Football Options

[StunningSteve]

They'll just stay with 11 when they can't get Army/Boise/BYU

11 is not a bad outcome with that last share making the others bigger.

 

[bendm]

C'mon people, are we a P5 level school or are we the dregs of the G5????

no, we aren't a P5 level school for football. never were, never could, never will be.

but we can actually claim to be in a P6 basketball conference now. trying to say that with a straight face in the AAC, aka the G5 dregs, was embarrassing.

 

[VAHuskyFan]

Lets’s turn this around and start from the premise that we are independent today with:

(1) our own regional TV network in SNY that buys and guarantees coverage of all games not on a national feed (i.e. no $10/month streaming-only games);

(2) the ability to creatively design our full schedule using MBB and WBB tie-ins, 2-for-1s, etc., to obtain payouts from other programs and bring 1 or 2 big names to the Rent annually (while also scheduling lesser teams that help generate Ws as we rebuild);

(3) the opportunity to schedule home games when we want to schedule them (as opposed to when ESPNU tells us to schedule them).

How much would the AAC need to offer us to give all that up and sign on the dotted line to join the league in football? A lot! Certainly more than they are in a position to offer given the AAC’s garbage ESPN contract.

Having SNY, our national brand in MBB and WBB, and close proximity to northeast NFL stadiums (plus Yankee Stadium, etc.) gives us a lot of different levers to pull as an independent that the average school in a non-P5 conference could only dream about. If we can use them wisely, UConn can generate a lot more value (and fan interest) as a football independent than in the AAC or MAC.

 

[WrenchFan69]

Probably.

Only thing that could screw it up would be if the NCAA didn't let them do a CCG without the round robin. 10/12 games being conference games could be a problem, especially considering every school in the AAC has years where they're over 2 OOC already scheduled.

 

[StunningSteve]

How much would the AAC need to offer us to give all that up and sign on the dotted line to join the league in football? A lot! Certainly more than they are in a position to offer given the AAC’s garbage ESPN contract.

Having SNY, the UConn national brand in MBB and WBB, and close proximity to northeast NFL stadiums gives us a lot of different levers to pull as an independent that the average school in a non-P5 conference could only dream about. If we can use them wisely, UConn can generate a lot more value (and fan interest) as a football independent than in the AAC or MAC.

I like this.

Frankly, UConn football is too expensive for the American.

That being said, I do appreciate all of UConns efforts made toward the AAC's crappy media deal to this point. A lot of sweat equity was put in and I'm grateful to those guys who bled on the field.

Now that UConn wants to part ways and strike a better deal, I'm 100% supportive.

 

[whaler11]

The AAC is delusional, not UConn.

The AAC thinks BYU might join on the same terms as other schools? The new media deal will cut their revenue by a factor of 3 and decrease visibility, and the extra travel will increase expenses. They they will have to pay $10 million and give 27 months notice to leave. No way BYU would consent to that. "They had too many demands and wanted to be treated differently on TV rights than other members” -- yeah, guess what, you've lost both UConn and BYU by not giving that deal.

Army would be a coup for the AAC, we'll see if they can get it. "It’s quite possible neither school wants to join" -- Army previously decided that competing in a major conference is incompatible with its military mission.

Beyond Army, every alternative is inferior to UConn. If the AAC is smart, if they fail to get Army they should come beg for UConn as football only.

god i hope they add army. that is legitimately brain dead.

army would be so bad in the aac they would miss uconn

 

[ctchamps]

No but you'll almost definitely see UMass Liberty Army and New Mexico State as default "conference" opponents on an annual basis beginning in 2-3 years given they all need 12 games annually too.

BYU came here on a H/H when we were in the AAC. I could see them doing that again- they signed a 4 game deal with UMass 2 in Provo 2 in MA. If they want to play an east coast game every year they can alternate UConn and UMass.

ND probably will never play us again given the history and their quasi ACC association.

The FCS games will be a rotation of local schools like Villanova, Rhode Island, etc.

Now that were Independent, I'd love us to play Yale a few times. I don't think a win vs them counts towards bowl eligibility for us but given that we don't have any bowl tie-ins anymore that doesn't matter anyways.

I'd love it if they could convince Delaware or URI any of the other teams to upgrade but thats got a 0.0001% chance of happening.

Brings a whole new meaning to the expression “Give me Liberty or give me death”.

UConn will be known as a trend setting school. Football sacrificed for basketball. UConn going religious as the country goes secular.

 

[bendm]

UConn going religious as the country goes secular.

bball is our religion!

 

[pj]

army would be so bad in the aac they would miss uconn

They're going to miss UConn regardless.

Sooner or later Cincy, Houston, SMU, USF, UCF, Navy will approach UConn, BYU, Air Force, Colorado State, etc about forming a football only conference and getting out from under Aresco's stupid deals.

