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So how stupid or delusional is UConn?

WoadBlue

Hall of Famer
Aug 15, 2008
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UConn is about to cut a bunch of sports.

Even in the days when New England colleges mostly played NE colleges and a few NY colleges in all sports, UConn was nothing big in the eyes of CT sports fans. The BE changed that. For reasons that have never been adequately explained, UConn was the lone state school when the BE opened play. Every other BE member made sense in terms of its basketball history and/or its TV market and/or regionally important rivalry with 1 or 2 other BE teams.

But UConn brought nothing. If you have BC and Providence, you have the only NE TV markets that matter. NY TV blankets the western third, maybe half, of CT. UConn had no basketball history anybody cared about, and UConn had no halfway meaningful rivals among BE teams. Nor does CT produce recruits.

However UConn got into the BE, once BE basketball hit BIG, and then UConn became competitive, the UConn head began to swell. That ego-mushrooming coincided with the founding of BE football, which was created to keep Syracuse, BC, and Pitt in BE basketball. With no UConn 1AA football history of merit, and fewer decent football recruits than basketball recruits in CT, UConn decided that it deserved to play 1A football, in a Major conference.

The average BE fan of the 1990s still has not allowed himself to understand that BE football was always living on very thin ice, because Miami was determined to pair with FSU in the ACC, and any BE football member would leave for any other Major conference that offered once Miami was out the door. But BE commissioner Mike Tranghese knew, which means every BE AD knew. UConn's response was not to work to save BE football by helping the league keep its members, but to plan to move up from 1AA to 1A and BE membership when somebody left. UConn coveted Big Time football, and the only to get it was to be a Major conference. And that mean that at least 1 BE football member had to leave.

UConn set about making the case to BE brass that it being a BE charter member deserved BE football more than Temple, which was last in the BE in attendance. Temple would be expelled from BE football to allow UConn to play. When the ACC finally agreed to add Miami and VT, and then later BC, UConn was livid, because that meant that UConn would never get to play BE football at its full strength. So UConn sued the ACC and got the CT Attorney General to join in.

UConn deserved to be in a Major conference for football.

UConn people assumed that the ACC would dearly love to have the silly dogs, surely if we went to 14 members. But the ACC was not nearly that stupid. And then UConn saw that it could not be worth anything in the best non-P5 football conference, and left for the BE, which no longe plays football. But UConn still has its Major College football dream.

My advice to UConn: drop football, not just to 1A. Drop it. Save a lot of money that then can be spent on other sports that you can compete in.
 
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Yes. They should drop football. They have rabid fans for womens' basketball. And the support for mens' basketball is very good when the team is playing well. I imagine that they could be very good in a couple of other sports if they focused upon them and dropped football. The only relevant football in Connecticut is the Patriots and Giants
 
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