- Joined
- Mar 20, 2016
- Messages
- 1,631
- Reaction Score
- 14,470
No, they wouldn't. There isn't a fanbase in the country that's as fractured as UCONN's. We have football only fans. We have men's BB only fans. We have women's BB only fans. We even seem to have baseball only fans, although that fanbase seems far more limited than the other three. I can think of no other school that has various factions of its general fanbase actually rooting for other sports at the same school to fail. The only segment of the fanbase that seems commited to seeing ALL Husky teams do well are many of the alumni. You would think that might be enough to diminish all the other subfactions comprised mostly of non-alums, but for some unknown reason it doesn't seem to.
Most normal college fanbases in the country root for all the teams their favorite school puts on the fields or courts. I have actually had conversations with men's BB fans at UCONN who resent the success of the women's program because they think it detracts attention from the men's program. They also, like many in this thread, can't understand why UCONN even bothers to field a football team. Of course, these folks tend to be non-UCONN alums. The women's BB fans at UCONN are good people, but they only care about women's sports in general through their fandom with the UCONN women. Most of them have no clue what's going on with men's BB and football, or any other sports at UCONN, even other women's sports, unless they are successful. They are typically elderly males and females, disproportionately, compared with the other fractured fanbases. Men's BB fans are generally much younger and more likely to be UCONN alums, including many recent grads. The football fanbase seems to be a cross section of many groups...alums and their families, non-alums and their families, across many age brackets.
We have the craziest collective fanbase in the country. Other big land grant flagship universities don't have to deal with this. Yes, they may have certain groups of fans that prefer men's or women's sports, or prefer football over all other sports, but they aren't openly antagonistic toward the other sports programs like many narrowly focused Husky fans seem to be. Being the AD at UCONN is a daunting task. I wouldn't wish the job on anybody. Keeping all these disparate, narrow based fan factions happy must be a continuing nightmare. None of it helps UCONN while attempting to find a P5 league, because your average P5 league members don't generally have factions of fans constantly at war with each other.
How could you make a post about our fractured fanbase and not mention the fact that some fans insist on misspelling “UConn” as “UCONN”? It’s the only thing I find unforgivable.
I kid, I kid...