So here we are on page 31, and 17 hours since the original post.
I feel kind of like it’s the aftermath of 9/11, minus any jubilation of course. Everybody is a little stunned in the immediate news. Nobody knows how this came to be and who exactly concocted this behind the scenes, and for how long. I feel like football is our early-00s position as the international moral authority; realistically dead for some time, but completely and almost openly abandoned. And we certainly are at a crossroads in the history of this AD, like there was America before and after 9/11.
I’m really happy for the basketball programs, but I really can’t feel amazing about long-term competition on television being our whole AD income, besides what we earn through winning of course (and make no mistake, I see how much better chance we now have at being a good program again). The Olympic sports will be stretched far less thinly. Baseball will likely suffer. I take it Hockey is staying where it’s at.
Have to be worried about a flagship state university doing this to football, though. I’m not crazy about football but certainly watch and care enough to pay attention to the football forum; I understand the value that simply sticking around with the “big leagues” (leaving the P5/6 debate alone) in football has. The big concern voiced is that, when the Book of P5 Revelation comes to pass and some committee forms some 64-team league outside of the NCAA, that we will not be considered, specifically because we can’t claim membership of a second-rate FBS conference where everyone knows we are the dreg. If this clean-slate scenario were to take place, East Carolina and Tulane aren’t above us on the hierarchy of schools that present value to a conference if we are at the top of the NBE and near the top of a MAC-like conference (does anyone doubt we could achieve that?). There’s always ability for UConn to be upwardly mobile at any time, granted we add sports value by winning and producing pros, due to our being a state university. We have great football facilities now. If we move down to a more regional FBS conference, we can bide our time while Basketball gets us back to being a national asset, and if/when the times comes, as we knew to be the case before, our basketball is attractive enough to get us the invite, and we can quickly upgrade in football with the insane revenue we will then be making. We really have NOTHING going for us in the AAC
