Why did uconn wait so long to join Div1 football?

[whaler11]

Did he update it for his latest problem? Taking money as a "consultant" to Apple Health Care while the guys' wife was actually using him as a consultant she ran for office? The Apple guy (name escapes me, he owned the Hartford ABA team once) has cut a deal with the Feds to cooperate.

Foley. He also owned the world team tennis team.

 

[UConn Dan]

I really don't think there would be enough support to go around if the patriots came. Although we're still on the outside looking in, the patriots not coming to CT was the best thing to happen for UConn football.

 

[huskyrob1]

Wrong, wrong, wrong. Rowland was anything but what you portray him to be.

You don't know what you are talking about, plain and simple. Yes he broke the law and paid his debt to society, but he did do a lot for the state while Governor.

During the years that Rowland was in office, the state enjoyed record-breaking surpluses, state spending increased only modestly, with real spending growth rates of just over 2 percent annually between 1995 and 2003. For the first time in state history, tax rebate checks were sent to taxpayers in 1998 and again in 1999. He adhered to a spending cap voters added to the state constitution in 1992.

During those years, the state invested more than $2 billion to rebuild the University of Connecticut. Major investments were also made in the Connecticut State University andCommunity Technical College systems; enrollments as of 2004 were at an all-time high.

As of 2004, Connecticut students led the nation in performance, and the number of spaces in pre-school programs more than doubled during his term in office.

During his term, more than 455,000 acres (1,840 km2) (700+ sq. miles) of open space were preserved for future generations and state parks were revitalized. Rowland also led an aggressive clean-up and protection effort for Long Island Sound.

The Adriaen’s Landing project, the most ambitious capital city development project in decades in the state, continued to progress during Rowland's time in office. College campuses were moved, which brought thousands downtown in Hartford, Stamford, Bridgeport and Waterbury. New London's waterfront was thriving as of 2004, with a new global research facility and rebuilt pier. Theaters and museums in all major cities were revitalized, from the Palace Theater in Waterbury to the New Britain's Museum of American Art.

In 1998, Rowland implemented the HUSKY Plan (Healthcare for UninSured Kids and Youth) to provide health insurance to uninsured Connecticut children. During his tenure, the budget for the Department of Children and Families more than doubled. Rowland supported addition to government of the state’s first Child Advocate.

Rowland was a strong proponent of a tough stance against violent crime as Governor. The prison population grew rapidly during his term, which caused the state to send inmates to prisons in Virginia to deal with overcrowding. Legislative opponents of this policy such as Representative Michael Lawlor urged more rapid release of nonviolent offenders. After Rowland left office the Virginia inmates were returned to Connecticut and more criminals were paroled. This approach was criticized after the 2007 Cheshire home invasionmurders committed by two "nonviolent" inmates paroled from Connecticut prison.

Before investigation into his conduct as governor started, Rowland was viewed as a rising star in the Republican Party, and was mentioned as a future presidential or vice-presidential candidate.

Shortly after being released from prison, he was offered a job as the city of Waterbury's economic development coordinator. Rowland was appointed to this office by long time friend and associate, Mayor Michael Jarjura.

 

[huskyrob1]

Barbara Kennelly and a few others didn't want it.

I do believe that Kraft was never going to come to Connecticut though and just wanted Massachusetts to pony up the new stadium. Unlike Jimmy I believe that if the Patriots came to Connecticut, UCONN would be in the ACC right now.

Some people can't see the forest through the trees.

 

[Carl Spackler]

We were classified Division II in football prior to IAA Edit; and after the College Division classification.

Again, Most of the Ivies had the stadiums to meet at the time the 30k seating requirement.
Those included Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Columbia, Penn. Cornell was slightly under at 26k but could have gone to 30k I think no problem. Syracuse played there a bit when the dome was being built. The rest of the schools to meet the 30k in the east were WVU, Syracuse, Rutgers, BC, Pitt, Temple(Yes they had 30k+ with a temporary seat waiver) Army, Navy and PSU.

To Freescooter's point, we had very good OOC's back then. In'79 we opened with Army, Navy, Yale, and Rutgers( began upgrading their schedule about then). We also played a good Delaware a lot and Lehigh when they were very very good. I think we won Yankee conference championships with losing overall records in the 80's.

I stand corrected about the division II, I trust Duncan. I'm old but not that old I guess. As for the seating capacity, who qualified and who didn't, I'll go with your assessment as well. Stand corrected. But I'm pretty sure that there was an attendance clause as well, taht was worked in, and however it worked out, I think 5 or 6 out of the 8 did not meet the requirements for 1A, and the reasons were tied to the attendance/stadium capacity. I got my stories about this from some former coaches in the Ivy league - re: Paterno's involvement. Paterno from what I know, personally and second hand, regularly battled the Ivy's recruiting for players and lost regulary until they went 1-AA.

Mike Slive, the current emporer of the SEC college football world, was a young athletic director at Cornell, managing some 30 sports including division 1 football, with a budget in the millions of early 1980's dollars. I think he probably learned some lessons about it all back then.

