Pot calling the kettle black
The Unfortunate Truth of Basketball Success
- Thread starter Forte
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Hurley staying is massive for UConn. We were all over every single national media outlet the this past week during the NBA finals. Has our basketball brand EVER looked better? Yes, basketball does not drive the bus, but this has to help in some way. Big 12 should be very interested as a basketball heavy league.
Playing Devils Advocate from a P2-Football First perspective:
1) Why did UConn leave an FBS conference for a 1AAA one?
2) Why is UConn the only FBS school spending more on basketball than football?
3) If UConn can come up with all this money for mens and women’s basketball coaches, why don’t they invest more in football?
We as UConn fans have reasons that we believe they are/were the right moves.
To the decision makers outside of UConn… (who hold UConn’s potential to gain enhanced revenue in their hands) it’s unusual, and hits their confirmation bias that UConn must not be serious about competing in football (the sport that drives most of those conference revenues it hopes to share in). Why would they give UConn access to more revenue to continue to invest in the “wrong” sport?
Now there are answers or solutions for that question, but it’s a bit of a chicken/egg scenario: we promise we’ll invest when the revenue arrives vs. investing in the hope that the revenue follows.
1) Why did UConn leave an FBS conference for a 1AAA one?
2) Why is UConn the only FBS school spending more on basketball than football?
3) If UConn can come up with all this money for mens and women’s basketball coaches, why don’t they invest more in football?
We as UConn fans have reasons that we believe they are/were the right moves.
To the decision makers outside of UConn… (who hold UConn’s potential to gain enhanced revenue in their hands) it’s unusual, and hits their confirmation bias that UConn must not be serious about competing in football (the sport that drives most of those conference revenues it hopes to share in). Why would they give UConn access to more revenue to continue to invest in the “wrong” sport?
Now there are answers or solutions for that question, but it’s a bit of a chicken/egg scenario: we promise we’ll invest when the revenue arrives vs. investing in the hope that the revenue follows.
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I think this means UConn is a BB school first. We are no different than Kentucky, UNC, Duke, or Kansas when it comes to putting BB first. Maybe throw Indiana in there as well to get someone from BIG.
When UConn had equal footing in BCS it was very competitive very quickly.
When that money dried up, funds were prioritized and football was reduced to protect BB. That’s also same formula that pulled UConn from AAC to BE. Protect BB.
Houston, Cincy, and UCF didn’t have a program to protect so staying in AAC wasn’t an issue. They also had some levels of success that UConn didn’t.
Bottom line, put UConn FB in any P4 conf and it will become competitive. At worst they would be Kansas or Kentucky in FB. History suggests UConn would be better.
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The most worrisome aspect is that P2 programs would still be asking those questions. The answers are obvious to everyone.
"Six years ago, back when it was still “coming,” this would have been almost impossible to conceive.
UConn, stuck then in the sterile, conglomerate killjoy that was the American Athletic Conference, had seen the light go out of its basketball blueblood eyes, which were glazing over as they witnessed conference losses to the likes of Tulsa and SMU. They watched on, as these random, listless, basketball-apathetic vagabonds somehow became equals. Nothing made sense anymore.
Dan Hurley remembers “waking up in weird places, weird states,” as he told The Athletic in 2023. “Not exactly rivalry matchups like Providence and Villanova. We were in Tulsa.”
UConn men’s basketball wasn’t the program it had been from the mid-to-late 90s through 2014, the tough-as-nails northeast upstart that built itself brick-by-brick into a perennial basketball power, validated by not one, not two, but four national championships.
It had been rudely exiled and shut out of a major conference by realignment, cast aside as if its hoops dominance meant nothing, left to fend for itself on those cold, dark winter nights in Tulsa and Wichita, its future unknown, dangerously teetering on the verge of irrelevance."
Hurley had been hired to revive the program, and it seemed like he was the perfect fit. You could squint and see a younger version of Jim Calhoun roaming the sidelines, barking at everyone in sight, willing his teams to victory almost by toughness, intensity and force of personality alone.
It hasn’t been easy, but no one could have ever predicted how it would turn out.
www.courant.com
UConn, stuck then in the sterile, conglomerate killjoy that was the American Athletic Conference, had seen the light go out of its basketball blueblood eyes, which were glazing over as they witnessed conference losses to the likes of Tulsa and SMU. They watched on, as these random, listless, basketball-apathetic vagabonds somehow became equals. Nothing made sense anymore.
Dan Hurley remembers “waking up in weird places, weird states,” as he told The Athletic in 2023. “Not exactly rivalry matchups like Providence and Villanova. We were in Tulsa.”
UConn men’s basketball wasn’t the program it had been from the mid-to-late 90s through 2014, the tough-as-nails northeast upstart that built itself brick-by-brick into a perennial basketball power, validated by not one, not two, but four national championships.
It had been rudely exiled and shut out of a major conference by realignment, cast aside as if its hoops dominance meant nothing, left to fend for itself on those cold, dark winter nights in Tulsa and Wichita, its future unknown, dangerously teetering on the verge of irrelevance."
Hurley had been hired to revive the program, and it seemed like he was the perfect fit. You could squint and see a younger version of Jim Calhoun roaming the sidelines, barking at everyone in sight, willing his teams to victory almost by toughness, intensity and force of personality alone.
It hasn’t been easy, but no one could have ever predicted how it would turn out.
By declining Lakers offer, Dan Hurley proves he’s built UConn into premier basketball destination
Storrs has long been known as the ‘Basketball Capital of the World.’ But after spurning a $70 million offer to coach the Lakers in favor of chasing a three-peat, Dan Hurley proved it…
www.courant.com
Take the next step and demand we spend on FB, up your donation TO FB, write letters to those decision makers outside of UConn. I said in one of my delusional we can do it posts(maybe not delusional??), that we need to "spend like a drunken sailor on FB". DB and UConn have held serve, now it's time to serve some aces. BB is going to get theirs, now you have to overspend on FB. Which brings you to your last paragraph of your post. It has to be invest and hope the revenue follows. How long do you wait for the bus before you start walking to your destination. The bus is not coming, we have to get there under our own power.
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Except for one recent season we have been permanent members of the Bottom 10.
If we had just been on the low end of competent we might not even be in the Big East.
Zoo, you contribute thoughtfully and consistently. Do you think we can turn this around, like regularly top 25 turned around?
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Top 25? Let’s worry about getting into the Top 100 first.
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In my head, for some reason 80 is always the magic number that sticks out. Given the last decade, perhaps it's far too ambitious, but that always just seemed like where we should be inside consistently.
Yeah, crawl before you walk, I get it. My hope is 8-4 this year. Where does that put us?
Weeks 14 Coaches Poll 2023
20. Liberty
24. Tulane
25 James Madison
Tell me we can't be better than those 3 programs
The concern I have is the QB for 2024 will be unproven. It could take a couple of games to get up to game speed. The goal is to be above 500 ( winning record for each year) for the next 5 years. This is a significant improvement over the past 10 years.
I would be willing to bet we over all spend significantly less on FOOTBALL than them. Especially Liberty and James Madison.
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Certainly on coaching staffs.
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Sure we can possibly be better than those 3 teams. There were still 123 other teams which were ranked higher than us last year. We have a long way to go even with a winning record with our schedule. For some comparisons:
49 Boise State 8-6
52 New Mexico State 10-5
54 Rutgers 7-6
58 App State 9-5
68 BCU 7-6
74 W. Kentucky 8-5
77 Syracuse 6-7
84 South Florida 7-6
127 UConn 3-9
Which is the obvious problem. If in fact we are "all in", we have to spend "like a drunken sailor" on FB. In the NIL era, you are not bound to a scholarship of tuition, room, board and fees. We have to overpay(NIL) for the kid that Alabama would like to have, but we need to have. We have to overspend to get and keep coaching talent. A previous thread asked, is this an investment chasing results, or results chasing investment? Clearly it is the former. Private Equity locks up your money for 5 years or so with the hope/claim/promise of outsized returns at the end of that time. You could get burned, but the return if you have "chosen wisely" is huge, 8-12x. We have to be willing to invest with modest expectations in the short term, for the long haul. Rule #1 is always lurking around the corner though. Treading water cannot be an option. And yes, "money doesn't grow on trees."
8-4 is my dream goal for this season. Looks like that would get us ranked 50-80. I'm guessing 6-6 might be around 100? Both represent progress. Keep investing $$ from there.