What about our academics?

[Redding Husky]

Villanova is a fine school and only getting better with their recent basketball success. Marquette is top 100 per US News.

US News has the AAC with four top 100 schools: Tulane, SMU, UConn, and Tulsa. And Navy is a very selective service academy. That’s five very good schools.

If we go to the Big East, there’s Georgetown, UConn, Villanova, and Marquette. Providence is very good. Butler and Creighton are good, too.

There not a huge difference between the conferences.

 

[Redding Husky]

I don't see the connection to the AAC. I can't agree that somehow we are viewed as affiliated with those schools because we were in the AAC.

We are a public Ivy. We should act like one. Nearly all have big time football.

 

[zls44]

US News has the AAC with four top 100 schools: Tulane, SMU, UConn, and Tulsa. And Navy is a very selective service academy. That’s five very good schools.

If we go to the Big East, there’s Georgetown, UConn, Villanova, and Marquette. Providence is very good. Butler and Creighton are good, too.

There not a huge difference between the conferences.

You named almost twice as many Big East schools as AAC schools!!

 

[huskymedic]

 

[VAHuskyFan]

The notion that anyone was watching our football games over the past few years and saying “Hot damn! Get me an application!” strikes me as less than plausible.

For starters, it assumes people are watching our football games.

Ivy League football was at one time the premier football league in the country at any level. (There’s a reason the Yale Bowl’s capacity is over 60k.)

So the Ivies are sort of a natural experiment in what happens when you drop down from top level football. They seem to be doing OK academically.

 

[Redding Husky]

You named almost twice as many Big East schools as AAC schools!!

There isn’t much of a difference between the conferences academically. It would be like arguing Ford vs. Chevrolet.

 

[Tigers69]

I think I’m the only one to bring up the academic issue. My apologies if I’m wrong about that.

Our academic brand has skyrocketed the last 20-25 years. I believe that’s due to: 1) the state’s huge investment, 2) four men’s nc’s and about a dozen women’s nc’s in BB, and 3) having a credible FBS FB program.

The state has a budget crisis (I’d love to get into the politics of that, but I’ll show some restraint). The funding to UConn has slowed and this has already hurt us. The drop in funding caused us to go down in the most recent US News rankings. SMU and a half dozen other schools passed us.

And now we’ve de-emphasized football. We knowingly took our program from a borderline power conference to irrelevance.

Two of the three legs supporting academic growth have disappeared. Even if the BB program does well, that’s just 1/3 of the “success” equation. I fear the number of student applications will fall, resulting in lower incoming class SAT averages. It will begin a downward spiral leaving us roughly equivalent to the other New England flagship schools.

Try to talk me off the ledge.

Get off the ledge.....IMHO academic standing is one of the reasons UCONN hated being in the AAC in the first place. To be clear, it's not the reason they are leaving, but academics is one reason they would rather be in the Big East than the AAC. I think UCONN can do better forging academic partnerships with Georgetown, Villanova, Providence, and St Johns than they can with Memphis, Temple, UCF.

 

[Redding Husky]

Get off the ledge.....IMHO academic standing is one of the reasons UCONN hated being in the AAC in the first place. To be clear, it's not the reason they are leaving, but academics is one reason they would rather be in the Big East than the AAC. I think UCONN can do better forging academic partnerships with Georgetown, Villanova, Providence, and St Johns than they can with Memphis, Temple, UCF.

Athletic success (especially in football) results in higher quality student applicants. Hopefully the football downgrade doesn’t hurt us.

 

[AndOne]

We are a public Ivy. We should act like one. Nearly all have big time football.

I honestly have never heard any UConn grad describe UConn as a public Ivy in person. Nor any alums from those other schools say they attended a public Ivy. They would get laughed at and stuffed in a locker. I looked it up and UConn was included in some random list from a book in 2001 about "Public Ivies". That's the genesis of it. To take that seriously is wild. Just be the best University for Connecticut and don't worry about this empty title or keeping up with the made up Jone's.

 

[Redding Husky]

I honestly have never heard any UConn grad describe UConn as a public Ivy in person. Nor any alums from those other schools say they attended a public Ivy. They would get laughed at and stuffed in a locker. I looked it up and UConn was included in some random list from a book in 2001 about "Public Ivies". That's the genesis of it. To take that seriously is wild. Just be the best University for Connecticut and don't worry about this empty title or keeping up with the made up Jone's.

SMH

 

[crazyUCfan23]

Current students don’t care about football

 

[Tigers69]

Athletic success (especially in football) results in higher quality student applicants. Hopefully the football downgrade doesn’t hurt us.

You mean like at MIT, Harvard, Fairfield U, CalTech, Princteon, the University of Chicago, Penn, Johns Hopkins, UCBerkley, Barnard and Vassar?

 

[uconnfan68]

You mean like at MIT, Harvard, Fairfield U, CalTech, Princteon, the University of Chicago, Penn, Johns Hopkins, UCBerkley, Barnard and Vassar?

UCBerkeley is very good now and then. And they play in a great league.

 

[Redding Husky]

You mean like at MIT, Harvard, Fairfield U, CalTech, Princteon, the University of Chicago, Penn, Johns Hopkins, UCBerkley, Barnard and Vassar?

No, more like Clemson, Oklahoma, Florida State, and Ohio State, etc. Those schools were very mediocre and they've improved greatly in academics based on the success of their football programs. We did the same with basketball.

We aren't a U.S. News Top 10 school. We don't have a $2 billion endowment. We need to find ways to attract quality students. A successful athletic program helps.