This was just posted on a local TV station (WTNH-8) website.
A little over-reacting to the Yale loss over the weekend (as Yale has a good team this year).
http://sportzedge.com/2014/12/09/its-time-for-uconn-to-end-the-american-athletic-conference-experiment-re-join-the-big-east/It’s time for UConn to end the American Athletic Conference experiment, re-join the Big EastBy: Kels Dayton
It’s time to take the batteries out of Frankenstein, let the lab mice free and tell the dudes in the white coats to go home.
UConn needs to be done with the AAC experiment. Like, right now.
The American Athletic Conference is killing the Huskies, in as gradual yet long-ranging a way as tanning or sleeping with your cell phone under your pillow. And it’s all for what? To make sure a 2-10 team that lost at home to a previously winless squad in its season finale, plays in the seventh-best conference instead of the eighth or ninth-best one?
To grab an extra $2 million in football revenue (the difference between television contracts in the AAC and the MAC)?
UConn’s defending national champion men’s basketball team lost at home to Yale on Friday–the same Bulldogs that went out and got blitzed, 85-47, by a 3-4 Florida team on Monday night. If UConn were still in the Big East, this would be a blip on the radar screen, an embarrassing loss that could be chalked up to growing pains and used to re-focus the Huskies as they head into the part of the season that really matters.
Instead, it’s a huge problem. Even if–and it’s a big if–UConn beats Duke at the IZOD Center on December 18 and follows it up with January wins over Florida and Stanford (games that looked better before the season than they do now), its resume still won’t be sparkling.
Is there any reason to believe the selection committee won’t punish the Huskies for beating up on directional Florida schools while other tournament contenders take and deliver punches in big-time conferences? As it has continuously said (and proved last year in giving then-defending champ Louisville a No. 4 seed), the selection committee doesn’t take into account past performance. UConn’s four national championships won’t be discussed in the room. Its loss to Yale, however, will.
UConn isn’t Gonzaga. The Huskies shouldn’t have to rely on non-conference games to solidify their tournament resume. As Kevin Ollie pointed out, this ain’t no Cinderella. This is UConn. They should start acting like it.
It’s not all about men’s basketball, of course.
The women’s basketball program will be fine no matter where it plays, as it showed in dismantling No. 2 Notre Dame on Sunday. For the Lady Huskies, Georgetown, Syracuse, and Louisville might as well be Central Florida, Memphis and SMU. They might as well be Quinnipiac, Robert Morris and Wagner. It doesn’t matter, because the women are going to win games 89-34 regardless of what mid-or low-level competition they play.
The field hockey Huskies, also two-time defending national champions, don’t have this problem. They still play in the Big East, alongside Old Dominion, Temple, Providence, Villanova and Georgetown.
Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby told reporters on Monday that the conference isn’t currently looking to expand to a name-appropriate 12 teams, despite the fact that its national title contenders were left out of the inaugural college football playoff on Sunday. UConn president Susan Herbst and athletic director Warde Manuel are probably calling him like a crazed ex-girlfriend, begging him to change his mind.
But even if, by some miraculous stroke of luck, that happens, games in Kansas, Texas, Oklahoma and Iowa aren’t what’s best for UConn basketball.
The Huskies need to re-join the Big East.
The conference, which has struggled to stay relevant with Georgetown, St. John’s, Providence and a struggling Marquette squad acting as headliners, desperately needs a boost if it wants to renew its television contract with Fox Sports, not to mention keep going its 30-plus year postseason tournament partnership with Madison Square Garden. Landing UConn would go a long way in legitimizing the conference, and it might just end up saving the Big East from becoming the Atlantic 10.
UConn’s football woes aren’t going away for a while. This program is miles away from where it was under Randy Edsall, when it had earned national respectability and in its best years, knocked on the door of the Top 25.
What difference does it make if UConn football plays in the MAC instead of the AAC? Or even if it goes independent and plays Army and Navy each year? Fans in Storrs won’t take much notice if it means a move back to the basketball conference in which it belongs. It’d be even sweeter than receiving an invite to the ACC, because it would mean UConn wouldn’t end up selling its soul to join the enemy, as much as it may have wanted or tried to.
Being the best in a conference consisting of East Carolina, Central Florida and Tulsa isn’t good enough.
The selection committee has told us that.
Now UConn needs to act on it.
