Miami had the chance in the very early 1990's to go to the Big East, the ACC or the SEC. They opted for the Big East, because most of their student population came from the northeast - particularly New Yawk. The chose the Big East.
Don't blame Blumenthal. He did the right thing. The ACC was nothing more than preditory practice designed to destroy Big East Basketball so that they could resume their past role as the dominent hoops conference. UConn had just invested millions and was (is now) going to be harmed.
You want to blame someone, blame the weak-kneed judges and court interpretations. The Old USFL (Steve Young, Herschal, Jim Kelly, Steve Spurrier) wins a major antitrust case against the NFL in the mid-80s and should have been positioned to negotiate a merger at worst. The courts decide on damages of $1 and treble damages of $3. A flippin disgrace to the American Judicial System. The "fix" was obviously in and the judge and the court where in on it.
Relevance for today? The court should have told Miami (and Shalala) that they were free "never to play a game in Connecticut" as long as they were willing to be saddled with a forfeiture each time they were a no show. That would have "shut her up" quickly. Oh and the message to Miami, BCU and VT (and even SU who was testing the water) should have been a judical pronouncement that they could play in the Big East or play in no conference at all. Take your pick.
No offense, but I don't think you have any idea what you're talking about. THe USFL thing happened because Donald Trump went head to head with some other big time business people, with serious connections, and lost big time. Nothing new for the Donald - he's always been a risk taker with bigger balls than brains. The professional football world could be entirely different than it is now, if not for Trump's ego. The USFL was poised to be a major competitor to the NFL, but Trump decided he wanted to go head to head with the NFL, and lost.
And make no mistake, just because the subject matter at hand might be be billions of dollars, entire state universities and private universities, attorney generals, and united states president cabinet advisors, dealings are no different than when you get two or more ego's clashing over what movie to watch on a friday night among teenagers. The power players in the current intercollegiate athletics world, are all driven by ego.
Things would be a lot different for UConn right now, I believe whole heartedly, had Dick Blumenthal's ego (and frankly Jim Calhoun's too) not been at the forefront of how business was handled in 2003.
As for the actual subject matter, yes - UConn had invested a ton of money and stood a chance to lose out on it. The fact is that we didn't. It could have and should have been handled much differently. The problem, as always with the Big East, was that people believed basketball trumped football, and in 2003, UConn football was non-existent and it was foolish for the CT AG and UConn leadership to get into an arena like we did, and pretend it did.
Times are different now, but read this NY Times piece in 2003. UConn football isn't even mentioned as a hope for maintaining viable Big East football confernce, because we were non-existent in the national landscape, although our leadership made it the centerpiece of that lawsuit against a multiple national championship football program.
We have proved the MIami AD completely wrong in the past 10 years, and we need to continue building, but going into that lawsuit in 2003 with all guns blazing,is a major, major reason we stand alone as a founding member of the Big EAst right now.
All we can do, is continue to win, and prove the naysayers wrong.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/01/s...ft-of-power-expected.html?pagewanted=2&src=pm