Dukie wrote:Pony_Law wrote:I also think the American likes to help out uconn because they are the last true "brand name" left in the conference. Thank god uconn football is awful or they would already be in the ACC.
FIFY. IMHO, the ACC passing on UConn wasn't about them being terrible in FB. The last ACC expansion was around the time UConn was decent enough to sneak into the Fiesta Bowl. It had more to do with options that were at least as good and were better for the ACC to lock up before someone else did (Louisville is the best example). The brutal logic for UConn is that the ACC knows they have nowhere else to go, so there was less urgency about taking them.
Finally, their BS suit over prior ACC raids on the Big East didn't help, of course. If HCCM gets things going, SMU will get in to the ACC before UConn will.
The Uconn fans know that they are in a terrible mess with very little hope of finding their way out.
1) when the Big East was whole, they played their rivals (BC, Syracuse, Rutgers) in football and recruited on relatively even terms for the same players. Essentially, the got kicked out of the SWC and didn't even get to play TCU, UH or Rice anymore. In football, they are getting killed in recruiting and playing teams that nobody in the area knows squat about.
2) yesterday, the waiter in our suite asked where SMU was located.
3) many fans would like them to rejoin the Big East and give up on D1 football. While they have friends who went to most of the Big East schools, very few of them know people from AAC schools not named Temple or Navy.
The conferences aren't looking to grow in an area that excludes Boston and NY.