So I'm driving to a job site and hear the Suze on the radio...

[buggsy]

Herbst was on the job not very long when this went down. That she did not know the importance of football should be no surprise, since most academics don't have any idea what it takes to land in a big conference. In fact, athletics people take advantage of this and sell these people a bill of goods without the goods. She was hired for her expertise elsewhere. She seems to have fulfilled those promises to a great degree. That she didn't know then, and admits as much now is a sign that she learned pretty quickly. The only relevant question is, did her lack of knowledge impact any of this? And the answer is NO.

You're delusional if you think leaders of major universities playing at the very highest levels of intercollegiate sports don't realize the importance of football and athletics in general.

What does Herbst have on you...that you defend her like you do? Naked pictures? A tape of you cheating on your wife?

To say it is 100 percent true that the vast majority of Presidents involved with CR were not cognizant of how important football is...well, that's just plain ignorant....and completely based on your opinion and nothing else.

Idiotic statement of the year.

 

[CTMike]

First off, freescooter misquoted her answer.

You are right, I need to listen and interpret her words for myself...

Sigh... I just listened. And I hang my head in shame for trusting an ounce of freescooter's interpretation, despite knowing better.

 

[Kevin Caliendo]

Uconn athletics are on life support. I suspect we downgrade football before we ever are invited to a real conference. Simple math, the football program will lose money as it currently stands. at some point, when there are 12,000 people at games, the decision will be made to downgrade the program or maybe even drop it. And if you don't think the AAC will eventually kill the absketball program, youa re mistaken. there will not be enough money to pay Ollie or a high profile coach when the big 5 conferences can pay $3M or more.

I don't think UConn will be in the AAC in 10 years, or the ACC or B1G. I think they will be Independent

 

[J187Money]

Sigh... I just listened. And I hang my head in shame for trusting an ounce of freescooter's interpretation, despite knowing better.

I suggest everyone listen before commenting.

 

[BlueDogs]

Been getting my head kicked in on Herbst for a while....all I can say is its nice to be right.

 

[J187Money]

Been getting my head kicked in on Herbst for a while....all I can say is its nice to be right.

Did you listen to it?

 

[uconnbill]

Uconn athletics are on life support. I suspect we downgrade football before we ever are invited to a real conference. Simple math, the football program will lose money as it currently stands. at some point, when there are 12,000 people at games, the decision will be made to downgrade the program or maybe even drop it. And if you don't think the AAC will eventually kill the absketball program, youa re mistaken. there will not be enough money to pay Ollie or a high profile coach when the big 5 conferences can pay $3M or more.

I don't think UConn will be in the AAC in 10 years, or the ACC or B1G. I think they will be Independent

Then maybe you should stop following UCONN all together since you already have the team and athletics downgraded.

I didn't have an issue with what she said. She trust Warde Manuel on football and athletics as she should.

 

[CTMike]

She emphasized that we want to win (ok, good)... Talked about Warde being a football guy, as a player and administrator - my interpretation being that they know what winning football is supposed to look like and they know the disappointment in losing to Towson.

On CR- FIRST THING SHE SAYS is that there is no question that football is the driver. Yes, she did say that she isn't sure if as it all unfolded that all presidents recognized that as the *singular* driver. My guess is we were probably overconfident that our other successes were "good enough". She said that we've come a long way as a D1 football squad but there's still lots of work to do.

Honestly, my impression was that she was committed to being good at football, whatever "good" means.

At no point was there any endorsement of our current football product or coach...

As for the logo, she said that negative folks get all the attention but she saw lots of support for the new logo on campus.

 

[ZooCougar]

I get the sense that she is sick of talking about realignment and sick of having her tenure being defined by something the school has little control over and the fact that it's fate was determined largely by actions and inactions of predecessors.

 

[metsfan2323]

Ban Freescooter, he's worse than HFD.

 

[upstater]

Are they not cognizant or powerless? The two are exclusive of each other. Cantor fully understands the importance of being in a conference that is known as being one of the power conferences, understands that the conference affiliation and revenue makes many other things possible at the university and understands that alumni EXPECT and DEMAND inclusion in a power conference. Pitt and Cuse, as well as every other school I listed, understand that FB drives the bus.

