One of the biggest clusterflucks was orchestrated by Marinatto, who blatantly favored the interests of the BB schools over the FB schools, since he was a member of the Providence College mafia. He extended an invitation to Villanova to join the football conference. Nova had to commit to the upgrade from I-AA. For a whole year Nova hemmed and hawed, and Marinatto waited for their answer. This behavior pissed off the football schools. That's what spurred Pitt, Syracuse and West Virginia to start shopping around. They were sick and tired of the BB schools calling all the shots with their own hand picked Commissioner, who owed his allegiance to Pee Cee and the other small Catholic schools.
Nova finally declined, but by then it was already over. Pitt and Syracuse cut their deals with the ACC, WVU later broke every contract provision (ironically written by their own AD, Oliver Luck) and bolted early without the requisite notice, and Rutgers made their deal with the Big Ten.
Any objective analysis of UCONN's approach to the whole situation has to be that we were reactive, not proactive. By the time we woke up, Loserville had out manuvered us for the ACC invite, and here we are today and tomorrow in the AAC, a/k/a the conference of misfit toys.
To show how slanted the conference administration was, the only reason DePaul and Marquette were invited to join after BS College, Miami and VA Tech left, was to insure a balance of eight BB and 8 FB schools. That way, if ever there were tie votes, the BB school loving commish breaks the tie by voting with the BB schools. Tranghese set that up. It was a prescription for disaster. That's why he turned tail and bolted. He didn't want to be around for the impending carnage.