Our chance for a P-4 conference to want us does not rise and fall in any appreciable amount in any game. Mostly, our chances depend on how much the market values men's and women's hoops in comparison to football, and there's nothing anyone can do about that. Second on the list if fan support -- filling seats, funding NIL collectives, traveling to bowl games shows financial support, and no one doubts that any school with sufficient financial support can compete if they make good coaching decisions. Winning doesn't hurt, and losing doesn't help, but it's a distant third on the list. We were winning when we got left in the dust in the early teens. It had no effect whatsoever.
It's all about the money.
Conference realignment is
mostly about the market's perception of our value, but there are other elements as well such as protectionism and regionalism and play as well. I view criteria like crowd, size and "financial support" as being largely potential false objection rather than actual criteria. The bottom line is simply will a media partner pay sufficient funds for us to join a conference so that our shares paid for and the rest of the conference gets some type of meaningful increase. With every round of conference realignment that dollar figure has gone up and accordingly is more difficult to achieve
Here's the thing, if ESPN had decided that the big east was the conference it wanted to promote, instead of the ACC, then Connecticut would be inside the club and sitting pretty. As things stand now, we are outside the club in a world where it is increasingly more difficult to join a P4 conference. Like you, I have a healthy skepticism about our getting an invite. It's certainly not impossible, but it is certainly not "imminent" either.
Given that it is entirely out of our control, I don't worry about it. To paraphrase the immortal Doris Day, "What will be will be."
