On Friday, multiple reports emerged that UConn and the Big 12 were, yet again, sizing one another up from across the bar. One important difference? UConn’s football team wouldn’t be invited just yet. Under the proposed but as yet unapproved arrangement, the Big 12 would welcome the Huskies next year in all non-football Big 12 sports. Football wouldn’t join until 2031, when the Big 12’s next media deal will kick in. In the meantime, UConn would be asked to keep working on its football and preparing it to play at a power conference level.
The Big 12 and UConn have long been romantically linked. Brett Yormark has made no secret of his desire to spread from coast to coast, nor has he played it cool over his enamorment with prominent basketball schools. Existing Big 12 institutions, though, have always met the idea with something of an eye roll. Like the SEC but unlike the Big Ten and ACC, the Big 12 still awards equal revenue shares to all of its schools. Adding UConn in football would dilute that revenue share if it were still split equally.
That isn’t necessarily a permanent situation. UConn football might be worth a fair paycheck by 2031. Thanks to the remaining value of cable, UConn’s New York-adjacent location means the school doesn’t need as good a football team as Kansas State’s to generate advertising and subscription revenue for cable providers, revenue which eventually works its way back to the networks and then to the schools. Similarly, the Big 12 presidents could theoretically make some terms conditional: They could say, “UConn can join in football in 2031 if they make three bowl games from 2026 through 2029.” They could try to add UConn with the understanding that eventual football membership is likely but not guaranteed. They could even cross the partial revenue share Rubicon.
Through separating UConn football from the rest of UConn sports, UConn becomes a reasonable target for a Big 12 which fears losing an arms race with the ACC. Does it do anything for UConn?
For UConn, the focus is currently basketball. Basketball’s financial ceiling, though, is only so high. Power conference college football is a lucrative world.
It’s easy to leave it at that. It’s easy to say, “College football can make UConn more money, so they’ll do what’s best for football.” That ignores an important piece of the situation. Why does college football make so much money? It makes so much money because people like it. It makes so much money because people watch it. It makes so much money because at the power conference level, college football is really, really fun. Basketball could be UConn’s ticket into a broader experience for its fans.
The question for UConn is how certain the football situation needs to be for this to be worth the jump. The decision is harder if there’s a chance UConn doesn’t get to join the Big 12 in football in 2031, or if there’s a risk that the Big 12 is a weaker league at that point (if a new Big 12 power starts dominating, the Big Ten or SEC might come calling). Leaving to play basketball against Kansas and Arizona is justifiable for the Huskies, who enjoy all those historic ties to the Big East but are more similar institutionally to the Big 12’s state schools. Leaving to play basketball against UNC and Duke would probably be an easier pill for East Coast college basketball traditionalists to swallow, but that’s not what’s on the table. The Big 12 is on the table.
It’s setting up to be an interesting negotiation, something that wasn’t the case when Yormark was still trying to pitch his presidents on taking a pay cut to get one more good basketball team. My guess would be that it happens.
UConn has invested so much at this point into FBS football. I don’t think the university views those investments as a sunk cost. At some point, UConn is going to have to decide whether they’re a power conference school or a power conference basketball school. They seem to want to be the former, not just the latter. This is a path to finally make it happen.
On the Big 12 side, it’s complicated. It’s easy for us to throw out those conditional ideas presidents would probably like. It’s harder for presidents—people whose primary job is not at all to navigate conference realignment—to come up with those ideas on their own. Still, the fact they keep letting Yormark bring them UConn proposals probably signifies that they’re open to it. He’s worn them down. If he can make them confident enough that they won’t lose money, UConn should be his.
Miscellany – Baseball
It’s been a bit of a long time since we’ve done these notes (hence the Sunday edition). Some big things:
- Shohei Ohtani has already reached the 40/40 mark, hitting his 40th home run and stealing his 40th base well before the end of August. Nobody has ever posted a 50/50 season. He is right around the edge of being on pace.
- The Mariners fired Scott Servais, and everyone seems sad about it. He’d been the second-longest tenured manager in Major League Baseball, having started in Seattle in 2016. Is there anything to the theory that a clubhouse shakeup can break a slump? I don’t know that we have a big enough sample. Given how psychological baseball is, it would make sense, but the Mariners are pretty far out of the playoff race at this point.
- The Diamondbacks are playing well, and their rotation has grown deep enough that they’re moving Jordan Montgomery to the bullpen. Of course, this is partly happening because Montgomery’s pitching badly. If Montgomery were pitching well, he would still be in the rotation and someone else would be out. But Montgomery isn’t pitching well, and here the Diamondbacks are. Is Montgomery still unhappy with how the offseason went? You tell me. Ahead of Arizona’s series in Boston this weekend, he referenced talking to the Red Sox in the winter: “Obviously Boras kind of butchered it,” he began.
- Yu Darvish is back with the Padres after a stint on the Restricted List dealing with an unspecified family matter. He’s still on the IL—he reportedly made the Restricted List decision himself to spare the Padres a 40-man roster spot and what turned out to be four million bucks—but he should be back this season.
- Willson Contreras broke his finger on a hit by pitch yesterday. The Cardinals have won four of five and aren’t wholly out of the Wild Card chase, but that isn’t going to help.
- Fernando Tatís Jr. expects to be back in September.
- Kyle Tucker is still weirdly absent with his bone bruise. Based on what the Astros have said, they want him to be able to fully sprint when he returns. They seem to be doing just fine in his absence, so I guess they can afford to not rush him back.
- Finally, Joey Votto retired. Good for him. Sad to see him go. He was a baseball icon in a weird baseball era, one in which the sport rapidly vanished from the American mainstream. This wasn’t his fault, of course. Joey Votto was a delight. But guys like him, Andrew McCutchen, and Corey Kluber will occupy different territory in memory than Alex Rodriguez and David Ortiz. And not only because they all played in the Rust Belt.
Miscellany – Miscellany
- The NCAA is considering getting rid of the spring transfer window, and I wish they’d get rid of the winter one. I understand that coaches want to know their rosters for spring football. But letting players enter the transfer portal before bowl games is one of the primary factors driving bowl opt-outs. My understanding is that the winter transfer window needs to happen when it happens so that players can enroll in classes ahead of the spring semester. That takes away the ideal option, which would be a transfer window in February or March. I get why coaches want to get rid of the spring one. It’s better for them to do that. But it’s better for the sport to eliminate the winter window. That’s the better big-picture idea.
- The NWSL hammered out a new CBA, and it’s getting rid of the draft. This is a major step forward for American sports. Drafts are insane, and while they help parity to an extent, their overall effect is one which makes competition dramatically worse. Next up? Tear down those salary caps.
- We got confirmation on the reason for Pat Hobbs’s exit as athletic director at Rutgers. It turns out he stepped down to focus on his cardiac health. I don’t think that negates what we said at the time about the potential for Rutgers’s boosters to get the AD they want, but it eliminates the possibility those boosters pushed him out, unless you want to make an uncomfortable argument centered around the impact of stress on the human body. Hopefully this move makes the difference Hobbs needs it to make. Best wishes to the guy.
- In other AD news, Eddie Nuñez is replacing Chris Pezman at Houston. Nuñez had been New Mexico’s AD since 2017. Once upon a time, he played for Billy Donovan at Florida. This one’s interesting because of just how bad New Mexico football became during Nuñez’s time in Albuquerque. Houston’s doubling down on basketball? Obviously, there’s more to athletic departments than those two sports, but the question stands.
