Why Football at KU Matters - UCONN AD Leaves Door Open To Cut Sports Programs

First, I know this is the basketball board, but I think this is a topic all the basketball fans need to be aware of and understand. It's come up a couple of times in the past on here and the football section.

Second, you may have noticed me being pretty active on the football board tracking the coaching staff changes, recruiting, etc. I'm focused on where the football program is heading and tracking everything to see if it can get turned around. I'm firmly in the camp that it can. I'm also trying to keep up with the topic of where college sports revenue is headed and how that will affect KU. No mystery that football leads college revenue.

I'll let you read this story about what's happened at UConn which has had phenomenal success with women's basketball, had a great men's basketball program not too long ago, but has not had a great football team.

www.apnews.com/5bf6e16950ec4de89117c206fff8786a

There are a few factors that led Connecticut to where it is, but I think this paragraph sums it up:
The school, with most of its athletic programs in the American Athletic Conference, struggles to compete fiscally with similar programs in the higher revenue-generating Power Five conferences — the Big Ten, Big 12, Atlantic Coast Conference, Southeastern Conference and Pac-12.

That's why I'm convinced KU must have a strong football program that can compete in a Power 5 conference. I'd love to hear thoughts/opinions on this. And, I urge you to consider rooting for the football team as strongly as you do the basketball team.

I agree you have to be competitive in football and basketball to stay in a power 5 conference long term.

Interesting article. I can add some local flavor as I'm only about an hour from UConn and I actually was one of a few dozen people who attended the UConn vs. UMass football game this year (it was cold and rainy, but my daughter is in the UMass marching band and I had purchased tickets to go to the game before looking at the weather forecast).

With very few exceptions, college football isn't nearly as big of a deal in these large northeast schools as it is in the south, and midwest. In fact, outside of Penn State, Syracuse and maybe Boston College, and West Point, there really isn't much of a college football local fan base here. Meanwhile there are plenty of large universities with 20,000+ students. The old Big East conference was a huge basketball conference, but not so much in regard to football. In fact, most college football fans that I know follow teams in the Big 10, Big 12, or SEC.

Compare that to KU and it's a very different situation. KU is in "football country". KU fans are surrounded by K-State, Mizzou, OU, OSU, Nebraska, and Iowa who have all had successful programs going back over some time.

If UConn is to succeed in building up their football program, they'll be essentially doing so on an island without much regional competition or rivalries. UConn plays in the AAC which is one of those goofy conferences with teams as far flung as South Florida and Houston. That triangle probably takes up 1/3 of the landmass of the continential US and only adds costs to the program (the football team isn't taking busses to Houston, Florida, SMU, or Tulsa). Finally, UConn plays their games 30 minutes away off campus in Hartford which hinders students' ability to conveniently attend games. In short, they've got a big mountain to climb.

KU has a whole lot more potential for success than UConn and it wouldn't shock me at all to see programs like UConn (or UMass) decide at some point that it doesn't make financial sense to keep the program afloat.