Welcome Back, UConn Fans!

[adoraz]

Wow, talk about some big news. Hopefully during the dead months of the summer this board will get some new members.

I have been hoping for UConn to return to the Big East for a long time. They have been my #1 expansion candidate. I anticipate this will result in a better upcoming TV contract for all 11 of us. Also, this past year we had the #1 attended conference tournament, so it's exciting to think about how much UConn can add to our rivalries/attendance/ratings/etc.

As a St. John's fan, I know half of us aren't happy (scared?) with your return given our regional rivalry, but most Big East fans are excited. Can't wait to add another MSG home game to our schedule each year.

[billyjack]

Wow, talk about some big news. Hopefully during the dead months of the summer this board will get some new members.

I have been hoping for UConn to return to the Big East for a long time. They have been my #1 expansion candidate. I anticipate this will result in a better upcoming TV contract for all 11 of us. Also, this past year we had the #1 attended conference tournament, so it's exciting to think about how much UConn can add to our rivalries/attendance/ratings/etc.

As a St. John's fan, I know half of us aren't happy (scared?) with your return given our regional rivalry, but most Big East fans are excited. Can't wait to add another MSG home game to our schedule each year.

I agree. Very happy that they're back. Half the sports world thought they were still in the Big East anyway. I definitely like that they took the initiative and showed the stones to move forward, rather than continuing to d-ck around in the American. Four national championships in the last 20 years, and they shouldn't have waited so long. Six of our original 8 are now in the current Big East. Awesome!

Also, i can't get past how adding UConn pisses the ACC and Duke off, and locks in MSG perfectly. Ratface K is still pissed that UConn bounced Duke in the National Final.

[gtmoBlue]

Billyjack, please explain this statement to those of us not in the know. Why would the ACC care??
As for MSG it's already "locked in" as we have a current extension and the ACC will never permanently leave Tobacco Road.

Also, i can't get past how adding UConn pisses the ACC and Duke off, and locks in MSG perfectly. Ratface K is still pissed that UConn bounced Duke in the National Final.

[GoldenWarrior11]

What a great, great, great day for the Big East and our member schools. Welcome back home, UConn!

[Xudash]

This is going to be interesting.

The UCONN fan base itself appears to have a certain amount of civil war going on within it between the diehard football crowd and the more traditional basketball crowd.

The sky-is-falling crowd on the Boneyard have some entertaining observations and thoughts:

1. The AAC is passing the BE in basketball stature.

2. Related to that, the BE simply isn't a sustainable conference long-term, given the power of the P5, etc.

3. As I noted in another thread, some of them actually believe that private schools are going the way of the dinosaur.

4. It's not the old Big East - - Pitt, 'cuse, WVA, etc. aren't making it back into the lineup - - and whoopi about Creighton, Butler, etc.

This is going to get interesting. We've had a successful run. We're 10 like-minded and successful private schools that compete against one another while having racked up a lot of conference success, but with fan bases that mostly respect each other and certainly get along well with one another, as these things go.

is it fair to wonder whether or not Al Czervik is about to rollup to the front door and change the chemistry of the place? I have no doubt some number of UCONN fans will come into this conference believing that it is their conference for the taking. They'll come in, perceiving that Butler, Creighton and Xavier, to name the obvious three, will be a walk in the park as compared to Pitt, Syracuse and WVU.

Time to let things settle in. Perhaps I'm reading too much into the comments made by some of their football zealot fans. We'll see. It's all about performance anyway. Let's see how they feel after they've made their way through the new 20-game conference format when it cranks up. As one example, let's see how playing in Pittsburgh in front of a crowd of less than full to 12,500 in the Petersen Events Center against Pitt compares to playing in front of an over-capacity crowd of 10,800 at the Cintas Center in Cincinnati against Xavier.

UCONN is going to make the Big East a better conference. And the Big East is going to give UCONN all it can handle, making it better along the way. May we all win in the process. We'll have to see how the fans get along - - civility over toxic banter at least some of the time?

[adoraz]

https://the-boneyard.com/threads/poll-o ... ip.144667/

Most of their fans are pretty happy with this. Just a fraction (20-25%) aren't.

[scoscox]

Most of the big east teams I remember having some fans who thought they’d roll over us when we joined the league. They’ll figure it out after a few trips to the chi health center and Cintas

[GoldenWarrior11]

Unlike many school athletic programs, I have perceived UConn to have had "UConn Football" fans and "UConn Basketball fans". Their fan base has been, and today especially, incredibly divided. Some of their fans were on the radical football side of things, spending whatever it took to right football and position itself for an invitation to a power conference - no matter its effect on Olympic sports, Despite the incredible budget deficit that the school and athletic department faced, it was argued that they needed to spend even more - like a compulsive gambler - in order to get out from the hole they found themselves in. Conversely, there are passionate basketball fans, who realized that their basketball programs were suffering being in a Southern-focused league, with little-to-no history with any conference opponents, which eliminated fan interest and destroyed excitement about conference tournaments. The lack of winning and postseason success post-2014 only added fuel to the fire.

The UConn fans that are irate about today's news are very much UConn Football fans, and not UConn Basketball fans. They have realized (officially) that their window into the P5 has closed, and that they are forever a class below Boston College, Rutgers, Syracuse and Pittsburgh. While many proclaimed and predicted this outcome (even dating back to 2013), it still came as a surprise and shock to those that felt they were destined to be in the ACC or B1G (despite the substantial obstacles and hurdles both had in aligning).

Some UConn fans will harbor resentment for being forced into the "NBE" with "a bunch of small Private/Catholic schools" on a second-rate network "Fox". I think these UConn fans will be pleasantly surprised by how quickly their views will change, especially with the unbelievable commitment that Fox has given us since 2013 (and which is a dramatic reversal than what ESPN provided to UConn and the AAC in that time frame).

[LMS]

Where are all the UConn fans? Surprised they’re not here yet.

[Django]

Crickets....

This site is way too boring for public school kids