The football goal is respectability. That basically means at least 5 wins a season, bowl game more often than not even if not prestigious ones, with the occasional (i.e. once every 5-10 years) 7 or 8 win surprise season when everything breaks right. I don't think that's out of reach.
That's too harsh. While I understand that finding a conference for football is Job 1, football almost took us down. That's not easily forgotten.
Perhaps I should have dialed that back a bit. However, we are trying to find a good place to park our entire athletic program, not just football.
The extent can be debated but the AAC was a big problem. Women's hoops didn't miss a beat because there are far fewer national brands and UCONN and Geno are the kingpins. Hurley may have been successful but I believe there is no way Cling Kong comes to UCONN knowing he is playing in the freaking AAC. AD Dave Benedict's quote from the USA Today article I posted in the Big 12 thread:
And your point is? Please tell me one OBE team has had any modicum of success in their new respective conference(s).
Miami went to the Final Four this year
Big 10 is not taking Duke or Syracuse
They’re not taking us either.
They'd take UNC and Virginia in a heartbeat. Maybe GT and one of the Florida schools too.
Ye of little faith.
We don’t fit the mold! I’m sorry but it’s true.
What other conference is full of state flagship and land grant schools like ours?
Here's my take-away. I am perfectly content in the New Big East and I think UCONN would be highly successful in the ACC. Given the split of the old Big East teams, I think it's about 50/50 in terms of desirability. It probably would have been better for those teams if all 6 went to the ACC at one time. It would have been more of a merger. Instead it was piecemeal so it always felt like crumbs joining the ACC. More importantly, if UCONN had gone along with cuse, pitt, va tech, and nd, it may have really bolstered ALL of those programs because UCONN, cuse, and pitt were the heavy hitters, and believe it or not, even bcu was doing well.
Yes that’s what I want to fit in. Just those two categories.
Not a big fan of peer institutions?
I’ll play devil’s advocate. If we go to the Big Ten, do you think we’ll have the same basketball success? Keep in mind Big Ten teams don’t win national titles
. Same for football, we won’t jump into the top half of the Big Ten. We’d collect a paycheck each year to be a doormat.
I think, coaching, tradition, and facilities, have a lot more to do with our success than our conference affiliation.I’ll play devil’s advocate. If we go to the Big Ten, do you think we’ll have the same basketball success? Keep in mind Big Ten teams don’t win national titles
Is that worth it?
B1G or B12 or bust.
But will 5 National championships matter? Asking for a friend.
Well maybe in 13 years. Let’s see that would be $30M more per year for 13 years…$390M.
Just curious, what do you perceive “the mold” to be at this point?
Exactly.
They are not the minds you need to change. Getting an invite to either the Big 12 or the ACC is a precursor to any moves. The minds that need to be changed are in those conference offices, or actually in either ESPN or foxes corporate offices since they will be footing the bill.
So as examples here are the following great coaches who lead programs that switched conferences: