When did you become a UConn fan? Many of us dealt with years of mid-level 1AA football with a couple of playoff games thrown in. We were the dregs of Big East basketball, cupcakes of the conference. A good public school in a region where not going to a private college meant your parents didn't have cash.
Look where the university stands right now. The campus has been transformed over the past 20 years and Storrs Center will fill the biggest demand of future/present students. Academics have strengthened considerably. We're sitting on a packed trophy case. We have a relatively new 40k seat stadium, elite football facilities and soon-to-be elite basketball facilities. Plans to continue to upgrade the olympic facilities. And an alumni base that is growing quickly - 70-80% increase in enrollment over the past 20 years.
2013 will be a fun year, still have a few teams worth playing against in the conference. 2014? Who knows what the conference landscape will look like by then. If you want to give up now but come running back when we get invited to the ACC or B1G, what kind of statement is that about you?
This is one of the more intelligent things I"ve read around here lately. Especially that first paragraph, because it's absolutely true. In Connecticut, up until the current century, if you were going to UConn.......well there were reasons, and it had to do with not being able to afford any of the multiple other private schools in the northeast and the facilities (aside from the brand new Gampel in 1990) reflected it. The library was in a big plastic bag for years, because bricks were falling off of it. When it rained, and you wanted to go for a run in the field house, the roof leaked and you had to watch out for wet spots on the track. The hockey rink was open air, and had bird frozen into the ice. Memorial stadium field, was the best athletic surface and arena (prior to Gampel) on campus. 1-AA football had been instituted in the late 1970s. Cost-containiment athletics in theory was an epic fail.
The daily campus had regular cartoons in it about falling off the sidewalks on campus into bottomless pits of mud. That has all changed. The school is now a destination top notch public university, and in architecture, appearance, design, and in academics purely - is a very, very nice school.
Thanks for the perspective. The great difficulty lies, in moving forward, is that the phenomenal growth of Husky Mania, which undoubtedly has fueled the growth of the university, in the past two decades- on the national stage of the college landscape, centered on the success of the men's basketball program in the Big East conference, and the Big East conference is no more. It leaves a big wide unknown, and what now question. Are people still going to be interested? Is it UConn itself, and the coaches, athletes, students, and average non-affiliated to the university UConn fans that made it what it is, or was it the big east conference that made Husky Mania? We shall see. I'm confident that UConn can live without the big east conference as it was. In the current landscape of intercollegiate athletics, the only - ONLY driving force is securing the best media rights deal you can get to bring athletic department revenue into your university. With that in mind, and I've spent a long, long time researching this over the past several years, I'm confident that our leadership has done a detailed evaluation of our product, our market, and our needs, and is going to do the best it can for our university based on that goal.
It is certainly the case, that there are conference affiliations, that would absolutely be more beneficial than others, for UConn. To date, it certainly appears that we have not been extending the opportunity to join such an arrangement, and I absolutely would prefer to be a member of the big 10 conference. My ideal, would be a conference that included a division of major public, football playing institutions in teh northeast. COllege educations are going to go through some kind of evolution in the future, the cost is just so out of hand. Public universities are going to lead the way. The cost of a private education undergraduate degree is astronomical. Athletics, and the revenue around athletics can be used to change that and make college sports really about what it's supposed to be about - education.
moving on...
(sorry women's hoops fans, but as huge as women's hoops is locally, it's simply not the national draw to the school).....but with the phenomenal success of the women's hoops program and the local following, you've got huge interest in the university that grew out of the ashes of the mud in the 1980s for that program too, which added to the university's growth. THe women's hoops program was less dependant, much less than the men's program on the big east for it's success, and next in line to that was football. THe football big east conference of the 1990's that existed when we were invited to join, was long gone, before we ever played a big east game. The football program, for many reasons, a little over a decade into 1-A existence, is still starting from scratch in finding a stable home, as was predicted would be the case with the upgrade, way back in the feasibility reports back in 1996. THe football program will continue to draw fans, because so many are invested now, the uconn brand name, is strong locally, and scheduling, is very, very important, and connecting with the existing fan base is very very important in the coming years. As far as I can tell, tehy're trying, although as each day passes, and our future football schedules remain open, I get concerned. But football, is going to continue,a nd we've got our best home schedule ever as 1-A in 2013....beyond that? Still waiting.
That leaves men's basketball. Major crossroads. The biggest piece of the puzzle for me right now, is the conference tournament at Madison Square Garden. THat is so huge right now. Having that week, at the end of every season, to play ball on the floor of MSG, has been part of UConn hoops for a long, long time, and we need it to continue. We aren't going to have the same playing partners anymore in a conference tournament, but having that week in the Garden, regardless of who opponents are, to look forward to every year based on the regular season is so big, and basketball - the NCAA tourney, unlike football postseason, is all about competition on the court....so in a weaker conference, we actually have a much better shot at being eligible for that NCAA tournament every year, and as we all know, once you get there, and start dancing, anything can happen.
I think every UConn alumni, from the 1990s or prior should take a trip up to UConn and see what's there now, the only landmark left that you can orient yourself with if you went there before Gampel was finished, is the library, and even that is hard to recognize.
Back to what made me respond - the post - I wonder, many times, looking at the campus now, if I would have been able to afford to go to UConn now. Athletics, and the revenue aroudn athletics can be used in the future, to make sure that kind of question doesn't really have to be asked, to separate prospective students, and I hope we find a home with like minded institutions.