Uconn, and that includes a lot of its alumni, former and maybe some current people in charge, the casual fan base and most importantly the BoT, continue to misunderstand and undervalue its importance. I 100% believe that the BoT still doesn't get it. Look at the BoT's at any of the schools that won in CR. There are some pretty good FB players on all of those boards. They understand. And they make sure the presidents understand. That is why they are on the winning side. The guy that got it and saw that no one else did was Perkins.

If Cantor understood this, why did she allow Syracuse to suck at football?

 

[Jimmy Serrano]

That is the last time I take a freescooter post at face value.

I just listened to the interview.

It isn't anything remotely close to what he implied.

 

[upstater]

Of course you disagree, and of course, you are wrong.

RU poured $112 million into the stadium upgrade, but didn't cut a single academic program. Not one. Nada. Other athletic programs were cut (8 in all) but not a single academic program was cut. Let's get that mistruth you stated out in the clear.

Our academic ranking fell because we are currently mandated to accept no more than 8 percent out-of-state students. That has kept a lot of weaker in-state students in.....while keeping stronger out-of- state students who applied out. That's changing thank god, under Prez Barchi. He wants to expand out-of-state enrollment to 12-15 percent....and he's going to do it.

By the way, UCONN's student body in 1995 was 83 percent in-state...17 percent out-of-state.

http://www.ctpost.com/news/article/It-s-getting-harder-to-get-into-UConn-908733.php

In 2012, UCONN was only 76 percent-in-state, and 24 percent out-of-state.

http://www.uconn.edu/students.php

UCONN got smart...and let in more stronger students from outside CT. That's what Barchi has started doing at RU.

Regarding the money we poured into the stadium (it was $112 million, not hundreds of millions) that was done to better situate us for a move into a big-time conference...and it worked. One of the first things Delany told Pernetti was that we were going to have to upgrade our stadium. Once Pernetti explained that we had just done that....and showed him the changes made (including the additional 11K seats and nearly 3 dozen new suites) he said he was satisfied, and that no expansion would be necessary.

Now if you want to argue that we should have waited until we got a P-5 invite (and the accompanying tens of millions of new annual $) before breaking ground on the stadium expansion....then I would say you're wrong, because by that time it would have been too late.

Thankfully, President McCormick...who came from a PAC 10 school (U. of Washington), saw the value of investing in athletics for the future of the school.

Also, that argument would only further my original point. that conference realignment is necessary in order to keep relevant, and start earning the 25 million a year in TV rights the other P-5 schools are making....and if Herbst failed to realize that, then she has done a terrible job as president, and should not hold the office she holds.

And you conveniently left out some notables, relevant to recent conference realignment.

Louisville invested $72 million recently with the expansion of Papa John Stadium. What happened to them?

Oh that's right, They took the ACC spot UCONN absolutely SHOULD have received.

TCU? They invested more than $160 million into its football stadium, upgraded other facilities, and paid $3 million annually to keep its top-notch football coach. In five years, TCU more than doubled its athletics budget, from $21 million per annum to $52 million.

They got a Big 12 offer, worth 20+million a year.

Houston is investing $125 million for their new football stadium and another $40 million on their basketball arena, Hofheinz Pavilion.

I won't be surprised one bit if the Big 12 extends them an offer before UCONN gets one.

Now regarding Rutgers' academic rankings...do you really think RU is NOT going to see a big uptick in its rankings now that we have joined the Big Ten (like Penn State did 20 years ago)....and since RU invested millions into re-organizing the new medical school into the fold?

Come on Upstater, you're smarter than that. Or at least, you think you are.

Don't know why I'm even bother to do this since your replies about all these other schools and the money they spent are totally ridiculous. It is totally irrelevant to a post about how Rutgers slashed academics and poured money into athletics and in the process hurt their academic reputation.

But before we get into that, UConn has spent $200 m on facilities in the last 11 years. Don't be an idiot.

Has Houston or TCU improved academics? No. The correlation is nebulous at best.

As for Rutgers, come on, do you want me to post articles in the Chronicle and Star Ledger about all the cuts? $50 million cut followed by $30 million followed by $25 million? 15% and 10% and then another 10% cuts year over year. Down a hundred million+. If I recall correctly students were complaining about not being able to reach professors because phones were ripped out of the offices of the history and english departments. Meanwhile, the staff had paycuts, and one prominent professor said many of his colleagues had fled for elsewhere. All this coincided with the drop in rankings.

