Whaler,
What is uconn's realistic best case?
Whaler,
What is uconn's realistic best case?
Alums at Northwestern or Duke vanderbilt or wherever can look down their noses at state schools till the cows come home, the presidents are still driving the bus and they're not going to turn down truckloads of free money.
Their realistic best case is that they are invited to join a power conference at some point in time.
How?
You attack everyone else, but never take a position yourself. How is UConn going to end up in a different league? What is going to change between now and 10 years from now to make a major conference add the Huskies?
If you don't think it is more realistic than not that UConn, in 10 years, is in a major conference then you should just stop posting.
Things that we know will happen in the next 10 years:
Things that are likely to happen in the next 10 years:
[ ]+ 8,000 undergrads
[ ]A significantly larger endowment
[ ]Significant new educational infrastructure and research capability
[ ]New hockey arena/program
[ ]New basketball practice facility
[ ]A new/upgraded bball facility (either in conjunction with the required hockey arena, or as a result of HCC upgrades/rebuild
[ ]Addition to Rentschler (we have a recognition of its short-comings up through the AD)
[ ]AAU
[ ]Potentially more undergraduates (I saw a plan a number of years that called for 40-50k undergrads ultimately)
deja vu...Their realistic best case is that they are invited to join a power conference at some point in time.
You're asking the wrong question. The people hopeful for government intervention keep couching it in terms of equality among respective in-state schools when that hasn't ever been a concern of politicians at all (including the way most states explicitly fund their flagships at a much higher level than commuter and directional public universities).
There's also something much more basic that's the real question: what Senator in his or her right mind is every going to actually vote for a law that would take money AWAY from their home state universities (who they are otherwise constantly trying to win government pork for) and send that money to Washington? Taking money away from state entities (which public universities are) and sending it to Washington is already an automatic loser for every Republican, regardless of whether he or she represents a BCS state. Heck - that concept isn't even popular with most Democrats right now.
Once again - does anyone think that these politicians that keep fighting for federal research funds to send back to their public universities on the one hand are actually going to suddenly vote to take away money from them on the basis of extremely popular sports teams on the other hand? That's essentially what the pro-government interventionists are saying and it makes no sense when you take a step back from it and look at it from the perspective of anyone that isn't specifically aggrieved by this. Yes, I'd expect UConn and Boise supporters to be pissed (for good reason), but I'm not seeing how that translates into broad support for a measure that, at the end of the day, is a transfer of state money to Washington (which is simply a deal killer for most politicians regardless of personal school allegiances).
We all know the resume. How is it going to happen? Why are things going to be different in 5 or 10 years? I gave a handful of credible avenues for this to happen. I think the top tier academic schools will either prevent a break or leave the P5 if a break happens. I think the P5 could not be more dead from an anti-trust perspective if they try to break free. The tax exempt thing cuts both ways. It could hold the P5 in place, but could also reduce the benefit of a school like UConn to continue to invest in their program.
How?
You attack everyone else, but never take a position yourself. How is UConn going to end up in a different league? What is going to change between now and 10 years from now to make a major conference add the Huskies?
The other point you miss is that average fans don't root for the P5 to destroy the rest of the athletic programs. A Michigan fan might want to see tOSU's athletic program burned to the ground, but that same Michigan fan knows people that went to EMU, CMU and WMU, and may have gone to one of those schools himself. He doesn't want to see them hurt, or he is at the least indifferent. He is certainly not rooting for their demise, as you seem to think.
So Senators are not going to line up to destroy their second tier programs just because Alabama wants it to happen. Frankly, most of them would prefer more schools in the mix than less.
How?
You attack everyone else, but never take a position yourself. How is UConn going to end up in a different league? What is going to change between now and 10 years from now to make a major conference add the Huskies?
Jim Delany has now weighed in on the topic as well. It is starting to sound like the P5 commisioners had a private meeting to discuss this topic. They have all made the topic of NCAA reform an important point at the conference meetings. Also, it is interesting to note that they have all said very, very similar things and have even used the same key words when describing the topic of NCAA reform and gave a similar time frame for implementing the new NCAA reform. A second interesting point is that they have not given any indication as to which conferences or schools will be included, or what guidelines will be used to create a new division. I think it will be very interesting to see the the AAC has to say about this topic during conference meetings next week and hopefully we will have a better understanding of the changes to come.
http://espn.go.com/college-sports/s...mmisioner-jim-delany-pitches-ncaa-reform-plan
We'll have to agree to disagree about this. You're phrasing it as "rooting for the demise" of non-power schools, but what I see is indifference. Believe me: the average sports fan in the State of Michigan will absolutely let EMU/CMU/WMU wallow in obscurity if it means more national championships for Michigan in football and Michigan State in basketball. They already know that the MAC schools won't ever compete with the Big Ten schools (and people in the South know that C-USA will never compete with the SEC and ACC schools), so it's doubtful that they'd see any purpose of taxing their own home public universities where that money is going to be spent in Washington as opposed to Ann Arbor or East Lansing.
