What’s your solution?

[upstater]

I love how people are impatient and want the P5 upheaval to happen immediately. Me, I need UConn bball and football to improve enough to become a viable entity by, say, 2022 when the conversations will start to happen.

 

[nelsonmuntz]

The Big East is on the wrong side of the split too. Their current status is fool's good.

I have been hearing the Big East basketball conference is going to suck since they split. When exactly is that going to happen? They had 4 teams in Scout's Top 30 recruiting rankings and 6 in the Top 50. The highest ranked AAC school was #49, and that was only because Memphis had a huge class.

We can't have a debate when one side is spewing nonsense. AAC basketball is not remotely as strong as Big East basketball, and there is no evidence that we are going to pass the Big East financially. On top of that, UConn is a huge geographic outlier in a southern mid-major conference, which everyone just pretends is not relevant.

 

[Adios]

You think UCONN football is ever going to be good and we're delusional imbeciles?

OK.

I do agree that football isn't done anytime soon, but there are going to be fewer players coming out of the Northeast.

Our future is in a "P5" conference. That is a guarantee. It's an issue of when, not if. Not hard to see.

Our football program has proven it can draw when it plays competent football against "brand names". Our school's athletic department has a solid reputation, period. Doesn't matter where the players are coming from. QB who led Alabama to victory over Georgia is from Hawaii.

Nelson can go enjoy his Xavier vs DePaul games. Freaking drama queen. Don't feed the trolls.

 

[whaler11]

UNC announced they are taking Kenan from 61k capacity to 52k.

The trend is going to be stark. Stadiums and arenas are going to need to find how to deliver a different experience to fewer people or a lot more stadiums are going to look like Rentschler than not.

Look at the bowl season. TV ratings up a good amount and you could crash a blimp into 2/3rds of the stadiums and not injure anyone.

My idea may very well be a loser. However. the more I look, the more an attitude like Butch’s or ‘monitor the situation’ is just sitting in the pot and not noticing it’s getting warm. This is time for bold leadership - not check cashing and letting the next guy blame.

 

[olehead]

If UConn cuts their football program or drops to FCS, I will never attend another UConn sporting event in my lifetime. Will not step foot into Gampel. And I'll hire a witch doctor to curse the MBB program so that it shoots all you idiots in the foot anyways. Locusts will rain onto that Epcot looking stupid **** roof and you all will pay the price

So, you support fb?

 

[nelsonmuntz]

Bowl attendance was one problem. The fact that teams transparently mail in their effort on bowl games is also a problem. There were a lot of blowouts this bowl season, and it sure looked like a lot of teams didn't want to be there. Why should anyone care about the bowl games if so many teams playing in bowls clearly don't care?

 

[olehead]

The AAC isn't to blame for the MBB situation - our ability to adapt to being in the AAC rather than the Big East as we loved it is more of the cause; the AAC is not as ""sexy" to top 50 recruits as the P5 conferences which impacts recruiting. Our legacy is only meaningful to us right now; 4 NC's since 99 don't really mean as much to recruits since the landscape has changed.

I agree w/ all JayBird said notw/standing blamelessness of the AAC. What works for other AAC teams does not work for us. We miss many really good NE kids b/c of the AAC. Some things don't change. Kids want to be BMOC's and know the school has a rabid hoop following, ala, old Big East programs. NE talent looks at the present state and they can choose Providence, Rhode Island, in some cases UMass, Rutgers, hell even St. John's. It makes me wonder whether in the last four years, have we lost out on a recruit to Iona?

 

[olehead]

This decision needed to be made 5 years ago. We are already dead.

We have had to take some risks on football coaches BECAUSE OF our conference situation. The Diaco hire was desperate, and there were a lot of warning signs that he was not head coach material. A lot of schools had passed on him before we hired him. I think that Benedict might be more aggressive with Ollie's meltdown if he thought we could bring in a significant improvement if he canned Ollie. Unfortunately, Benedict is looking at a 2nd tier P5 assistant or a twice fired retread as our next basketball HC, which is probably the reason behind giving Ollie a few extra second chances.

