College athletics has always been about money. First, it was about money for the NCAA. Then, it was about money for the schools. Now, it’s about money for the players. Money has always driven the decisions made by athletic directors, but perhaps the impact hasn’t been quite as jarring as it was in recent years.
The Pac-12, a Power 5 conference featuring some of the best teams in the revenue sports (football and men’s basketball), no longer exists on paper. Four of the schools went to the Big Ten, four others went to the Big 12 and two were somehow recruited to the ACC. Washington State and Oregon State have been left to fend for themselves. The ACC itself is in a bit of a battle with Florida State and Clemson trying to depart. The newest tradition of college athletics seems to be which random school will join which random conference next.
Amidst all this realignment stands the Big East, a basketball-only conference that has seemingly rejected the cash cow that is college football. The Big East was originally formed to showcase college hoops in the Northeast and East Coast. It quickly turned into the premier conference in the country, dominating college hoops for much of the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s. And arguably the most successful Big East program was UConn.
The Huskies won three national titles in the conference, creating conversation on whether they had become a blue blood program. The Big East fell apart in 2013, with seven schools breaking off to form their own basketball-only league. UConn joined the American Athletic Conference to cater to football, despite the program being irrelevant for decades. Basketball suffered tremendously in Storrs. Even though the Huskies managed to win a fourth national title in 2014, there were many more problems to come.
UConn could’ve stuck it out in the AAC but the school decided it would do the opposite of what we’ve seen others do. It sacrificed (and sacrifice is a heavy word given the state of UConn football) what felt like a massive chunk of change for the success of a program it knew could actually be successful. And that decision has paid off with a national title last year and a trip to the Final Four with a real chance to be the first program to repeat in over 15 years.
Before we get to how UConn rediscovered its roots, we have to unravel the move to the AAC and the eventual exit. The Huskies landed in the AAC when the Big East first broke up in 2013 due to Syracuse and Pittsburgh leaving for the ACC. Louisville would eventually join them after spending one season in the AAC. UConn felt out of place in the new conference, with the rivalries it had built up over many decades being replaced with unfamiliar opponents. The showcase games were gone, the bright lights of Madison Square Garden for the conference tournament were killed and attendance suffered. In the 2018-19 season, UConn averaged 8,652 fans per home game.
Recruiting was also down. Since UConn couldn’t pitch the previous appeals of the Big East anymore, top talent from the Northeast was going elsewhere. Even the 2014 national title didn’t help much. According to 247Sports, only one recruiting class at UConn between 2013 and 2020 was in the top 10. Two classes didn’t receive a ranking, and the average ranking of the six classes that did was 41. Kevin Ollie would end up being fired for cause after a series of Level 1 NCAA violations, leading to penalties for the program including scholarships being docked and wins being vacated. All the while, UConn’s football program won 20 games in seven seasons. Clearly, something had to change.
Connecticut decided to punt on football and the AAC. The school paid a $17 million exit fee to get back to the Big East. Since the AAC wouldn’t take UConn as a football-only member, the school decided to make that program an independent. The Huskies hoped a return to their former stomping grounds with a new coach who was familiar with the Northeast region could restore what they had lost in the realignment shuffle.
Fast forward four years and UConn is right back where it should be. Dan Hurley has been able to get recruits, with the school ranking in the top 10 at 247 twice in the last three seasons. The 2024 class is ranked 33 at the moment since only two players have signed, but both are 4-stars in the region. The fans are back too, with the Huskies averaging 11,446 per home game last year and 12,733 per home game this year. This is a basketball school, and thankfully someone had the common sense to ignore the potential payout from football to go all-in on the hardwood. UConn came back to its roots and restored itself, in a rare realignment move where a school essentially shut down one revenue sport so the others could thrive. There will potentially be calls in the future for the Huskies to jump ship again but they know the dangers of leaving what they have. After all, a blue blood doesn’t have to join the big dogs if it’s the biggest dog of them all.