Fortunately for Rutgers football, the build out worked. You landed in the B1G. The investment was successful in terms of your sports. The cost was a big drop in reputation. I'm not disputing the fact that you landed on your feet athletics-wise. I only wrote to dispute the notion that athletics correlates to increased academic reputation. It doesn't, The last member of the AAU to join did so after dropping football a decade earlier.

 

[upstater]

You're delusional if you think leaders of major universities playing at the very highest levels of intercollegiate sports don't realize the importance of football and athletics in general.

What does Herbst have on you...that you defend her like you do? Naked pictures? A tape of you cheating on your wife?

To say it is 100 percent true that the vast majority of Presidents involved with CR were not cognizant of how important football is...well, that's just plain ignorant....and completely based on your opinion and nothing else.

Idiotic statement of the year.

You don't know what you are talking about. I have had discussions on this very issue with some of these people at BCS conferences. Many never played a sport in their lives and never watched sports. Have you ever heard Wallace Loh discuss Maryland's move to the B1G? These people leave it up to the ADs who well understand the importance, but coming in, these academics couldn't tell you the difference between Tulane and TCU when it comes to football. They don't know.
And again, if Nancy Cantor is so adamant about the importance of football, why did Syracuse suck for so long?

 

[upstater]

She emphasized that we want to win (ok, good)... Talked about Warde being a football guy, as a player and administrator - my interpretation being that they know what winning football is supposed to look like and they know the disappointment in losing to Towson.

On CR- FIRST THING SHE SAYS is that there is no question that football is the driver. Yes, she did say that she isn't sure if as it all unfolded that all presidents recognized that as the *singular* driver. My guess is we were probably overconfident that our other successes were "good enough". She said that we've come a long way as a D1 football squad but there's still lots of work to do.

Honestly, my impression was that she was committed to being good at football, whatever "good" means.

At no point was there any endorsement of our current football product or coach...

As for the logo, she said that negative folks get all the attention but she saw lots of support for the new logo on campus.

People seem to have missed this point in the interview.

This interview should have been eye-opening for this football board, when the President of the university gives an answer like that about the future of football, and the coach is hardly mentioned in terms of being the focal point and the driver of its future potential.

 

[ZooCougar]

What football team?

 

[freescooter]

What football team?

As the old TMQ thing used to go, Caution: UConn 2013 may contain small amount of football like product...

 

[BlueDogs]

Did you listen to it?

Yes, seems to me relatively clear there is little interest or appreciation in football as a fundamental anchor. As I've said in the past, she is an academic with zero football DNA, and I think that comes through very clearly. She just doesn't get it.

 

[upstater]

Yes, seems to me relatively clear there is little interest or appreciation in football as a fundamental anchor. As I've said in the past, she is an academic with zero football DNA, and I think that comes through very clearly. She just doesn't get it.

She is the President of the University of Connecticut.

 

[J187Money]

Yes, seems to me relatively clear there is little interest or appreciation in football as a fundamental anchor. As I've said in the past, she is an academic with zero football DNA, and I think that comes through very clearly. She just doesn't get it.

I think she gets it, but with 20 things on her plate, focuses on the 19 things she can actually improve and leaves sports to the AD. She clearly EXPECTS him to do a great job. And given her track record if she feels he isn't, he will be shown the door (as she has done in a number of other areas in her 2+ years on the job). The definition of what constitutes a good job is really what is at issue here. And most of THIS constituency seems to care pretty much ONLY about the football program and NOT about the school (half of the football regulars don't even care about MBB). Which is fair, because this is a football board. I know you'd all be happier if she acted like Jerry Jones, but look at how that generally works out for the Cowboys.

 

[buggsy]

Don't know why I'm even bother to do this since your replies about all these other schools and the money they spent are totally ridiculous. It is totally irrelevant to a post about how Rutgers slashed academics and poured money into athletics and in the process hurt their academic reputation.

But before we get into that, UConn has spent $200 m on facilities in the last 11 years. Don't be an idiot.

Has Houston or TCU improved academics? No. The correlation is nebulous at best.

As for Rutgers, come on, do you want me to post articles in the Chronicle and Star Ledger about all the cuts? $50 million cut followed by $30 million followed by $25 million? 15% and 10% and then another 10% cuts year over year. Down a hundred million+. If I recall correctly students were complaining about not being able to reach professors because phones were ripped out of the offices of the history and english departments. Meanwhile, the staff had paycuts, and one prominent professor said many of his colleagues had fled for elsewhere. All this coincided with the drop in rankings.