 

[Carl Spackler]

Not really. CT spent a lot of money siting the extensions through Bolton/Coventry and then to the RI border complete with intersection with the then CT Turnpike (now part of I-395) in Danielson. Biggest impediment was in the Coventry to Willi stretch. Lots of wetlands involved and the Army Corps of Engineers never gave sign off to the final route. There was also a ton of eminent domain issues with something like 85+ residential homes and farms that were needed. Severe wetalnds issues in eastern CT too but not as many homes impacted. Several alternate plans were floated but never followed thru on when it became clear that a direct interstate to RI was not all that important.

Thanks for the rundown. I knew that there were plans to build a highway, I didn't have any idea why it never was completed.

 

[Gilligan]

As for that guy from apple which everybody says is foley..His real name is Brian FOOEY and he's gone through bankruptcy and screwed a lot of people and has property in Newport...It doesn't surprise me for him to cut a deal, the guy is a snake oil salesman....

 

[junglehusky]

Shortly after being released from prison, he was offered a job as the city of Waterbury's economic development coordinator. Rowland was appointed to this office by long time friend and associate, Mayor Michael Jarjura.

 

[SAMCRO]

the guys I tailgate with played at UCONN under Tom Jackson in the late 80's early 90's. All of them say that when they were recruited, they were told UCONN would be a 1A program by the time they graduated.

This. I was at a breakfast in '88 where Turner told a group of us that within the next 4-5 years UConn would be playing the likes of Pitt, BC, and Penn St on a regular basis.

 

[FfldCntyFan]

the guys I tailgate with played at UCONN under Tom Jackson in the late 80's early 90's. All of them say that when they were recruited, they were told UCONN would be a 1A program by the time they graduated.

Toner wanted to move up from basically the day that division one split into A & AA but met far too much resistance (keep in mind what a struggle it was to get Gampel built) and wasn't skilled enough at working politicians.

One thing about the Jackson era was that every time it looked like we were building some momentum we would follow it with a step or two backwards.

 

[Waquoit]

Rowland was in on it. The fake paper signing and all.

Not a finger was lifted to prepare for any of the work that south end stadium site would have required in the 24 month time frame being thrown around.

What did CT get out of it?

 

[BoatShow]

This is a fair argument and something a lot of people elsewhere in the NCAA hold against us still. We found ourselves in a BCS conference without having to prove a whole lot on the field. How would we feel if Stony Brook got an invited to the B1G tomorrow?

 

[Carl Spackler]

This is a fair argument and something a lot of people elsewhere in the NCAA hold against us still. We found ourselves in a BCS conference without having to prove a whole lot on the field. How would we feel if Stony Brook got an invited to the B1G tomorrow?

I don't think it was the invite itself that bothered people. GIven the structure of the Big East conference, adn all the stuff that went down between 1984-1996 in college football across the country, as well as with the Big EAst specifically, it was pretty much inevitable that the Big EAst leadership would extend offers to the schools in the conference that played football at 1-AA to upgrade to 1-A. And that was us and VIllanova, and it was well known, and the offer came to both - in 1996. THere were studies done about it by important people in the landscape, and it was all taken very serious - at least by UCONN. That's fact.

VIllanova - I firmly believe that had Villanova actually committed to upgrade in 2010 (they had the standing offer since 1996) rather than drag ass and produce that embarrassing proposal a year late - the leadership at Syracuse and Pitt, doesn't leave the conference. But that's just may opinion. BAsed on feedback and conversation I've had over the years, the problem was not with the offer, but in the perception of how the offer was handled by UCONN, as I've described. THe offer was the gold cased silver spoon, and UCONN couldn't move on it. It took backdoor politics to squeeze it through at the last second.

On top of that, came Blumenthal's grandstanding act, naming actual people in the lawsuit and claiming that UCONN was being damaged having upgraded into a BCS conference. He had all the backing of the basketball community and all the outrage against BC, Miami, etc..... THe few people that really knew football...well - I can't speak for anyone else - I wasn't happy to say the least.

We are now on the outside looking in again, with USF, Cincinatti - Louisville - being the only school that was cut out of the big picture back in the mid 1990's to have found a way back in now that the BCS is gone.

THe sooner that the majority of UCONN people understand all of this, the easier it will be to move on through this new conference, and work to reach the highest levels we can reach......and our leadership earn the respect of those that actually vote about such matters as conference alignments when such votes come up again, and they inevitably will.

Because - Captain Obvious speaking, the only reason we are not included among the ESPN chosen 5 tribes right now, is because we did not get enough votes, from the small handful of people that actually vote. THat needs to be changed, and it's slow and steady progress that eventually changes it.

 

[NickyNewark]

Hey guys, we get a lot of traffic here on the BY from fans of other P5 conferences!! Why is that? Because they all know UConn will soon be one of them(in a P5 soon) and there curious to see how our(UConn) FanBase is dealing with what we all know is a wrong. If a VT could in short order go from a "mid-major to BE to ACC in a heartbeat practically think what a state flagbearing school like UConn can do!Everyone knows it but its the waiting thats killing us.I figure no more than 2 yrs from my objective(to a small degree) viewpoint. I spend most of my free time checking out whats happening until UConn is in.....how many thousands of others are?

