The last decade for University of Connecticut athletics has been marked by the best of times in the form of several national championships. The decade has also been marked by the worst of times in the form of persistent athletic department budget deficits.
Hartford Courant sports columnist Dom Amore says getting into one of the country’s four biggest athletic conferences, known as the “Power Four,” could have turned the financial fortunes of UConn athletics around.
“You put UConn into the Big 12, and they could then bring in maybe even $30 million a year,” Amore said.
But those hopes were dashed on Thursday afternoon, when Big 12 Commissioner Brett Yormark issued a statement saying he was pausing conversations about adding the Huskies to the conference.
“As Commissioner, it is my responsibility to explore a variety of value-creating opportunities on behalf of the Big 12. Following detailed discussions with my conference colleagues alongside UConn leadership, we have jointly decided to pause our conversations at this time," Yormark said. "We will instead focus our attention and resources to ushering in this new era of college athletics.”
Since late August, multiple reports have circulated that the Big 12 Conference was holding meetings to discuss the possibility of adding the UConn Athletic program. UConn is currently in the Big East Conference, with the exception of the football team, which is currently not a member of any conference.
“The conflict here is that the commissioner [Brett Yormark] has a vision that UConn fits of wanting to make the Big 12 a mega basketball conference,” Amore said, speaking with Connecticut Public's "All Things Considered" on Aug. 30 before the pause was announced. “But conference expansion in the recent past has always been based on football.”
UConn football's past could impact its future
UConn football is among the least successful college football programs in major college football. The program’s 46% all-time winning percentage is 114th out of 134 teams. Husky football dropped their 2024 season opener to the University of Maryland by a lopsided 50-7 score, and the program’s last winning season happened 14 years ago.
Amore said that history makes adding UConn to a Big 12 conference, full of historically competitive football programs, a tougher sell.
“While the commissioner and maybe two or three schools support [adding UConn] many of the other presidents in the conference are not sold on the idea of taking UConn because they feel their football program would be a drag,” Amore said.
If UConn is unable to get into one of the richest, most powerful conferences, Amore said all sports at UConn will suffer.
“You know, UConn needs to do this, not to save football, but to survive, to get the money to save basketball,” Amore said. “The way college sports is going, schools are going to be allowed to distribute as much as $20 million a year to their athletes. Playing as a basketball-centric school in the Big East, UConn only generates a fraction of that, maybe five or six million. Their football program as an independent doesn't generate much to add to that.”
Ripple effects on students and taxpayers
A lack of sports revenue could have a ripple effect on the university’s total budget and beyond, according to Amore. With such relatively limited revenue coming in, the UConn Athletics Department increasingly has had to rely on state and university subsidies to make ends meet.
“UConn is going to have to have more money, or else that money is going to have to come from the taxpayers. It's going to have to come from the general fund, from the tuition," Amore said.
The talks come at a time when public colleges and universities in Connecticut and beyond are still recovering financially from COVID-19 and the loss of federal pandemic relief funding.
“So UConn needs to make this move to have the kind of big time sports that people in Connecticut are used to seeing, that's part of the quality of life in Connecticut, and I think the majority of people would want them to maintain,” he said. “But, they could maintain it without maybe having to dip deeper and deeper and deeper into a subsidy situation.”
Some fans wary of AAC repeat
Despite the financial reasons for wanting to join a power conference, there are UConn fans who still don’t feel good about a future move. There are some who point to the $15 million to $30 million that UConn is contractually obligated to pay should the school exit the Big East Conference.
U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy is among the voices who have expressed discomfort with the idea of the basketball program leaving behind traditional Big East Conference rivals like Villanova and Georgetown.
Then, there are those who remain underwhelmed by UConn’s last money-motivated move out of The Big East to another conference. In 2013, UConn left the Big East to join the American Athletic Conference. By 2018, the Men’s Basketball team was suffering historically low attendance. UConn would leave the AAC and return to the Big East one year later. But, Amore said a move to the Big 12 would be different than the ill-fated move to the AAC.
“This move would be different for, first of all, the money,” Amore said. “When UConn was in the AAC, they were not getting anywhere near the money that they're even getting now, let alone what they would get in the Big 12.”
Wins more important than opponents in filling the seats
As for the idea that attendance at men’s home basketball games suffered during the AAC years because of the move away from traditional Big East matchups, Amore said there was another, more salient issue: The team wasn’t winning. During the AAC era, the Huskies finished under .500 for three straight seasons and missed the NCAA tournament for four straight seasons, the longest such tournament drought in the last 34 years.
“When UConn started to get better under [coach] Dan Hurley, they started to sell out Gampel [Pavillion] and [the] XL [Center] for those games too,” Amore said. “I really think the enthusiasm of UConn fans, because we're in the Northeast, depends on what UConn is doing.”
And, Amore said the Big 12 offers very attractive matchups for the women’s and men’s teams. In women’s basketball, Big 12 teams have sent five or more teams to the NCAA Tournament in 23 of the last 27 seasons. On the men’s side, Big 12 teams have won two of the last 4 NCAA championships. UConn won the other two.
“The fact is, the Big 12 has Kansas and Arizona and Arizona State [and] number of other programs that would be ... very sexy for UConn basketball,” Amore said.