Fortunately for Rutgers football, the build out worked. You landed in the B1G. The investment was successful in terms of your sports. The cost was a big drop in reputation. I'm not disputing the fact that you landed on your feet athletics-wise. I only wrote to dispute the notion that athletics correlates to increased academic reputation. It doesn't, The last member of the AAU to join did so after dropping football a decade earlier.

yes, please post a link to an article stating that Rutgers cut funding to academic programs. I'm dying to read that.

Secondly, This isn't about other sports, this is about funding football. UCONN has done next to nothing when it comes to expanding your stadium. You haven't spent anywhere near 200 million (if that is even an accurate number....probably not. You probably made that up as well) on football.

You're the idiot.

And there you go again with your persistent lies...that Rutgers cut funding to academic programs while spending "hundreds of millions" your words....on the football stadium upgrade.

Sad, that you have to lie to win an argument.

It's like the lie you LOVE to tell, that 40 percent of Rutgers tickets are handed out for free, when I proved to you countless times that the 40 percent number was not even accurate...and that it was just one year....ONE YEAR that it happened....then the following year it was less than 20 percent....which is probably about the same as UCONN.

But go ahead continuing that lie...like you do about academic cuts in spending.

That's what people resort to when they know they are wrong and beaten. Totelling lies and half-truths.

 

[CL82]

Don't know why I'm even bother to do this since your replies about all these other schools and the money they spent are totally ridiculous. It is totally irrelevant to a post about how Rutgers slashed academics and poured money into athletics and in the process hurt their academic reputation.

But before we get into that, UConn has spent $200 m on facilities in the last 11 years. Don't be an idiot.

Has Houston or TCU improved academics? No. The correlation is nebulous at best.

As for Rutgers, come on, do you want me to post articles in the Chronicle and Star Ledger about all the cuts? $50 million cut followed by $30 million followed by $25 million? 15% and 10% and then another 10% cuts year over year. Down a hundred million+. If I recall correctly students were complaining about not being able to reach professors because phones were ripped out of the offices of the history and english departments. Meanwhile, the staff had paycuts, and one prominent professor said many of his colleagues had fled for elsewhere. All this coincided with the drop in rankings.

Fortunately for Rutgers football, the build out worked. You landed in the B1G. The investment was successful in terms of your sports. The cost was a big drop in reputation. I'm not disputing the fact that you landed on your feet athletics-wise. I only wrote to dispute the notion that athletics correlates to increased academic reputation. It doesn't, The last member of the AAU to join did so after dropping football a decade earlier.

Upstater, you don't think that the CIC membership and B1G TV money allows RU to reverse this decline?

 

[BlueDogs]

She is the President of the University of Connecticut.

Hey, I get what you're saying, but also recognize that football is a key component of the brand identity of many national institutions. It attracts students because students they want to identify and carry an allegiance that carries beyond four years. The closest you come to that after grad is the sports program. We are not Harvard, nor are we Boise State. We are a class state school with solid academics that is best served with a national sports reputation. Academics is the mission, but sports is the sizzle. You need both.

 

[buggsy]

You don't know what you are talking about. I have had discussions on this very issue with some of these people at BCS conferences. Many never played a sport in their lives and never watched sports. Have you ever heard Wallace Loh discuss Maryland's move to the B1G? These people leave it up to the ADs who well understand the importance, but coming in, these academics couldn't tell you the difference between Tulane and TCU when it comes to football. They don't know.
And again, if Nancy Cantor is so adamant about the importance of football, why did Syracuse suck for so long?

yada yada yada...there you go again....with no legs to stand on so you make stuff up and pass it off as fact.

I know your game.

It's pathetic.

And yes, I did hear Wallace Loh talking about athletics....back when he decided correctly that the Big Ten was the absolute best decision for his university, for both academic and athletic reasons....and for positioning his university to move forward in the future.

He said the thought of Byrd stadium...and playing Michigan, Penn State, and other big time football programs would lead to sellouts and even more money coming into the athletic program.

Hmmm, sounds like he knew exactly what conference realignment could do for his university..and despite many contrary opinions from some of his own people.....decided to move forward with Maryland to the Big Ten.

He did exactly what a university leader should do.

Thanks chief, for giving me that softball.

 

[CL82]

That is the last time I take a freescooter post at face value.

I just listened to the interview.

It isn't anything remotely close to what he implied.

She was reasonable.