 

[Fishy]

no, we aren't a P5 level school for football. never were, never could, never will be.

but we can actually claim to be in a P6 basketball conference now. trying to say that with a straight face in the AAC, aka the G5 dregs, was embarrassing.

Crazy - I remember UConn beating P5 schools. I must be confused.

When AOL started handing out disks that let even the dumbest people on the planet get online, I knew this site was going to suffer for it.

 

[Guapo]

Crazy - I remember UConn beating P5 schools. I must be confused.

When AOL started handing out disks that let even the dumbest people on the planet get online, I knew this site was going to suffer for it.

To be fair, I think it's a bit more nuanced than "we played and beat West Virginia, once."

UConn, and it's fan base, never behaved or cared (as a collective, obviously I know there are die hard UConn football fans out there and I feel bad for them) as a power conference football school.

It's more than just wins and loses, it's culture.

Honestly, this isn't an insult to UConn fans. There's a lot about college football culture that is bad a toxic.

We do behave and care like a power college basketball school.

 

[Stinger92860]

no, we aren't a P5 level school for football. never were, never could, never will be.

but we can actually claim to be in a P6 basketball conference now. trying to say that with a straight face in the AAC, aka the G5 dregs, was embarrassing.

 

[templefan1]

As a Temple fan, I wanted to say a few things because frankly I know what bad football looks like prior to Al Golden. I honestly think UConn will not have a football program in 5 years. Independence does not work unless you have something to sell. ND (tradition/history), Liberty/BYU (religious affiliation), Service Acad. (Army). UConn football doesn't have any off that to go on to get thru the rough part of starting out as an independent. The only reason Temple has a football program is because the university committed to football and got a life line in MAC membership. Remove the conference affiliation from the equation and Al Golden would have failed too and also probably would have never taken the Temple job back in 2006. UConn is in the same boat right now, no commitment to football (besides lip service at this point "we will figure it out", no bowls, no TV contract. That is hard to sell for a school in desperate need of an influx in talent.
Lets’s turn this around and start from the premise that we are independent today with:

(1) our own regional TV network in SNY that buys and guarantees coverage off all games not on a national feed (i.e. no $10/month streaming-only games); Ok, so this applies to 5-6 home games a year vs most likely and FCS opponent, Umass/NMst alternating years, maybe Liberty, MAC/C-USA school. The assumption that UConn will be able to schedule a P5 opponents at home as an independent (and a not good independent) will certainly not cause SNY to throw money at UConn. They run a business and will buy cheap

(2) the ability to creatively design our full schedule using MBB and WBB tie-ins, 2-for-1s, etc., to obtain payouts from other programs and bring 1 or 2 big names to the Rent annually (while also scheduling lesser teams that help generate Ws as we rebuild); No way UConn can get 1 to 2 big names a year to CT. 1st, the big payouts only come on the 1 and done deals where you play at the big name school. 2nd, UConn has the big disadvantage of being in a cold weather area for Oct. Nov. No big name school is traveling to UConn outside of Sept for a road game. NM St and Umass have a combined 3 home games vs P5 opponents scheduled. One is BC playing in Foxboro, which will be a BC home game basically. Liberty has actually been successful at scheduling P5 home games, but they only have 2 in the next 6 years and then 1 a year from 2025-2028 (still lots of scheduling to do of course.) Using basketball as an incentive works until you realize that most conference are adding more league games and there are less opportunities for OOC games each year. Also, the trend of P5s scheduling more neutral/home site games is a big issue as well. So in theory, UConn would probably have to travel on the road more in basketball to make this a reality, and that means less homes games/marquee home opponents for Uconn too.

(3) the opportunity to schedule home games when we want to schedule them (as opposed to when ESPNU tells us to schedule them). Sounds like a "win".

How much would the AAC need to offer us to give all that up and sign on the dotted line to join the league in football? A lot! Certainly more than they are in a position to offer given the AAC’s garbage ESPN contract. I am not sure you are grasping how this all works. Without UConn basketball, UConn football is basically Umass football at this point (probably worse). UConn stood to make $7M in media, and $2-3M in CFP and bowl money annually, and some money from NCAA credits staying in the AAC. The math is fuzzy regarding how UConn will be better off in the BE and still playing football as an independent or even FCS(still expensive).

Having SNY, our national brand in MBB and WBB, and close proximity to northeast NFL stadiums (plus Yankee Stadium, etc.) gives us a lot of different levers to pull as an independent that the average school in a non-P5 conference could only dream about. If we can use them wisely, UConn can generate a lot more value (and fan interest) as a football independent than in the AAC or MAC.

Just some thoughts from a Temple fan that has been there before. I always enjoyed my trips to the Rent the last 10+ years. I don't see Temple playing UConn for a very long time in either bball or FB after the split happens unfortunately.