There are 3 big factors that can not be ignored:

A) The media rights situation is incredibly unstable due to streaming and the decline of the networks. It is hard to see a scenario where rights fees increase for the P5, and given that situation, they will not be looking to add members. The Big 12 decided to add no one over adding UConn, and there was some extra revenue there if they added us. How much more information do we need that the P5 door has been slammed shut? The "P5 Fantasy" posters want the school to continue to lose money hand over fist because somewhere in the distant future some derivative P5 league might add us. That is a bad investment.

B) State budget - There is no easy fix for our state budget situation, because there is a massively underfunded pension behind all of it. I do not see any way out of the budget problem other than the state massively cutting pension benefits for retired cops and teachers and whoever else. When that happens, do you think there will be an ounce of political support for continuing to lose $10 million a year on an athletic department so that 20,000 football fans can drink on a runway for 2 hours, watch a half of football vs. Tulane, and go home? I am one of those 20,000, and I realize that this is crazy from a budgetary perspective.

C) Football has probably already crossed a tipping point in the northeast due to concussions and CTE. Participation is dropping dramatically at the youth level. Youth leagues are folding or merging with neighboring towns, and even high schools are pooling players across districts. Participation is only going one direction, at least in the Northeast. The best case for the sport is that the drop off stabilizes at some level, but remains strong in the South and Midwest, at which point you have a regional sport. Worst case, southern and Midwestern parents decide that they don't want their kids' brains turning to mush either, and the entire sport falls off a cliff. Is this the kind of trend we want to bet against? Even in the best case, CT football is dead dead dead. A dry recruiting area will become Saharan, which means we will be trying to convince an entire roster full of Florida kids to move 800 miles north (what was the temperature this past weekend?) when there are 11 other schools in our conference closer to them and with warmer weather.

My advice:

1) The Football First fans have been wrong every step of the way, so the first thing to do is stop listening to them.

2) Make the athletic department breakeven within 3 years. This probably means going to the Big East and football independence, but the Big East door may be closing. We can not afford to lose money at the level we are losing money. It will damage the university before long.

We are in a very dark place right now, and we got there by making a big bet on football that has not been paid off. We can get into an "I told you so" debate about the events of 10 or 16 years ago if you want, but the only thing worse than making a bad investment is to continue to double down on the bad investment long after it has proven to be bad. Sometimes you need to cut your losses, and I think it is that time with the AAC.

​

Amen. Outstanding Analysis. That is all.

 

[J187Money]

Someone needs to help me out here:

FBS football teams - 85 scholarships
FCS football teams - 63 scholarships

So there is a "savings" of 22 scholarships between the two. And that's not really a "cash" cost.

The stadium is built. The training facilities are built. Maybe you fly less if you play FCS Yankee conference-ish opponents in the NE. And maybe you save a couple million on the coaching staff.

But the way people talk about this here is that it costs $200M to run a FBS program and an FCS program costs the equivalent of a ham sandwich. When you factor in that NOBODY will give the athletic department a dime to run an FCS program, I'm not 100% convinced that the school isn't in worse shape if we drop down to FCS.

We might be better off in Whaler's suggestion to do a combo of BE/MAC, or maybe not. But unless you actually STOP playing football I think people are fooling themselves that dropping to FCS will somehow save the school from financial ruin.

 

[noeynox]

Someone needs to help me out here:

FBS football teams - 85 scholarships
FCS football teams - 63 scholarships

So there is a "savings" of 22 scholarships between the two. And that's not really a "cash" cost.

The stadium is built. The training facilities are built. Maybe you fly less if you play FCS Yankee conference-ish opponents in the NE. And maybe you save a couple million on the coaching staff.

But the way people talk about this here is that it costs $200M to run a FBS program and an FCS program costs the equivalent of a ham sandwich. When you factor in that NOBODY will give the athletic department a dime to run an FCS program, I'm not 100% convinced that the school isn't in worse shape if we drop down to FCS.

We might be better off in Whaler's suggestion to do a combo of BE/MAC, or maybe not. But unless you actually STOP playing football I think people are fooling themselves that dropping to FCS will somehow save the school from financial ruin.

You might save enough to be able to pay Ollie 2 million more a year though.

