What’s your solution?

[SouthBayHusky]

Maybe I’m in the minority, but the American is still a very new conference, and is improving greatly every year in both football and basketball. The only one not improving is Connecticut. But, I have faith. With Randy back at helm I think it’s only a matter of time before we improve to something more respectable again. Basketball is another story, but we have enough history and gravitas to return to something respectable again but time is running out with KO. But honestly, I see greater respect today by media towards our conference than even couple years ago. Last year the conference put more players in the NFL than the Big 12. Weve also had multiple ranked teams each year with major bowl wins, including an undefeated UCF that has people talking and building pressure for change so that doesn’t happen again. I think the P6 branding will slowly change minds, and even the media now refers to American, the NBE, and the remaining P5 as the power 7 conferences in basketball. And obviously in football which is improving I wouldn’t be surprised to hear the media start referring to the power six conference. It just takes time. We are still so young as a conference. Leaving the American now to go back to NBE will relegate us forever to smalltime. There is no going back. I see the American getting better every year, and I think we will get a much better media contract as we continue to improve further. In the meantime, as Uconn improves and a spot opens in the ACC (or elsewhere) we will at least have a shot at a possible landing place. For now, we are at least in a solid conference. It’s not the old Big East but the old Big East will never return nor will the rivalries shared during its glory days. Times change and no matter how much we wish it the past will never return. That’s why it’s the past. But soon enough, new rivalries will emerge with the teams in our own conference. Honestly, if we were playing great football and great basketball I would really enjoy some of the clashes with some of the top teams in our conference. There is serious talent in football and basketball among many teams and it will be a lot more fun when we become one of those talented teams again.

 

[whaler11]

Maybe I’m in the minority, but the American is still a very new conference, and is improving greatly every year in both football and basketball. The only one not improving is Connecticut. But, I have faith. With Randy back at helm I think it’s only a matter of time before we improve to something more respectable again. Basketball is another story, but we have enough history and gravitas to return to something respectable again but time is running out with KO. But honestly, I see greater respect today by media towards our conference than even couple years ago. Last year the conference put more players in the NFL than the Big 12. Weve also had multiple ranked teams each year with major bowl wins, including an undefeated UCF that has people talking and building pressure for change so that doesn’t happen again. I think the P6 branding will slowly change minds, and even the media now refers to American, the NBE, and the remaining P5 as the power 7 conferences in basketball. And obviously in football which is improving I wouldn’t be surprised to hear the media start referring to the power six conference. It just takes time. We are still so young as a conference. Leaving the American now to go back to NBE will relegate us forever to smalltime. There is no going back. I see the American getting better every year, and I think we will get a much better media contract as we continue to improve further. In the meantime, as Uconn improves and a spot opens in the ACC (or elsewhere) we will at least have a shot at a possible landing place. For now, we are at least in a solid conference. It’s not the old Big East but the old Big East will never return nor will the rivalries shared during its glory days. Times change and no matter how much we wish it the past will never return. That’s why it’s the past. But soon enough, new rivalries will emerge with the teams in our own conference. Honestly, if we were playing great football and great basketball I would really enjoy some of the clashes with some of the top teams in our conference. There is serious talent in football and basketball among many teams and it will be a lot more fun when we become one of those talented teams again.

Everytime you don’t create a paragraph a kitten dies.

The American is not a new conference. It is Conference USA with a new name. The Metro is actually a better name for this mess but the forward looking leadership believes in the order of the yellow pages. So what matters is AAC is before ACC alphabetically on a half dozen websites.

I couldn’t get past the second sentence so maybe it got better - I’ll take y’alls word for it.

 

[Adios]

Hiring Nick Saban.

 

[Adios]

Houston and UCF are both each probably 5 baskets made from being ranked.

This conference is a mish mash of schools who have taken strange or unusual paths (such the Metro schools or Tulane) or paths towards growth (such as UConn) from the Big East, SWC, SEC, and Metro Conference. Louisville and FSU used to be in the Metro Conference. USF and UCF came out of nowhere.

