On Friday morning, a report came out that said that the UConn Huskies are looking to join the American Athletic Conference as a football-only member, keeping all other programs in the Big East.
For the time being, the AAC does not appear interested in bringing UConn in, or James Madison or Miami of Ohio, who also have expressed interest in bringing all their sports over.
Even though this only exists in hypotheticals right now, we covered the early potential positives and negatives of this move from the football program's side, but how would this move potentially impact UConn's basketball programs?
Pretty simple: It means they'd be stuck in the Big East moving forward.
What's the positive of that?
Don't get me wrong. I personally don't think being "stuck" in the Big East is necessarily a bad thing.
1) Obviously, UConn has tremendous history in the Big East, and even though tradition and history matter less in college athletics than they used to, it still does matter.
2) By keeping that tradition alive, you'd be keeping longstanding familiar rivalries with programs like Villanova, St. John's, Providence and Georgetown.
3) Staying in the Big East would obviously keep travel reduced, which is better for fans that want to travel to watch UConn games on the road.
4) UConn is at the top of the food chain in both men's and women's basketball. While you never want your league to be too easy, you also don't want to go to a place where you aren't clearly at the top. The women's program would be at the top of just about any conference it could go to, but the men's program would get mildly devalued if it were in the mix of the ACC, Big 12 or Big Ten, for example.
What's the negative of staying in the Big East?
1) The Big East television deal pales in comparison to that of other conferences, of course because the Big East doesn't offer football. But you can see just how lucrative other leagues' deals are, meaning that much more revenue would be available if UConn joined another power conference.
That revenue would help fund the entire athletic department, and would help produce more NIL opportunities. If UConn brought its entire athletic department over to a new conference, that revenue would be far greater than a Big East/AAC split.
2) As was stated by Jon Rothstein of CBS Sports this spring, the Big East men's conference hasn't done a good job recently, with only three teams making the NCAA Tournament last year (UConn, Villanova, St. John's). When only three teams get to the tournament, there's less conference exposure and less tournament revenue shares. Eventually, you get tired of propping up an entire league.
The Huskies wouldn't have to do that in other Power Four leagues, which is why Rothstein had said he thinks the Huskies would jump ship if they were able to. This would preclude that.