 

[businesslawyer]

To be fair, I think it's a bit more nuanced than "we played and beat West Virginia, once."

UConn, and it's fan base, never behaved or cared (as a collective, obviously I know there are die hard UConn football fans out there and I feel bad for them) as a power conference football school.

It's more than just wins and loses, it's culture.

Honestly, this isn't an insult to UConn fans. There's a lot about college football culture that is bad a toxic.

We do behave and care like a power college basketball school.

Based on what? We filled a 40k seat stadium, made a heck of a lot of noise and intimidated opponents. Given the overall quality and location of the five bowls we played in, we did fine bringing people. Yes, the Fiesta Bowl didn't work well but that was for a whole host of reasons. We brought more people than organizers hoped for to crappy places like Detroit and Charlotte and Toronto (I know -- Toronto is not a crappy place, or anything near it, but for college football in January ....). We were nowhere near being Michigan or Alabama. But we were absolutely at a comfortable level within the power conferences as a whole. But not shockingly, we couldn't sustain it when we got thrown out. I'd like to see UVA or Illinois or Oregon State try it.

 

[ctchamps]

To be fair, I think it's a bit more nuanced than "we played and beat West Virginia, once."

UConn, and it's fan base, never behaved or cared (as a collective, obviously I know there are die hard UConn football fans out there and I feel bad for them) as a power conference football school.

It's more than just wins and loses, it's culture.

Honestly, this isn't an insult to UConn fans. There's a lot about college football culture that is bad a toxic.

We do behave and care like a power college basketball school.

The momentum was just beginning to develop for football when the bottom dropped out. A few more years of success after the BCS bid and the conversation would be different now.

We’ve had three bad men’s bb seasons and look what has happened to attendance.

The one thing that hurts the region for football is the lack of football programs at the youth level in NY and New England. But people in those regions love watching the sport every bit as much as elsewhere in the country. They just needed the product to be better than what has happened these past six years.

 

[ConnHuskBask]

To be fair, I think it's a bit more nuanced than "we played and beat West Virginia, once."

UConn, and it's fan base, never behaved or cared (as a collective, obviously I know there are die hard UConn football fans out there and I feel bad for them) as a power conference football school.

It's more than just wins and loses, it's culture.

Honestly, this isn't an insult to UConn fans. There's a lot about college football culture that is bad a toxic.

We do behave and care like a power college basketball school.

Right, it would probably start winning a BCS Conference twice in four years before the whole league was turned on it's head.

It's bad enough there's enough BC, Cuse and national media want to discredit our football but we were right there with them, beating them, and filling the Rent before the carpet was pulled out from beneath us.

 

[Guapo]

Based on what? We filled a 40k seat stadium, made a heck of a lot of noise and intimidated opponents. Given the overall quality and location of the five bowls we played in, we did fine bringing people. Yes, the Fiesta Bowl didn't work well but that was for a whole host of reasons. We brought more people than organizers hoped for to crappy places like Detroit and Charlotte and Toronto (I know -- Toronto is not a crappy place, or anything near it, but for college football in January ....). We were nowhere near being Michigan or Alabama. But we were absolutely at a comfortable level within the power conferences as a whole. But not shockingly, we couldn't sustain it when we got thrown out. I'd like to see UVA or Illinois or Oregon State try it.

I’m not saying it’s fair, and what the program accomplished in as short of a time as it did was nothing short of remarkable, however we did not have the luxury of being grandfathered in as some of these other schools did.

It is what it is and we made the right choice.

I actually think UConn does have a future as an independent and I’m certainly interested to see how that turns out.

I’ll be rooting for them hard, just like I do all UConn teams.

 

[ToolzieFan]

The momentum was just beginning to develop for football when the bottom dropped out. A few more years of success after the BCS bid and the conversation would be different now.

We’ve had three bad men’s bb seasons and look what has happened to attendance.

The one thing that hurts the region for football is the lack of football programs at the youth level in NY and New England. But people in those regions love watching the sport every bit as much as elsewhere in the country. They just needed the product to be better than what has happened these past six years.

It makes sense to me that sports participation drives sports viewership. In other words, if more kids play football, more kids and adults will watch football. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen studies that verify this intuitive claim. For that reason, although winning seasons would put some fans back in PAWS ARF, I think that football will only decline in popularity in CT over time. As the evidence about the health risks of children playing football continues to mount, I envision more and more parents keeping their kids away from football in a state like CT. So I agree with your point about the lack of youth programs in New England and New York hurting football in the region, and I only see youth participation deceasing more over time.