 

[Towney007]

I guess this is where i'm at.

The backdrop is fairly straight-forward to me. UConn made the right move out of realignment to take a concerted stab at football. Hindsight is always 20/20 but it was hard to envision things going this way in totality, but at the time it was a good call We had a chance to run a draw play - hopefully basketball kept it's head above water (it did in the short term and won a national title), and football could maintain post-RE. Football didn't. Then the call didn't come. The overtures haven't. Then hoops fell off.

But even with the two teams sagging, you still had a bit of a chance. UConn still brings a lot to the table. But it put them on a real clock. But so long as hoops could hold the water back, they could stay nationally relevant enough to have a shot. Then hoops totally cratered. And with hoops cratering, its really you brand cratering. So that just makes the clock tick faster. And the margin for error less and less.

Football reset after Diaco, RE is back but it's a long road to tow and realistically - any shot of us being really good in a short period of time are slim to none. I hope i'm wrong, but it's just reality. The conference is undoubtedly better if not good in football, but you look at the coaching changeovers in the league and it's kind of stuck between this no-man's land of being clearly better than the rest, but also viewed as a stop off to P5 jobs for coaches. Which makes recuiting more skiddish. And maintaining success will always be more challenging. That's not even getting into the financial constraints. I think that's a whole other can of worms that football has to deal with and that's not even getting into the fact that the Rent has the energy of a hospice home and that the team has been a dog the last four or five years.

SO a jump in football is going to be really hard.

It's STILL OK if hoops hadn't totally fallen apart. First losing season in forever. Looks like we may have another one coming up. We had some decent recruiting classes, but we've lost a ton of guys. We don't have much of an offensive system that's appealing to the team's needs. Ollie looks more like a lame duck by the day and that'll hurt recruiting even more. Add into the fact that despite the conference being better, it's still not high profile enough to be sexy. And even for teams at this level, Cincinnati, Wichita and others look like a more appealing option. Lack of rivals, history and geography has ballooned the budget, hurt attendance and I think more than anything the totality of being left out of conference realginment and traditional rivals has left an even deeper scar that i'm not even sure being competitive in the conference would solve significantly. It's hard to sell tickets to East Carolina, Tulane, Tulsa and the also-rans. We've been non-competitive out of conference against ranked teams and few people want to watch their favorite team get embarrassed.

So you add all that up and I dunno if there's much of a timer left. At most- they can wait until the next round of TV rights for the conference, but I still feel like the return is going to be disappointing for everyone in college sports, never mind the AAC. I just don't know if it's going to yield the results the University is looking for - but it's hard for us to take them to task because we're really the ankle weight right now (along with Memphis, arguably) in that we're the flagship brand and were what the conference built around and we've totally laid and egg overall while everyone else has gotten better.

So then your options are stick it out - which unless we see turnarounds quick could be the end - and faster than we think. The other option is let the hoops program peter out and hope for the best long term with football, hoping a P5 invite or ostensibly power-house mid major status can help fuel enough revenue to get hoops back on track. Another option is to bail on big time football, move programs to the MAC and move everything else to the Big East where you'll definitely increase your revenue, earn a good shot at sparking some renewed interest in the program through rivals and friendlier geographics, and a likely bump in recruiting. But that move means you're pairing up with schools that don't give a hoot about football. That are private when we're a flagship state university. And is filled with a lot of private schools who given the bigger picture could struggle financially to stay afloat at all - never mind stay afloat athletically - in the future. Student loan defaults are on the rise and college debt structures are a disaster. TV rights bubbles are showing all the signs of a hardline burst for everyone, and who knows how that effects the Big East being hoops-only. They likely get hit first and hit the hardest. That could spark another round of raiding the Big East, there's perhaps a possibility that Villanova spooks themselves into FBS football, there's just lots of risk. Then other members are not the king fish in their markets. Wisconsin > Marquette. Northwestern and Illinios > DePaul. Nebraska > Creighton. Xavier and Cincinnati are on a more streamlined level competitively, but Cincinnati is more established. Neither can hold a candle to Ohio State in their own state. Villanova and Georgetown are relatively safe bets to maintain some assemblance of success at the box office... but Georgetown is hardly in a good spot and arguably a little further along in the hardline rebuild we might need to undergo, but are a long ways from out of the weeds. Butler is the little engine that can, but they're also not as revered as Indiana, Notre Dame and Purdue are. It's probably a better situation in the short term - but potentially disasterous in the long term. The last option - which is a nuclear one - is to dump FBS football altogether and go back to pouring everything into Men's hoops and hoping for the best, but that slams the door on a P5 invite forever.

