Financial Woes of a University Outside the Power Five - UConn Edition

Sorry, I am apparently way out of it.
Why isn't Idaho in the Big Sky any more?

 

Also, something that I'm surprised wasn't in the earlier report, but I have to imagine that travel costs are doubled what they used to be. Trips to St. John's and Seton Hall have been replaced with SMU and Tulsa.

 

They're back in the Big Sky. They bounced between the WAC and Sun Belt when they were FBS from the early aughts until this past year.

 

The ACC is perfect for UConn, but that doesn’t mean UConn is perfect for the ACC. Maybe in hindsight a better fit than Louisville, but it’s not like anybody in Greensboro is longing for UConn at this point.

And Rutgers is hardly a disaster for the Big Ten. It did what it was supposed to do, get the Big Ten Network on New York and New Jersey cable packages with the added bonus that Ohio State and Michigan now recruit the hell out of New Jersey. Do you really think the old Big Ten powers wanted to bring in a program that might beat them?

 

I know in the Pac-12 - all the added TV money that schools were counting on didn't suddenly allow them to "break even" or get into the black - they just used the extra money on coaching salaries and facility improvements (to "remain competitive")

I'd love to see a conference require school athletic departments to pay for themselves. You could sell a student season ticket, but not access student fees. You could use school resources to raise money, but not to provide money. Would that impact sports? Yes. Schools would probably drop a lot of non-revenue sports, but then maybe conferences would have an incentive to develop a more sustainable model. (Caps on coaching salaries, caps on athletic department employees (paid and unpaid). Maybe take the bowl model wider and all ticket and media revenue is split more equitably.

 

Two things:
1) BC was indeed opposed to the concept of UConn joining the fold, and Fr. Leahy was the head of the expansion committee at that time.
2) I'm not sure that opposition mattered. There was considerable angst from the 2003-04 ACC expansion, in which the state of Connecticut, headed by then AG and now U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal, sued the conference. Very ugly.

 

Raising money would be impossible in that scenario. Donors give to college athletics programs because they want to give their school a competitive edge. If I'm a Kansas State guy, why would I give millions knowing that a portion of it would go to KU?

 

That's a killer.
How much $ does the school owe on debt service to build the stadium? That's got to be a major disincentive to give up football. It probably has decades to go if it's like everybody else.

 

But under my scenario - departments could raise as much as they wanted (only ticket and media revenue would be shared) - but the coaching/employee caps would remain.

And lets be honest - Bama is still going to get the best players under any scenario.

 

Connecticut built the stupid stadium (or committed to it, same thing) when Bob Kraft was making goo-goo eyes at them in the mid-90s. He never wanted to leave Mass. but whichever nitwit Governor was in charge believed him. So The stadium was built. The whitest elephant ever.
PS: BC is far from innocent in this saga, but the phrase "you can't cheat an honest man" applies as well.

 

I look at this and yet again I appreciate the miracle that was the revival of UAB football. UAB's fans are rooting for UConn to crash out of the AAC in hopes that generates an invitation to move up in conference. The majority of the AAC were C-USA members before the conference shakeup. The AAC's not all that great, but it beats hell out of today's C-USA.

 

That would be Gov. John Rowland, he of the two convictions after the wooing of the Patriots.

I don't know how much UConn still owes toward Rentschler Field, but that is going to be in its back pocket for some time.

The facilities on campus are pretty nice, all things considering. The newest is the basketball facility, built on the site of old Memorial Stadium. The football training facility is probably 10 years old (side note, read this for a fun story from 2011 about the person behind the name of the complex, and what happened after Pasqualoni was hired) and the soccer/baseball/hockey complex is under construction. But yeah, not having the football stadium on campus ... that is a real shame. I was in the marching band and it was a real treat marching to and from the stadium on game day. Homecoming ... well, I don't even know what they do for it anymore because there is no real incentive to start in Storrs and drive to East Hartford.

Interesting that UMass, which is/was our chief rival, is going through the same thing with football. Made the move to I-A, plays some games in Foxboro (much further than we have it), has about as much "success" as us lately.