 

[ConnHuskBask]

Someone needs to help me out here:

FBS football teams - 85 scholarships
FCS football teams - 63 scholarships

So there is a "savings" of 22 scholarships between the two. And that's not really a "cash" cost.

The stadium is built. The training facilities are built. Maybe you fly less if you play FCS Yankee conference-ish opponents in the NE. And maybe you save a couple million on the coaching staff.

But the way people talk about this here is that it costs $200M to run a FBS program and an FCS program costs the equivalent of a ham sandwich. When you factor in that NOBODY will give the athletic department a dime to run an FCS program, I'm not 100% convinced that the school isn't in worse shape if we drop down to FCS.

We might be better off in Whaler's suggestion to do a combo of BE/MAC, or maybe not. But unless you actually STOP playing football I think people are fooling themselves that dropping to FCS will somehow save the school from financial ruin.

I had season tickets for a decade until I moved out of state, went to all the Bowls, etc. I may end up moving back to CT within a few years, but if UConn is playing a FCS or MAC schedule I am absolutely never getting season tickets again.

That may make me a "bad fan" but as much as it's tough to stomach the AAC, it at least has good teams in it from year to year and at least a couple familiar foes in Cincinnati, USF, and Temple. There is absolutely no way I'm going to Eastern Michigan or Miami Ohio games.

Keep the program in the AAC or just kill it.

 

[Waquoit]

What? That's the game we led until Toddman landed on his head and hyper extended his elbow.
Came back in and we kept force feeding him the ball despite him protecting the injured arm and eventually a Temple LB stripped him of the ball from the injured arm and scored off the strip.
The wheels came off after that because as we were wont to do in those days we rode the star running back exclusively.

I remember Temple laying the wood to us all game. I don't remember us being out coached as much as being out physicalled. We lost by two touchdowns and I can't believe anyone who watched that game came away thinking UConn was the better team. I was very depressed after that game.

 

[upstater]

Bowl attendance was one problem. The fact that teams transparently mail in their effort on bowl games is also a problem. There were a lot of blowouts this bowl season, and it sure looked like a lot of teams didn't want to be there. Why should anyone care about the bowl games if so many teams playing in bowls clearly don't care?

It's always been this way.

 

[upstater]

Someone needs to help me out here:

FBS football teams - 85 scholarships
FCS football teams - 63 scholarships

So there is a "savings" of 22 scholarships between the two. And that's not really a "cash" cost.

The stadium is built. The training facilities are built. Maybe you fly less if you play FCS Yankee conference-ish opponents in the NE. And maybe you save a couple million on the coaching staff.

But the way people talk about this here is that it costs $200M to run a FBS program and an FCS program costs the equivalent of a ham sandwich. When you factor in that NOBODY will give the athletic department a dime to run an FCS program, I'm not 100% convinced that the school isn't in worse shape if we drop down to FCS.

We might be better off in Whaler's suggestion to do a combo of BE/MAC, or maybe not. But unless you actually STOP playing football I think people are fooling themselves that dropping to FCS will somehow save the school from financial ruin.

All I know is that when a current MAC school jumped from 1-AA to D1 about a decade or so ago, it's athletic budget jumped from $7m to $24m in one year. There were no other changes. The additional $1m in scholarships was not the only increase, but also the additional duplicate # of scholarships, the tripling of coaching fees, the recruiting budget went into the millions, they hired more staffers, and the travel went up. So did efforts to promote and sell tickets.

 

[8893]

Does Syracuse belong?

Not in recent times, but they had a history dating back to Jim Brown, Ernie Davis and Floyd Little that made them seem more legitimate on a national level. We had no such history.

 

[Alum86]

He makes that assumption because the AAC would never bother allowing us to be in for football only. Our marginal value comes from basketball only, which by the way is itself waning by the month with KO in charge. We don’t get to pick like “I would stay”. We don’t have that leverage. It’s all or nothing in the AAC for us.

I bet we would

 

[upstater]

Not in recent times, but they had a history dating back to Jim Brown, Ernie Davis and Floyd Little that made them seem more legitimate on a national level. We had no such history.