All of them are really risky. Really, really risky.

So to me -

#1 - Seems like for now, the best option, but a decision absolutely needs to be made on 3, 4 and 5 as soon as TV rights negotiations are up.

#2 - I just can't realistically see happening. UConn's built it's brand on two things: Academics and hoops. I can't see the alums being good with it. Football could get better, but that seems so far off that by the time it happens, any appeal we have as a well-rounded potential addition to a P5 are dead. Best you probably hope for is the next round of realignment ends up with the P5's getting super aggressive in picking apart the AAC and we get picked up as a 'screw it, we'll just do it to swallow em up' addition.

#3 - Is the best plan-B I think. I think there's enough cache built up over the years to still make the program an appealing job for a good coach and yeah - I think we could get that coach to stay. It helps protect your baseline for sure. Football takes a huge hit, but it doesn't TOTALLY off your chances at a P5 invite and in the same vein as #2, if the Big East gets targeted, just our having football probably helps relative to the other guys in the conference. The short term bump in revenue shores up our coffers and gives you enough revenue to get over the hump to hopefully have a crack heading forward. But it's also enormously risky if financial trends an the greater economy around colleges and universities keeps trending the way it is. We could just end up right back where we are now in 5-10 years with zero to show for it. Which could end up in

#4 - Football being downgraded and the school all-in bets on hoops. Which eliminates all P5 aspirations altogether but at least cuts enough of the budget to keep the hoops program from totally going down the drain for a little while longer, but is more likely just staving off the inevitable.

The best case scenario is Ollie figures his life out or a new coach turns the program right around fast, but without a Pitino type, that's going to be hard (he sucks, btw he's awful). And that level of a coach is totally unrealistic for a rebuild. That and Edsall gets the team close to or at .500 next year and then a bowl in year 3 during the rights negotiations. Football then washes basketball's hands a bit and buys you time on a rebuild.

But if the TV deal is a dog and that scenario doesn't play out, I think they have to probably pull the trigger on the Big East move with Football going to the MAC or maybe the AAC begrugingly allows us to stay for football only.

But they need to A.) Win (which seems unlikely right now) and show value sooner rather than later and B.) Time to let things play out (which they just don't have nearly as much of anymore, if any at all). That's what makes this so sticky, I think.

So if it's me, I think Ollie's a stuck pig at this point. I'd find a replacement, but they need to go hard in doing it. I hope Edsall figures things out fast. I wait to see what the new AAC deal is. If it sucks, Then i'm pulling the trigger and heading to the Big East as soon as possible and despite the obvious risks, protecting my floor and figuring the rest out later because at that point, you don't have much of a choice if the hope, want and desire is to keep both. It's the only scenario where that works with the best chance at success even though it's not necessarily a 'good' option. To me #4 isn't an option and is panic. #2 would totally shift a decades long focus in the AD an that's not realistic. Plus it'd be nuclear with alums. #1 you can't keep doubling down on when the cards are so blatantly obvious and #3 is probably the route I choose, albeit regretfully.

Sorry for the new testament.

 

[metsfan2323]

I like the idea of adding 3 more basketball schools to make it 15. Maybe try and get some A-10 teams to switch over.