 

[VAHuskyFan]

Re:templefan1


1. Agree with you completely that our position as an independent is not as good as that of ND, BYU, or the service academies for the reasons you state. With that said, it is better than just about any other non-P5 school. Having SNY is huge. Being able to offer travel games with our MBB and WBB teams to secure FB scheduling is also a unique asset. And the ability to potentially offer a game in NYC as part of a larger deal is also something most non-P5s can’t offer.

2. Lack of bowl access is the least of our problems after the last two seasons we’ve had.

3. Re: scheduling P5s, I doubt being independent makes us any less attractive than we would be in the AAC. We’d offer value in two ways: (1) package deals involving MBB and WBB home-and-homes, and (2) being willing to take 2-for-1s (with payouts). I understand that we aren’t getting payouts for home-and-homes.

4. Re: SNY, they’re a cable network. They are looking for points of leverage with cable companies. They don’t need most people to watch, they just need enough people who will go nuts if their cable company tries to cut SNY from the lineup. UConn football fits that bill. As you point out, if the finances don’t work out, UConn may have to shut down football, so buying “cheap” would be short-sighted on the part of SNY. I sincerely hope the school has already worked something out here. If SNY isn’t interested or isn’t wiling to offer much, independence starts to look less good for sure.

5. It will not take much for us to be better off financially with Fox BB money plus SNY. The BE also figures to take in considerably more than the AAC in NCAA basketball tournament unit $$$ going forward, which offsets the CFP amount in the AAC.

6. We aren’t Notre Dame in terms of trying to schedule P5s, but we aren’t Liberty or New Mexico State either. (Most P5 fanbases can identify our mascot.). We’d only need to use basketball package deals to line up two or so football games a year. The rest I’d try to get done with football-only 2-for-1s. You bring up a good point regarding crowding out on basketball schedules, but we’ll have room enough to offer a few away games a year as part of multi-sport home-and-homes.

I’ll freely concede that independence doesn’t offer guaranteed success for us to turn things around. It’s risky and we could screw it up. You certainly highlight some of the challenges. My preference for independence has more to do with (a) how little value the AAC offers us in terms of revenue and fan interest, and (b) how difficult it would be to try to pull a turnaround in a conference against a lot of good teams that are spending way beyond their athletic revenues to chase the P5 dream. We don’t have the pockets for that arms race at the moment - particularly given where the team currently is - so we need to try something different that leverages our strengths.

 

[Fishy]

To be fair, I think it's a bit more nuanced than "we played and beat West Virginia, once."

UConn, and it's fan base, never behaved or cared (as a collective, obviously I know there are die hard UConn football fans out there and I feel bad for them) as a power conference football school.

It's more than just wins and loses, it's culture.

Honestly, this isn't an insult to UConn fans. There's a lot about college football culture that is bad a toxic.

We do behave and care like a power college basketball school.

There are 65 schools deemed P5 schools.

We regularly beat them - Big 12, Big Ten, Notre Dame, ACC, Big East.

There’s no nuance needed - we played with those schools, successfully.

 

[Adios]

They'll just stay with 11 when they can't get Army/Boise/BYU

Maybe we can go back Temple-style in time, since we'd still be the only school that adds value.

 

[Adios]

no, we aren't a P5 level school for football. never were, never could, never will be.

but we can actually claim to be in a P6 basketball conference now. trying to say that with a straight face in the AAC, aka the G5 dregs, was embarrassing.

Total bull. We were beating solid teams not long ago. Beat a ranked Houston 4 years ago.

Short memories? So excited about the Big East?

 

[Bonehead]

The following schools could be interested in joining a league in the next few years:

UConn
UMASS
Temple
Army
Buffalo
Cincinnati
Navy
Marshall
Liberty
Old Dominion
East Carolina
Coastal Carolina

Basketball will dominate this league!!

 

[VAHuskyFan]

“There is also a plan being discussed that UConn and UMass become part of the Eastern Division of Conference USA, which would then split apart and become its league (9 teams) and the West would also be a 9 team conference by going after schools such as BYU and New Mexico State in football only.”

Hahahaha, just kidding apparently about this being a well-thought-out plan to leverage our strengths as a football independent!

If there’s any truth to this hysterically bad CUSA idea, there is definitely no plan for football at the moment. And if the AD’s office thinks this beats going independent, football is screwed.

 

[Bonehead]

“There is also a plan being discussed that UConn and UMass become part of the Eastern Division of Conference USA, which would then split apart and become its league (9 teams) and the West would also be a 9 team conference by going after schools such as BYU and New Mexico State in football only.”

Hahahaha, just kidding apparently about this being a well-thought-out plan to leverage our strengths as a football independent!

If there’s any truth to this hysterically bad CUSA idea, there is definitely no plan for football at the moment. And if the AD’s office thinks this beats going independent, football is screwed.

There is no plan for football.

If there is a plan it's a much better secret than moving to the NBE.