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Message: [QUOTE="ninety-nine, post: 5065939, member: 5497"] I get that it serves the Big East's interest to hang onto UConn as long as possible, even if it means we get frozen out of big-time sports in the long run and our programs get left behind. But keep in mind that it was the private Catholic non-FBS schools that, for understandable reasons, made the decision to leave the Big East and split from the FBS schools (acknowledging Georgetown was the only one who voted against it). The Big East with football was GREAT for UConn. But 10 years after UConn had, at the Big East's behest, upgraded its football program at tremendous expense, including building a state-funded stadium, the non-football-schools essentially flipped the script on us. They put a gun to UConn's head and made us choose between dropping FBS football and pretty much just taking a loss on that entire investment (which was going very well at the time), or trying to go our own way while retaining football. We did not want to be in either situation, but we made the logical choice, and the AAC wound up being a poor cultural fit for us, especially after Louisville got poached. All of our sports programs suffered (except women's hoops maybe). It certainly helped both UConn and the Big East for us to rejoin in 2020, but it's not like the Big East didn't write very onerous terms into UConn's contract that account for the likelihood that UConn would eventually leave for a suitable football-playing conference. It's not unreasonable for UConn to try to survive and be what it wants to be, which is a state flagship university that has top-flight sports programs, including football. Other states get to do that. Why not us? UConn fans love the Big East rivalries, but the remaining schools are fundamentally very different from UConn, and we can't be in the same exact boat forever. [/QUOTE]

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