Quote:
Originally Posted by paintmered
The amount of near-term future movement is tied to how much Maryland pays in exit fees to the ACC. If that number goes low, then it's essentially free agency for current ACC programs. Supposedly, the ACC took Louisville because other conferences are sniffing around, and they felt it was most important to secure them while they could. UC and UCONN will be available in the next round.
Louisville leaving the Big East is another kick to the midsection for us UC fans. We've had plenty of them before, and there may be more to come. But if you're looking for hope, look towards the Maryland v. ACC lawsuit. That will determine our future.
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The longer this all takes, the more difficult it will be to keep any sort of momentum for UC football. They're going to probably lose Jones at the end of this season, and their recruiting is definitely going to take a hit from the loss of the AQ slot. Going forward, if they're having trouble selling tickets to current BE games, they'll have a hell of a time selling tickets to games against teams like Tulane, SMU, Houston, and Memphis.
The TV deal is going to be a dog -- especially if Boise State doesn't stick around. Even with Boise, I think they'll be hard-pressed to wrangle out even the same amount of money they're currently getting. You're probably looking at a lot of mid-week games in any new TV deal, which will further impact attendance.
There's also the issue of facilities -- Nippert & 5/3 are in desperate need of upgrades, and it's going to get tougher and tougher to find money for those projects when boosters are seeing low-level competition coming through town.
Really, there's nothing UC can do right now except pray really hard this holding pattern isn't years, because the state of the program is going to deteriorate significantly if they're forced to live in the Big East much longer.