now that we're officially mid-major, we will never be able to recruit the top players. Also, now that we play on channels that nobody watches, we have far less recruiting exposure to those 3-star kids that don't hand their recruiting coaches a bill for their services.

And all that is before the NBA figures out what to do with one-and-done nonsense.

If you really think our recruiting won’t improve you’re wrong. Enjoying the pity party though.

 

[DefCONNOne]

We were making BCS bowl games during the realignment talks and they didn’t even think about adding us. As soon as the Big East added us in football teams started leaving.

Now you're just trolling.