A third school?

If the AAC wanted a NYC team they could add Stony Brook basketball only. Stony Brook is a much better school than St Johns.

If the AAC added UMASS, VCU, and Stony Brook basketball only Big East fans would shiite themselves.

 

[UConnDad]

Unfortunately things look bleak right now for sure. It's all about hoops for me. Try to get to one football game every year. I wouldn't miss it even though I realize we need it. What I do miss tremendously is the Big East Tournament and going to MSG. By far my favorite sporting event. Would love to do that again!

 

[pepband99]

This still isn’t even a question worth considering.

The pay difference between the AAC and the big east is going to equalize (if not flip) in the next tv negotiation set, which is reasonably soon.

Dropping football in any way to join a watered down big east is a minimal short term gain, but a massive long term loss. You kill essentially any upside with UConn athletics.

Stay and pray.

 

[Edward Sargent]

Stay where we are and fix the team.

 

[nelsonmuntz]

I start with these assumptions:

1. The AAC won’t allow UConn to stay as FB only (doubt anyone disagrees)

2. Independence and/or FCS football is a non-starter.


I’ve been predicting for a few years that the drop football voices were going to get loud. They got loud faster than I expected. It’s pretty hard to argue against some of their logic. We have argued who to blame a million times so let’s ignore that this time.

If I’m running the show this is what I’m exploring:

1. Approach the MAC with UMass asking to be football only members (I know they kicked UMass out but that was because they were 13 and UMass wouldn’t add basketball)

2. If the MAC is in, approach the Big East on membership for everything they sponsor.

To me this is the best case scenario.

The Big East is 1.7 billion times more attractive as a basketball league to me and I think most of the fanbase.

Keeping football at the FBS level keeps UConn’s ACC powerball ticket alive. It looks bleak but Independent/FCS kills it.

The football fanbase couldn’t be smaller than it is now - the marginal difference to the MAC can’t make it much worse. 14k instead of 17k. How cares? Competing at the top of the any league no matter how mediocre might actually increase interest.

The biggest downside is the horrible schedule the MAC plays. Saturday games end in October.

Some will worry about the academics of the other schools. Candidly, I don’t give a damn. I don’t think it matters at all. Tulane is good, Memphis is not - guess who I’d rather watch play?

Anyway - anyone got a better idea?

I’m football first, but if we don’t get creative we are going to be tailgating with @Butch at the Yale Bowl or Arute.

Separately I’d tear the athletic department to the studs and start over. Marketing, ticketing, presentation. Separate thread for that. It’s like a Martin Luther hang 99 thesis on the charter oak rant.

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.

​

 

[nelsonmuntz]

This still isn’t even a question worth considering.

The pay difference between the AAC and the big east is going to equalize (if not flip) in the next tv negotiation set, which is reasonably soon.

Dropping football in any way to join a watered down big east is a minimal short term gain, but a massive long term loss. You kill essentially any upside with UConn athletics.

Stay and pray.

2012 called, it wants its pep talk back.

 

[Adios]

This going to the Big East is some of the most stupid crap that gets brought up here endlessly. It's the dumbest business proposition possible for our athletic department. What the phukk do you people not get? All this precious time gets wasted on talking about taking basketball to the Big East and football going independent? Gridiron football is not going to decline. People join militaries for far less pay. The logic is so dumb. London, Toronto and Mexico City want NFL teams. "Oh, I think football is done." So stupid.

I need to stop posting in the basketball section. Delusional imbeciles.

If we were so interested in the Big East as a possibility, why the phukk is the AAC forming a women's lacrosse conference for AAC and SEC schools? God Almighty. So myopic and little vision.

 

[djct1999]

Nelson is right, the ship already sailed. The P5 is never happening. The Big East(if thats what they want to call themselves), well, quite frankly, who gives a f&*k. In a game of high stakes musical chairs, the music stopped and UConn was caught standing. Unfortunately, its game over.

