UConn Can Ill Afford to Make the Mistake of a Football-Centric Big 12 Move

The Huskies have made misguided decisions while chasing gridiron glory before. Instead, they should lean all the way into their hoops-first identity.

Lightning in a bottle? That would be an exaggeration. More accurate, perhaps, to say that Connecticut football plugged into a 120-watt bulb from 2007 to ’10. Just enough to illuminate a false beacon of hope that still faintly glows today.

The Huskies went 33–19 in that stretch, tying for the Big East championship twice and finishing fifth in the league twice. They did not win more than nine games in any season and did not win a postseason game more prestigious than the PapaJohns.com Bowl. The signature moments were beating a 2009 Notre Dame team that would fire Charlie Weis nine days later, and sliding into the Fiesta Bowl in ’10 at 8–4, having won a three-way tie for the Big East despite being outgained for the season. UConn lost that Fiesta Bowl 48–20 to Oklahoma, and coach Randy Edsall never even boarded the team flight home—he left for the Maryland job instead.

UConn came out of that modest glow-up foolishly fancying itself something of a football school, and spent a lot of money trying to play the part. It didn’t go well and it shouldn’t be repeated, if another realignment spasm shakes the college athletics landscape.

The Huskies have had 11 straight losing seasons under four different coaches, and didn’t play at all in 2020 due to the pandemic. (Jim Mora did nice work last season, his first at the school, going 6–7.) The school eliminated three men’s sports while running an eight-figure athletic deficit. UConn wandered the American Athletic Conference wilderness from 2013 to ’19 before wisely returning to its roots, rejoining the Big East in all sports except football, playing independently in that sport.

Back in its happy place, UConn won its fifth men’s basketball national championship in March and is poised for a long run of excellence under coach Dan Hurley. But now, hark, what light through yonder window breaks? It’s the false beacon of football hope again. Do not go toward the light, UConn.

Sports Illustrated colleague Ross Dellenger reported Monday that if the Big 12 fails in its pursuit of Pac-12 schools to expand membership to 14 or 16, UConn is on the next tier of the wish list.

Conference commissioner Brett Yormark is aggressively trying to build a coast-to-coast conference. As a New York guy he’s familiar with the powerful draw of Huskies basketball in the northeast. The Big 12 is a phenomenal hoops conference, and the UConn men’s and women’s programs would be huge additions in that sport.

But a school that not long ago made misguided decisions while chasing football glory would be catastrophically stupid to repeat the error. UConn athletics is broke and the Big 12 offers a monetary ray of light—perhaps $30 million worth per year in terms of revenue upgrade—but the better option is to go the other way completely. Better to prioritize the sport in which the Huskies have been historically great for 30 years—men and women—and figure out the financials while staying true to the school’s identity.

Downsize football to the FCS level to reduce cost and maintain the basketball-first foundation. Stay in the Big East. Do not drag your athletes to Lubbock, Provo and Manhattan (Little Apple, not Big) trying to make a buck. Do not try to sell your already ambivalent fans on home football games against Kansas and Iowa State. Do not risk running off your current hero coach, Hurley, who could have plenty of employment options that don’t include road trips to Stillwater and Fort Worth.

The Big East’s 10-year renaissance was a triumph of counter programming, prioritizing basketball and institutional fit over the identity-sapping football money grab that engulfed college sports. UConn was the last piece to the Big East’s successful rebuild, a win-win for the school and the league.

Just spitballing here, but the guess is that UConn fans would prefer following the Villanova model (a basketball-first school with a successful FCS football program) to another aspirational football voyage that undermines the hoops foundation. “I think [UConn athletic director] Dave Benedict would be one of the most unpopular guys ever in the state,” says one Big East administrator. “The fans loving being back in the Big East.”

This is not to dismiss the athletic budget issues, which reportedly have produced the biggest deficit yet: $53 million, with the university and student fees covering that overage. The allure of a power-conference revenue gusher washing over UConn’s fiscal desert would certainly be an appealing one to those in charge of monetary decisions. But viewing football as the solution overlooks the fact that football was a huge part of the original problem.

The x-factor in all this is the future of the Atlantic Coast Conference, which is sending off warning signals about its long-term viability. Bound together by a near-endless grant of rights (through 2036), some members are chafing for a change of revenue distribution or a potential mutiny that breaks the agreement. That nuclear option would set off a massive chain reaction that could create some full-circle opportunities for UConn—possibly a reunion with Big East defectors and former rivals Syracuse, Pittsburgh and Boston College, in some form or fashion?

But that’s all speculative at this point, and still seems unlikely in the near term. Breaking up a major conference with more than a decade of contractual obligation to one another would be a very hard thing to do.

The Big East has two years remaining on its contract with Fox, which helped give birth to the renaissance. As long as commissioner Val Ackerman can reach another profitable agreement with the network—or bring golden-era partner ESPN back into the mix—nobody in the 11-school league should be looking elsewhere. It works, and its members all fit.

Big-time football is fun and profitable and enticing, but it’s also elusive. Other than a four-year window that lit a beacon of hope, UConn has been kicked in the teeth and the wallet on the gridiron. So much for the afterglow.