 

[Palatine]

What was the reasoning back in the 90s as to why uconn didn't join the newly formed big east football conference. I am more then positive we were asked to upgrade, what was the sad reasoning not to at that time? Easy to point fingers now obviously but what was the excuse?

Because this is Connecticut. We don't want to do anything rash.

Look we'll all for progress as long as nothing changes.

 

[ktuck911]

Because this is Connecticut. We don't want to do anything rash.

Look we'll all for progress as long as nothing changes.

And that's the worst part of it all.

 

[DarthGrumpy]

I don't think the Rent ever would have been built if UCONN had gone 1A in the mid or early 90's. There was a big push to build a huge stadium right in downtown Hartford which would have been home to both the Patriots and the Huskies and if that had happened UCONN would have been one of the first teams taken in the first conference raid, maybe even before BC. What killed that deal was the CT legislature not giving Kraft everything he wanted, despite Gov Rowland doing everything he could to urge them to do so. I liked John Rowland, yeah he got caught with his hand in the cookie jar, but I liked him as a Governor.

The Pats were never coming to Hartford (or Providence). Kraft was leveraging both cities to get what he wanted in Foxborough. He’s still doing the same today trying to pit various cities around Boston (Revere, Somerville, Boston, etc.) to get someone to pay for a soccer only, 20K stadium for the Revs, which is desperately needed. The fact that no one has offered enough money is why there is no stadium to date.

 

[DarthGrumpy]

It is what it is. The stadium was designed to built on campus, and was very close to ground breaking construction on campus before local politics got is shut down, and if not for John Rowland's activism to get the East Hartford site back to life in the state legislature...the upgrade goes dead as of 2001, and we most likely playing football in the CAA now.

I vaguely recall talk of a stadium being built behind the Jungle with a direct access road off of Route 44 at some point while I was in Storrs in the mid 1990’s when the rumors of the upgrade got serious.

 

[HuskyHawk]

Kraft used CT as leverage to get the Razor built for just about nothing.

As far as UConn being one of the first teams snatched up during the first raid if we played in a downtown stadium shared by the Patriots...that is Boneyard Fantasy at its finest.

Actually he paid for Gillette himself. All he wanted was some infrastructure work done on RT1 and other access roads. MA was too cheap for even that. He also considered putting a stadium in South Boston. The state did pony up 17% of the total cost, but it was all road and infrastructure work, not the stadium itself.

 

[Waquoit]

Toner wanted to move up from basically the day that division one split into A & AA but met far too much resistance (keep in mind what a struggle it was to get Gampel built) and wasn't skilled enough at working politicians.

But mostly the fact that he was an absentee AD. He spent more time out of the office than in it while the BB program was going to .

 

[uconnfan68]

I don't think the Rent ever would have been built if UCONN had gone 1A in the mid or early 90's. There was a big push to build a huge stadium right in downtown Hartford which would have been home to both the Patriots and the Huskies and if that had happened UCONN would have been one of the first teams taken in the first conference raid, maybe even before BC. What killed that deal was the CT legislature not giving Kraft everything he wanted, despite Gov Rowland doing everything he could to urge them to do so. I liked John Rowland, yeah he got caught with his hand in the cookie jar, but I liked him as a Governor.

Why are you blaming anyone but Kraft? He knew he couldn't leave Boston/Mass for CT. He was only trying to get Mass to foot the bill for a new stadium, and when they didn't, he paid for it. He could have had state money from CT.

 

[Glastonhusky]

I vaguely recall talk of a stadium being built behind the Jungle with a direct access road off of Route 44 at some point while I was in Storrs in the mid 1990’s when the rumors of the upgrade got serious.

I also remember that. There were objections by the people of Mansfield over traffic etc, but the main reason it died was because it was proposed in an election year. As I recall one of the candidates, Barbara Kennelly I believe, railed against the cost and how much it would hurt education and other state services. The other candidate(not sure, but it may have been Rowland) backed down and that was the end of it.

 

[hexlub]

Interesting read on where an on-campus stadium would have been on North Campus. I for one still think it was a big mistake not having the stadium in Storrs. Would have changed the whole campus.

http://articles.courant.com/1997-10...-storrs-campus-demolition-of-memorial-stadium

Love these two bullets:

* The football program, operating at a deficit of $2.1 million a year at I-AA, is expected to lose about $3 million by 2000 -- but should produce positive financial results as soon as 2005.

* The salary of the head coach is projected to increase from $110,000 to $200,000 by 2003, when the team would be playing a partial Big East schedule.

 

[Waquoit]

Thanks for the rundown. I knew that there were plans to build a highway, I didn't have any idea why it never was completed.

Rhode Island didn't want it. That's why the project stalled and died.

 

[DoctorWho85]

I was also really disappointed when the Patriots didn't come here (same thing when the Six Flags rumor was going around). Although it would be nice to share a stadium with a pro team, I don't think it would work out too well for attendance. Look at Pitt, Temple and USF. THey all play in pro stadiums and most of the time it looks like there are more empty seats than are fans. I know it isn't ideal, but I love The Rent and have many good memories in that stadium and hope to have a lot more this year, starting with BYU!