Tramel: Connecticut not the best idea for Big 12 expansion
Any surge in conference realignment brings a concurrent surge in freezing cold takes.
Predictions, declarations and statements, all made with boldness and conviction, returning from the past, to give us all a good laugh.
In this part of the country, the current Mister Freeze is The Athletic’s Stewart Mandel, a longtime college football scribe who two years ago tweeted about the Big 12’s “carcass.”
Didn’t hold up well, of course, with the Big 12 staging a rally for the ages, complete with the Colorado vote Thursday to return to the conference, a move that makes the Pac-12 worry about its own carcass.
But forgive Mandel. He’s a member of a big club. We all say things that depart the rails. We all have our “Dewey Beats Truman” moments.
And here’s one of mine.
In August 2016, with the Big 12 staging a casting call for expansion, I wrote that the league should add Brigham Young and Connecticut.
The Big 12 eventually passed on every candidate, until forced into fight-or-flight mode five years later by the OU/Texas exodus to the Southeastern Conference.
One of my preferred candidates, BYU, has indeed joined the Big 12 and is going to be a home-run addition. The other, UConn, is being promoted by whizbang commissioner Brett Yormark.
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With Colorado’s addition, the Big 12 needs at least one other member to reach 14 schools. The league might stop there, or it could expand to 16.
Reports that the Big 12 is capping expansion at 14 likely is a Yormark negotiating tactic. Make the Pac-12 candidates believe there’s only one seat left on the lifeboat, when three actually are available.
And Big 12 loyalists should hope that Yormark also is bluffing about Connecticut. Safe to say, my UConn enthusiasm has waned.
The Huskies’ basketball program is better than ever – Connecticut just won another NCAA men’s championship, its fifth in the last 24 March Madnesses.
Over that quarter century, UConn has won as many NCAA basketball titles as Duke and Kansas combined. More than North Carolina and Kentucky combined. Three head coaches have accounted for those five Connecticut banners. UConn basketball is a success story for the ages.
But Connecticut football has cratered since my 2016 endorsement. Cratered worse than Kansas.
Jim Mora Jr. became the Husky coach before last season and rallied the program. UConn went 6-7 with some notable victories — Fresno State, Boston College, Liberty — and the Huskies at least have a pulse.
But UConn hasn’t had a winning season since 2010, the year the Huskies played OU in the Fiesta Bowl. And before Mora, from 2016-21, UConn produced these seasons — 3-9, 3-9, 1-11, 2-10, 0-0, 1-11. All against mid-major schedules.
That 0-0 season was most telling. While the rest of the nation was scrambling to play football any way it could during the pandemic, Connecticut gave up the ghost. Just canceled the season.
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You could argue that UConn had its priorities straight. But college athletics are big business. Conference realignment is big business. And UConn’s indifference to football is a massive warning sign.
Connecticut left the American Conference in 2020 to return to the Big East, which doesn’t even sponsor football. Villanova, Butler and Georgetown play Division I-AA football; the rest of the Big East members don’t field football teams.
UConn made the decision to be a football independent. The American was a solid football league — Houston, Cincinnati, Central Florida, Memphis, Southern Methodist — but Connecticut kicked its own football program to the curb.
Is that the kind of athletic department that would enhance the Big 12?
UConn averaged 22,095 fans per game last season, double that of 2021. The Huskies play in East Hartford, 25 miles from the Storrs campus but closer to the fan base, since Storrs is a hamlet consisting of virtually nothing but university-related commerce and residents.
You can argue that UConn football closely resembles Kansas football; the Jayhawks also staged a 2022 revival, going 6-7 after 13 years of dismal results.
But KU has a much better football history, a much bigger fan base and is in a region of the country where college football matters. New England’s traditional sports passions lie with the professional ranks and college basketball.
Make no mistake, all of Connecticut’s potential value to the Big 12 resides in college hoops.
And to Yormark’s credit, that’s no small thing. Football rows the financial boat, of course, but Yormark sees unearthed potential in basketball.
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That’s a brave theory in modern times, when college hoops has taken a massive hit in popularity. The NCAA Tournament remains a big moneymaker, but pre-March college basketball is a tough sell on most campuses and most networks. In the 1980s, yes. In the 2020s, no.
Still, the Big 12 has emerged as the nation’s strongest basketball league. The conference came within whisker of three straight NCAA titles — Kansas won in 2022, Baylor won in 2021 and Texas Tech had a three-point lead in the final seconds of regulation in the 2019 finals, before losing to Virginia in overtime.
Put UConn in the Big 12 — especially with Houston having joined — and there is no debate. Big 12 basketball would be a runaway train.
How does that equate to increased financial bounty? Don’t know. Maybe it doesn’t.
But Yormark deserves some slack here. He’s had the Midas touch in his year in office. Even when his presidents and athletic directors disagree with him, they are deferential to their leader. Sometimes awed.
Yormark already has taken Big 12 basketball to Harlem’s famed Rucker Park — a New York PR blitz that can’t hurt — and is taking Big 12 basketball to Mexico City, with a Kansas-Houston game that figures to give the conference a marketing foothold south of the border.
And Yormark is adamant that basketball should be separated from football in the next television contract. Since the OU/Texas news hit, Big 12 schools have scrambled to produce other revenue streams, to account for the lost value of the league’s signature schools.
What if basketball can be one of those revenue streams? What if Yormark — a master marketer and basketball guy, from his days with the Brooklyn Netropolitans — can turn Big 12 basketball into a much-bigger moneymaker?
I wouldn’t put it past him, and Connecticut would be a big help.
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Still, UConn is a tough sell. The Big 12’s networks are not required to bolster their payout if the league adds an addition from outside a Power Five Conference.
And as I reported a couple of months ago, Big 12 administrators are alarmed by a $50 million subsidy UConn grants its athletic department. One change in Connecticut administration could wipe out that support.
Some of the 2016 UConn allure remains.
It’s always good to get a state’s flagship university. The more “University ofs”, the better. The Big 12 has lost OU, Texas, Missouri and Nebraska. But it added West Virginia and is getting back Colorado. If the Big 12 adds an Arizona or Utah (or, pray tell, Oregon or Washington), that flagship pedigree would get even stronger. Connecticut would add to that.
Also, academically, Connecticut is quite strong, which doesn’t mean much but is a nice bonus. UConn is rated 67th nationally by U.S. News & World Report, one spot behind Texas A&M and one spot above Massachusetts.
Connecticut’s population, 3.6 million, makes it the biggest state in the Union without a Power Five school. It’s still New England, a college football wasteland, but that’s a lot of people.
Connecticut’s media market is a plus. Its long-time affiliation with ESPN wouldn’t hurt.
But even with those pluses, and with Yormark’s golden touch, Connecticut can’t match what Pac-12 defectors would bring to the Big 12.
Forget what I said in 2016. Don’t settle for UConn.
Berry Tramel: Berry can be reached at 405-760-8080 or at btramel@oklahoman.com. He can be heard Monday through Friday from 4:40-5:20 p.m. on The Sports Animal radio network, including FM-98.1. Support his work and that of other Oklahoman journalists by purchasing a digital subscription today.
This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Big 12 expansion: Pac-12, not Connecticut, a much better option