This leads to the other point: it's not as if though taxing the Alabamas of the world suddenly means that money gets shifted from Bama to UAB. If that were the case, then there *might* be some populist support for government taxation of university athletic departments, but that is clearly NOT what would happen. Instead, that money is getting shifted from Bama to those "evil tax and spend liberals that keep infringing upon states' rights" in Washington, DC. Outside of the Northeast (which generally doesn't care about college sports except for certain pockets), I'm not seeing any viable political support for that position. I think you greatly overestimating politicians' aptitude to allow for a single penny of taxes assessed upon state institutions so that it can get transferred out of their own home states to Washington, regardless of whether we're talking about public university sports or, even better, university-run medical centers that actually generate way more revenue than even the largest athletic departments. (Take a step back and think about that one - how many universities are going to be willing to open *that* Pandora's box regarding medical center revenue? The UABs of the world that don't have big athletic departments but take in hundreds of millions of dollars in medical center revenue that generate immense paper profits aren't exactly going to be in a rush to start distinguishing what are "for profit" ventures at non-profit universities for tax purposes.) At the same time, I think that you're greatly underestimating just how much more popular the power schools are within their home states in every region outside of the Northeast - there's just no comparison. Taking money away from SEC, Big Ten, Pac-12 and Big 12 schools to send it to Washington would certainly be political suicide for any politician from those states.
We're not even getting into the logistical fact that this Congress can't get even widely popular bills passed these days due to partisanship and special interests. Good luck trying to find a filibuster-proof majority (as getting 50% plus 1 vote means nothing in Washington since those types of bills don't get to floor no matter which party is in charge) to support a measure that's going to be inherently unpopular with a group with a LOT more power, influence and passion (the power conferences and their respective home states) versus a group that have a lot fewer supporters with a lot less passion by comparison (the non-power schools in general). The NRA leverages a lot smaller group based on passion alone to shoot down what are otherwise widely popular bills (as the problem is that the popularity is with people that are a lot less passionate about the issue and they don't have any centralized lobbying power... unlike, say, hmmm... the Association of American Universities that the Big Ten kind of thinks is important and a majority of its members are power conference members).
Trying to argue that power conference schools should be taxed is an even worse false hope for non-power schools than the misguided wish for an antitrust lawsuit. Anyone in the non-power realm right now should only concentrate on rising up to meet the new standards that are going to get put into place. If the last two decades of the Bowl Alliance and BCS should have taught anyone anything, it's that outside help isn't coming (and anyone that waits around for outside help is going to get steamrolled into irrelevance).
I would like to see all three New England programs grow and thrive, as well as North Eastern football in general. Your right it has been done, and it can be done again. That was a very insightful, well thought out piece of writing! Hats off to you. We had our chance in the early days of the BIG EAST, if it would have been a YEA instead of a NEY to Penn St., and then went after Maryland, just imagine ....the Great North East Conf.I'm O.K. with an Eagle that gets it. Unless B.C. is in a region that develops some worthwhile football competition it will become marginalized in the ACC. It already has been in many respects. Other than hockey, B.C. has been uniformly not competitive in sports. Unfortunately, the ACC doesn't have a hockey conference let alone care one iota about it.
The real and only issue for P-5 consideration is football --- it drives the financial bus of inter-collegiate sports. Let's face it the northeast is going to struggle against the south and the southwest for football notoriety as it is. We don't need to be divisive among ourselves, but let's be real about the current P-5 members from the northeast for a moment. Do you think that B.C. will ever consistently thrive in the ACC competing against FSU, Clemson, VT etc. in the long term, if it remains an isolated outpost of D-1 football in New England? What are the chances that B.C.'s position will be enhanced by the presence of Syracuse, Pitt, Rutgers in the northeast? You'll see that Syracuse brings good hoops to the ACC (they were second to UConn in the BE for years.) In football - not so much, heck the upstart Huskies beat them 5 straight years (2007-2011) by average score of 35-15! Pitt? A genuine national champion in football --- 37 years ago! And not much of anything since. Rutgers --- well, enough said!
The biggest problem the northeast D-1 schools are going to have in the future is maintaining relevance in the national conversation about football. BB will be fine and the ACC will be the best hoops conference in the country (until the B1G takes UConn), but I don't think hoops matters a lot. If it did, UConn would have been the first one poached from the old BE. It's football, football, football! Until the schools in the northeast, as a group, become more competitive then northeast football will languish. (I don't care what conference you're in.) For that purpose all D-1 schools from the northeast should support the development of region-wide competence in football. Only then will recruiting become easier and the schools will be more attractive to kids from the football rich south and southwest. The recruiting numbers don't lie. In all of New England, approx. 15,000,000 people, there were 21 D-1 scholarship kids. 10 from CT and MA each and 1 from RI. That's it! Add NY, PA, and NJ (population of approx. 41,000,000) you add 146 for a total of 167 D-1 players from the northeast (56,000,000 population base). Compare that to the numbers from TX, Fla, GA -=- 346, 332 and 184 respectively - total of 862 D-1 players from a population of roughly the same - 56,000,000.