 

[noeynox]

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.

​

If you believe all this why not just cut football altogether?

What is the point of paying for football to remain FBS as an independent? You've essentially waived the white flag while keeping the financial albatross.

Again, if the Big East is the answer to our ills, go ahead and end it with FB. Watch UMass slide right into that spot.

 

[djct1999]

If you believe all this why not just cut football altogether?

What is the point of paying for football to remain FBS as an independent? You've essentially waived the white flag while keeping the financial albatross.

Again, if the Big East is the answer to our ills, go ahead and end it with FB. Watch UMass slide right into that spot.

Yeah, good luck with that UMass. Once again, the joke will be on them.

 

[Waquoit]

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

So true. Especially the "funny" ones.

 

[uconnfan68]

Agree people are using the AAC as an excuse to deflect from Ollie but you are wrong about the Big East. It is still a damn good basketball conference.

It's pretty amazing after being raided over and over again the Big East has managed to remain really good at basketball.

After they tossed 2 top teams, UConn and Cinn, they suddenly have parity.

 

[RipCity]

There is mutual interest.

More about finding money than anything else at this point.

 

[The Funster]

We've been sabotaged by some of our peers. We blew it with PP and BD. Ollie has torched the men's BB program. To drop to the MAC for FB would be further self-sabotage. HCRE has to keep pushing the FB program forward. Ollie has to go once the season is over. We can't complain about the weaknesses of the AAC when we can't dominate the damn conference. The solution is to rebuild the programs and hang on until 2024-25 and position ourselves as best as possible for the conference fallout. 2024-25 could look completely different that the current landscape does. UConn might have btter control of it's future. WE HAVE TO WIN.

 

[JSB60]

This going to the Big East is some of the most stupid crap that gets brought up here endlessly. It's the dumbest business proposition possible for our athletic department. What the phukk do you people not get? All this precious time gets wasted on talking about taking basketball to the Big East and football going independent? Gridiron football is not going to decline. People join militaries for far less pay. The logic is so dumb. London, Toronto and Mexico City want NFL teams. "Oh, I think football is done." So stupid.

I need to stop posting in the basketball section. Delusional imbeciles.

If we were so interested in the Big East as a possibility, why the phukk is the AAC forming a women's lacrosse conference for AAC and SEC schools? God Almighty. So myopic and little vision.

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.

 

[8893]

I feel like football is UConn's Vietnam. Stretching back decades and several administrations, no one wants to admit that it was not a winnable campaign, so we just keep marching to that tune to our ultimate deaths.

 

[freescooter]

Here’s the thing. The number of people who care about the Big East is going to get smaller every year. And even if you go there it ain’t Pitt and Syracuse coming to town. It’s Butler and (yawn) Creighton and Xavier. Put together successful programs in football and basketball and all this goes away. With the current basketball staff we would be competing with St Johns and DePaul to hold up the Big East instead of ECU and USF to hold up the AAC.

 

[noeynox]

Nelson is right, the ship already sailed. The P5 is never happening. The Big East(if thats what they want to call themselves), well, quite frankly, who gives a &*k. In a game of high stakes musical chairs, the music stopped and UConn was caught standing. Unfortunately, its game over.

fine then. End the FB program. Just don't give us the independent fb crap. You want to go all in on the BE do it, the signs were there when we got passed over for Louisville. Just don't half step it. Flatline it.

 

[August_West]

I feel like football is UConn's Vietnam. Stretching back decades and several administrations, no one wants to admit that it was not a winnable campaign, so we just keep marching to that tune to our ultimate deaths.

excellent analogy.


Whaler and Nelson made the same points but your succinct analogy wins the thread.

 

[upstater]

BCS then, outside the P5 now.

But they were 6th then, BCS or no BCS. Rosters haven't expanded beyond 85 so the talent level should be similar, or even better since the AAC draws from Texas and Florida more.