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With Financial Safeguards In Place, UConn Shouldn't Get Burned On Trip To St. Pete
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Dooley
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Good read. Much has changed since our nightmare Fiesta Bowl story that the national media ran with. I'm happy that the AAC has the financial protections in place for its bowl game members that the Big East never did.
Bowl games should be a positive news story for a school and football program, not a magnet for national scrutiny because fans decided to (gasp!) buy tickets for $5 on StubHub instead of $100+ through the school. Heck, even the photo used in this Courant story shows plenty of blue in the stands...from the UPPER DECK.
Bowl games should be a positive news story for a school and football program, not a magnet for national scrutiny because fans decided to (gasp!) buy tickets for $5 on StubHub instead of $100+ through the school. Heck, even the photo used in this Courant story shows plenty of blue in the stands...from the UPPER DECK.
Unfortunately, UConn got a bum rap from the national media. The media went along with the football elites who hated the Big East and the newbie UConn team drove them crazy. The local paper, which hates big time athletics, went along for the ride. They could have dug hard. Instead of just talking about tickets purchased on the secondary market, they could have worked their butts off to get an accurate count of Husky fans at the game
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I've said this in other threads, but even if Hathaway just made a comment similar to what Warde said in this article: "the bowl game is a celebration of a great season for Husky football, one of the fastest rising programs in the country. UConn Nation will be well represented in Arizona by all means necessary and it will be a great celebration of our school's first ever BCS appearance." then I think some of the flak UConn received from the national media would have been squashed a bit. The difference between a competent AD and incompetent one is really night and day. Or Fiesta and St Pete.
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Setting aside inaccurate national media reports, many thousands more UCONN fans supported our Huskies than portrayed. Sitting at home in barcaloungers, ill-informed reporters clearly couldn't see the game, us Huskies' fans, nor the UCONN marching band nearly as well.
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As someone who went to the Fiesta Bowl the numbers were definitely off and the issue with tickets was this: Auburn and Oregon fans were required to purchase tickets to both Fiesta Bowl and National Championship game. This flooded Stub Hub with tickets that were so much cheaper than you could buy them from UCONN for. Case in point my crew tried to work a deal with a Auburn fan for a box...he had paid $15,000 for it and wouldn't take anything less. That box sat dark and empty for the Fiesta Bowl. How do I know that..we literally sat right in front of it.
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Yup.....great point
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Many reasons existed as to why every single school witha hustory of a division 1 football program wanted out of the Big East. The post season was just one. UCONN was caught totally unprepared by the result of Teggart's kick back in 2010. I remember long discussions around here trying to explain why, and pleading to buy tickets.
Good to know, things have changed for the better.
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Doesn't require a "subscription" - just have to sign up w/ email or you can Google the thread title.
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This was easier. Found it on another site when googling the title. (No comments on the site please, it's what came up first after the Courant.)
http://palmbeach.gaynewstoday.com/w...uconn-shouldnt-get-burned-on-trip-to-st-pete/
http://palmbeach.gaynewstoday.com/w...uconn-shouldnt-get-burned-on-trip-to-st-pete/
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No judgement, Ed.thatguyed said:
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This article really hammers home the ineptitude the Big East had towards football. For a conference that was competing with the best in the early 2000's, they made every wrong decision at every turn. Happy the AAC at least is working to support its conference members.
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Don't leave out that UCONN leadership was inept too. It wasn't like what was going to be expected from UCONN for winning the conference and the BCS spot in 2010 was something new. Other schools in the conference had been doing it for 18 years, and the conference rifts started from day 1 in 1991. When our turn came to fall on the sword in that system (which existed for a long time) the school administration was entirely unprepared. The media following did nothing to help with the problems the either. They could have spun the stories different too, but even the media following for UCONN was basketball minded.
It's very good to know things are different now, and it's unfortunate that learning came at such a heavy price. But votes will happen again someday, and hopefully the proper relationships will be cultivated.
In the meantime, we got another bowl game to play with a $500k and change payout.
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I agree with this as well! And who knows, maybe if the Big East had better football leadership perhaps we wouldn't have even gotten the chance to join for football.
I'm a bigger basketball fan so I can appreciate basketball minded but the conference had a royal chance to strengthen football and they failed miserably. While the American is not my dream conference, I can appreciate the attempt to focus on both sports and understand the importance football holds.
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The Big East was Dickens for UCONN sports. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. It's very much true, that our entire university would be on a much different path, and much more similar to our former Yankee conference partners, if not for the establishmenf of the Big East basketball only conference, followed by the Big East intercollegiate conference at division 1 without football, followed by the Big East Division 1A all sports conference.
UCONN truly has a unique history in intercollegiate sports since the 1970's. A lot can be learned about why the national college sports environment is, simply by tracking the what, where, when and why UCONN athletics have shifted conferences since then.
The one constant through it all is that our entire athletic department wins championships. You don't win at anything, if you can't identify mistakes and correct them.
UCONN has done that with the sport of football, and until there is a true playoff for conference champions in division 1A (FBS), there is no reason to think the conference landscape won't change again.
In the meantime, we'll just keep building winners, and this Saturday is a big game for the current football program to get going.
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