You say enough with numbers. However, you can see that you have to convince kids from the south to come to school in the north to have any shot of developing northeast football at an elite level. The only way to do that is to have a thriving, competitive regional presence and an exciting brand of football. This will help create a national buzz about the sport in the northeast and that will attract athletes. Daunting task? You bet it is! But how the hell did Nebraska do it? A state that loves football, but works off a population base of 1,500,000 with only 5 D-1 recruits state-wide this year. It gets players from other football rich regions.
It will take awhile, but I think it can be done. The only question is whether the effete northeast fan base can embrace college football like it has been elsewhere. It did before --- this is where college football got its start.
Out of all the people on the boneyard, Mr. "UConn should jettison football to the MAC and suck up to Providence and Seton Hall to play basketball in the Catholic league instead of being the big fish in the AAC" is the one to post this????? Muhammed and Buddha. Right now we have a non-zero chance of joining Division 4 / Super FBS but if Herbst decided to take waylon's advice we'd have absolute zero.WE ALL GET THAT UCONN IS SCREWED. YOU DO NOT NEED TO KEEP TELLING US!!!!!!!!
We don't need another 2000 word essay on how we are screwed, unless you have something really original to say, which you don't.
Well at least they'll die rich. I'd love for UConn to be able to wipe its tears with 20 million a year.This really is a bad long term idea. It generates no new fans, alienates the 10-15% of fans who are loyal to the Gang of Five, and will turn off a population that dislikes the idea of paying players.
They are only going to play each other? Are Wake, Wazzu and Iowa State going to play 12 road games? How can dozens of schools sustain 8 game home slates?
Fans of schools that win 9-10 games like clockwork are going to be fun to watch adjusting to 6-7 wins.
The dregs who go 5-7 beating FCS and MAC teams are going to be real popular with 2 and 3 win seasons.
Most of our old Big East friends will die in that world: Rutgers, Syracuse, Boston College... They would be lucky to get bowl eligible 1 year out of 3 if they only play within the Big 5.
I think the idea is to create a separate division so that only power 5 schools can compete in the postseason playoff/bowls and don't have to split revenue with the mid major conferences. The current mid major conferences will either stay where they are and form their own playoff/bowl structure or drop down to FCS or drop football completely. Teams will still schedule non power teams out of conference similar to how current FBS schools schedule FCS schools, and there will probably be rules on how many of those teams each power 5 team can schedule per season.This really is a bad long term idea. It generates no new fans, alienates the 10-15% of fans who are loyal to the Gang of Five, and will turn off a population that dislikes the idea of paying players.
They are only going to play each other? Are Wake, Wazzu and Iowa State going to play 12 road games? How can dozens of schools sustain 8 game home slates?
Fans of schools that win 9-10 games like clockwork are going to be fun to watch adjusting to 6-7 wins.
The dregs who go 5-7 beating FCS and MAC teams are going to be real popular with 2 and 3 win seasons.
Most of our old Big East friends will die in that world: Rutgers, Syracuse, Boston College... They would be lucky to get bowl eligible 1 year out of 3 if they only play within the Big 5.
Aresco has made it clear that he is not a party to these conversations and would like to be BFF's with Delaney and Slive.Jim Delany has now weighed in on the topic as well. It is starting to sound like the P5 commisioners had a private meeting to discuss this topic. They have all made the topic of NCAA reform an important point at the conference meetings. Also, it is interesting to note that they have all said very, very similar things and have even used the same key words when describing the topic of NCAA reform and gave a similar time frame for implementing the new NCAA reform. A second interesting point is that they have not given any indication as to which conferences or schools will be included, or what guidelines will be used to create a new division. I think it will be very interesting to see the the AAC has to say about this topic during conference meetings next week and hopefully we will have a better understanding of the changes to come.
http://espn.go.com/college-sports/s...mmisioner-jim-delany-pitches-ncaa-reform-plan
Well at least they'll die rich. I'd love for UConn to be able to wipe its tears with 20 million a year.
I think the idea is to create a separate division so that only power 5 schools can compete in the postseason playoff/bowls and don't have to split revenue with the mid major conferences. The current mid major conferences will either stay where they are and form their own playoff/bowl structure or drop down to FCS or drop football completely. Teams will still schedule non power teams out of conference similar to how current FBS schools schedule FCS schools, and there will probably be rules on how many of those teams each power 5 team can schedule per season.
The current powers that be absolutely hate seeing teams like Northern Illinois and Hawaii and even Boise State getting into BCS games because they generally don't bring as many fans and don't attract as many casual viewers as a highly ranked power 5 school would. If the Orange Bowl last year featured FSU vs. Oklahoma or Florida the ratings would've been substantially higher than FSU vs. NIU. The only solution is completely shutting out these teams from making the big bowls.