History schmistory. A lot of good 4 championships are doing UConn. A lot of schools have histories. SMU and Hosuton too!

 

[8893]

History schmistory. A lot of good 4 championships are doing UConn. A lot of schools have histories. SMU and Hosuton too!

I don't make the rules. I am just observing them. You want to change the results; I am explaining them.

Not sure what your point about SMU and Houston is. Were they candidates for the ACC?

As for our basketball championships, that's apples and oranges as well. You obviously acknowledge that football drives the bus for conference realignment, and we were talking about football programs. The point I was making is that Syracuse had a glorified football history that influenced their perception as a more worthy football program than ours and I believe it was a factor in their selection over us. Not the only factor, but a factor that answered your "Does Syracuse belong?" query. You may not like the answer, but you can't dispute it factually.

 

[noeynox]

I remember Temple laying the wood to us all game. I don't remember us being out coached as much as being out physicalled. We lost by two touchdowns and I can't believe anyone who watched that game came away thinking UConn was the better team. I was very depressed after that game.

We were up 16-9, Todman got hurt and we kept force feeding him, when it was obvious he was protecting the injured arm. Eventually it led to the strip and score. Just the way things were back then.

 

[superjohn]

I don't make the rules. I am just observing them. You want to change the results; I am explaining them.

Not sure what your point about SMU and Houston is. Were they candidates for the ACC?

As for our basketball championships, that's apples and oranges as well. You obviously acknowledge that football drives the bus for conference realignment, and we were talking about football programs. The point I was making is that Syracuse had a glorified football history that influenced their perception as a more worthy football program than ours and I believe it was a factor in their selection over us. Not the only factor, but a factor that answered your "Does Syracuse belong?" query. You may not like the answer, but you can't dispute it factually.

Yep, Syracuse got into the ACC because of Ernie Davis.

 

[8893]

Yep, Syracuse got into the ACC because of Ernie Davis.

I wouldn't expect you to start being honest now though.

 

[J187Money]

All I know is that when a current MAC school jumped from 1-AA to D1 about a decade or so ago, it's athletic budget jumped from $7m to $24m in one year. There were no other changes. The additional $1m in scholarships was not the only increase, but also the additional duplicate # of scholarships, the tripling of coaching fees, the recruiting budget went into the millions, they hired more staffers, and the travel went up. So did efforts to promote and sell tickets.

Thanks - that's the first actual data point I've seen on this. Oddly enough one of the only things you can't find on google is the differential in operating costs between FBS and FCS football programs. Wonder what happened on the donor side.

I've seen other articles about the costs to upgrade, and the price tag is big, because you need better stadiums / practice facilities / etc. I feel like in our case you wouldn't save $17M by dropping down. My guess it is $5M. And while that's a real number, it is a rounding error in the overall operating budget of the school. If that's all you get - the downside is more than the upside that you get by getting it right. We just need to get it right. Lots of schools do it with a lot less money than we are spending.

 

[noeynox]

I had season tickets for a decade until I moved out of state, went to all the Bowls, etc. I may end up moving back to CT within a few years, but if UConn is playing a FCS or MAC schedule I am absolutely never getting season tickets again.

That may make me a "bad fan" but as much as it's tough to stomach the AAC, it at least has good teams in it from year to year and at least a couple familiar foes in Cincinnati, USF, and Temple. There is absolutely no way I'm going to Eastern Michigan or Miami Ohio games.

Keep the program in the AAC or just kill it.

This is where I'm at. Eastern Michigan on a Tuesday night with work the next day? Let those who want the Big East so bad show up to that.

The solution is to try and win your division and go to the conference championship game in football. This was Calhouns blueprint in Bball. Going to the MAC is equivalent to slicing of the wrist and waiting for the program go bleed out. I'd prefer a more compassionate ending.

 

[superjohn]

I wouldn't expect you to start being honest now though.

Everyone knows Rutgers got into the Big 10 because of their football history, first college football game ever played!

 

[upstater]

I don't make the rules. I am just observing them. You want to change the results; I am explaining them.

Not sure what your point about SMU and Houston is. Were they candidates for the ACC?

They were not candidates because no one cares about their history, which is my point.