College Football 2023: Hail to the Cheaters

https://twitter.com/bomani_jones/status/1289996456934273024

Talk about an unforced error by Rolovich. LOL @ that being a season this year. All he needed to do was nothing. Good luck recruiting in the future, fool.

1 Like

https://mobile.twitter.com/SportsDayDFW/status/1290408342981095427

Well this sucks.

It’s a very confusing story with different people claiming different things yet they all seemingly boycotted practice.

1 Like

Colleges literally just committing crimes to keep the exploration train rolling.

https://mobile.twitter.com/Kevin_Lytle/status/1290766084212174848

2 Likes

UConn is the first FBS program to cancel their season (Would anyone notice if they did play though?). Most of their games were cancelled anyway since they were going to be an independent this year. I don’t expect the Power 5 schools to cancel until whole teams get sick. There’s just too much money involved.

3 Likes

We now know there will be some college sports this Fall no matter what, as a small number of D3 schools and probably about 50% of NAIA schools are moving forward with Fall sports, generally in lower population areas.

Still waiting to see what happens with D2 and D1. Half of D2 has already postponed and roughly 25% of D1 but these levels are where the guidance has been the most fuzzy.

Why did UConn leave whatever conference they were last in, which I can’t be arsed to look up at the moment?

They were in the American Athletic. They rejoined the now non-football Big East. It’s widely seen as a move to upgrade the basketball program’s conference… and perhaps a hint that the football program will be thrown under the bus in the near future.

The weird thing is that the Big East is only really better in mens hoops by a little. I would say it is worse in several other sports and obviously them not having football really hurts UConn. It also isn’t like they were dominating AAC level basketball competition. They were finishing in the bottom half of the league year after year for the past several years.

I’d say the Big East is better than the AAC in basketball by a pretty substantial amount.

1 Like

I guess looking at it again you might be kind of right. Breaking down the BE Georgetown, St John’s, Depaul have all been pretty bad for a while now. There is a nice pack of S16 potential type teams in Creighton(never made the S16 but obviously have potential), Seton Hall, Providence, Butler, Marquette, Xavier. And obviously Villanova is a top tier basketball program.

The AAC has Houston, Wichita St., SMU, Cincinnati, Tulsa, Memphis and Temple who have all been relevant in recent years and would be comparable to the S16 potential teams I listed above for the BE. The big difference is that there is no Villanova in the AAC.

In short the Big East is better but I don’t think it is a huge upgrade. It isn’t like they joined the ACC.

The above-two comments pretty much nail it but I’d guess football drops down a division before they completely get rid of the program. They’ve thrown too much money at it to get rid of it completely though a lot of it was just from one individual donor so who knows if he stops the rain.

I’d also say that while the competition level for the men’s basketball team is only a slight increase, literally no one could be excited about a matchup against teams like Tulsa/UCF/etc. With Hurley and back in the BE there’s a definite excitement here.

UConn also touted the move as reducing travel for all sports, and in football, being more able to schedule local rivals, especially Army. None of the stated reasons make a whole lotta sense in my book.

In college football news today, the Big 10 announced their new 10 game conference only schedule this morning. And the NCAA might announce cancelling the FCS, II and III football playoffs… after punting on that Q two weeks ago and again yesterday.

The Big East was #2 in Sagarin’s conference ratings last year and would be #1 if you added UConn. ACC was only 4th and AAC was 7th.

It’s a pretty big upgrade for UConn (if all they care about is basketball) and I’d say that now the Big East is in the elite tier of basketball conferences w/the ACC, Big 12, and Big Ten.

Big East is stacked with DePaul being the only real dud. The other 10 teams are pretty legit programs.

Georgetown has been pretty bad under Patrick Ewing and has not made the tournament since the 2014-2015 season. St. John’s has basically been terrible for 20 years and has only made the tournament twice since the 2001-2002 season. They also haven’t had a season with less than 10 losses since the 1999-2000 season. Are those two programs better than South Florida or Tulane? Yup.

I completely agree the Big East is better. I guess what I was trying to get at was is it worth giving up the rest of your athletic department to go from what has probably been the 6th best league on average over the past 5 years to the 3rd. I don’t follow the olympic sports enough to really know what is what there but the AAC is a way better league in baseball and they actually have football. Also it is hard to see how the AAC was holding UConn back as they have been a bottom dweller in the conference for the last several years.

You claim Tulsa as on the same tier as those sweet 16 Big East teams when really they aren’t even on GTown’s level (who is one of the worst teams in the Big East).

Since 2000, Tulsa hasn’t been ranked in the final AP Top 25 a single season and has 4 NCAA tournies. GTown has been ranked 8 times w/9 NCAAs.

Even St. John’s has an NCAA appearance just 2 seasons ago. And those are 2 of the bottom 4 Big East teams and they still are occasional threats to have a good team.

The AAC has about 5 legit duds and the Big East only 1.

I guess it’s mostly just splitting hairs here, but I think the Big East is way better than the AAC minus UConn and it’s not particularly close.

I’d also gladly take GTown to have more AP top 25 finishes or better ave. KenPom than Tulsa over the next decade. And that’s a Big East bottom feeder vs. mid-pack AAC team.

Your point is well taken as to whether UConn torching the football program is worth the upgrade in basketball though. I suspect it is probably a knee-jerk reaction to try and reinvigorate the basketball program. They’ll never be good in football, so they really need the basketball program to get back to competing for natties.

Not to continue to make this the UConn sports thread but moving to the BE was huge in terms of marketing/alum excitement/recapturing the NYC area market. I think the administration finally realized the B10 or ACC weren’t gonna knock on that door (fuck you BC).

For Olympic sports I always thought of those as competing against yourself as an individual so who you were playing didn’t really matter. Hockey stays in Hockey East. Obv Geno will play whoever wherever so that doesn’t matter. So maybe it hurts like soccer and baseball a little- I know nothing about competition of either sport in either conference though so who knows.

UConn will always be a basketball school first and foremost no matter how much the prior administration tried to cram football down our throats. Though they did a spectacular job of fucking it up after having Dan O lead us into the big time and Edsall getting to the Fiesta Bowl. How Pasqualoni and Diacco got jobs after what they did to football is beyond me.

I mean Creighton has never even made the 2nd weekend of the tournament EVER and I included them in that list also.

Wow that’s surprising

Exactly. They’re probably bottom 4 in the Big East in historical credentials and they were a #2 tourney seed last year and preseason top 15 this year. That’s how deep the Big East is. Tulsa would kill to have a team like that (or a player like Dougie McBuckets).

BTW, are you a Shockers fan? I grew up in Omaha and was a Creighton season ticket holder for many years, those Creighton-Wichita battles in the Valley were hella fun.

We’re now at 27% of this thread being about basketball.

Maybe rename it to College Sports 2020?