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Message: [QUOTE="nelsonmuntz, post: 4618033, member: 833"] One point I would make is that UConn's rise coincided with a major recession in Connecticut in the late 1980's. UConn went from being a safety school to a target for many middle class and upper middle class families as the Connecticut economy took a big hit from the post-Cold War cuts in defense spending and a fairly deep recession in the late 80's into the early 90's. As Connecticut came out of that recession, the political support for the school increased significantly. Part of it was more kids from affluent communities going to UConn, and part of it was the success of the basketball teams. After that, the support started rolling in from the state government, non-UConn alums that liked the hoops program, and regional businesses. UConn 2000 cemented the rise of UConn from a regional afterthought to a respected national university. The 1990's were great for Connecticut, as insurance and Wall Street had a spectacular decade, more than compensating for the loss of manufacturing jobs. That enabled the state to write some checks into UConn to un-dumpify the place. Put another way, if UConn was the same spithole in 1996 that it was in 1986, Calhoun and Auriemma would not have stuck around as long as they did. There was a confluence of events that enabled UConn to not just get a coach like Calhoun, but to hold onto him. [/QUOTE]