HUSKIES, YOU NEVER SHOULD HAVE LEFT

I've been reading about the conference changes in UConn athletics with great interest and I thought I'd offer my taxpayer's portion of the millions we must cough up to support the transfer from the American Athletic Conference to the Big East.

Generally I believe the move is good for UConn and the fan base.  The contrived inanity of former football coach Bob Diaco's ConFLiCT is stirring testimony that rivalries with other AAC teams just lacked the luster to stimulate football and basketball fans into opening their wallets, although losing records don't help either.

The notion of Division I football was a complete travesty right from the start.

With all due respect to head coach Randy Edsall, the idea that the 2011 Fiesta Bowl that through sheer luck and administrative lunacy pitted UConn against Oklahoma was as rare a commodity as a snowstorm in Satan's kitchen.  How in heaven's name was the Big East champion presented a slot opposite a Big 12 team in a bowl game?  The whole system is so driven by money and is so lacking in what college football fans deserved to see that I wonder if somebody -- anybody -- found that match-up compelling.

Oh, but it stirred the juices in UConn faithful that football could follow the route that Geno Auriemma and Jim Calhoun forged on the basketball court.  Geno won it all!  Jim won it all!  Randy can do it, too?  Poor fellow had no chance, although I certainly can't blame him or his successors for giving it that old college try.

To become an Oklahoma, a school must have a decent percentage of in-state scholastic players talented enough to make up the team's core.  Trust me as a longtime scholastic football reporter in Connecticut; that was not going to happen here.  I can count on my hands and feet the number of top-flight Division I prospects I saw play over my 28-year career.  I can count on one hand how many of them opted to play for UConn.  UConn was never going to be an Oklahoma, no matter how many times Geno may have thrashed their women's hoop team.

But the cockeyed optimists who made the decisions couldn't be told that.  Hence, we built Rentschler Field, which has hosted more empty seats than the factories that produce them.  Meanwhile, the Huskies were whiffing on the likes of Aaron Hernandez, the Reed brothers David and Jordan, and Tyler Matakevich of St. Joseph (Trumbull) now the Steelers.

UConn football was fun to watch in the old Yankee Conference.  It was fine in the Big East, as it was.  But delusions of grandeur after that Fiesta Bowl will now cost the beleaguered taxpayers a massive AAC exit fee and an entry fee for a league to which UConn could have still belonged.  And what of UConn football as an independent?  Do you think Notre Dame is interested in paying a visit to The Rent?

When you tag the costs of change to the $40 million athletic deficit and the rest of the financial problems Connecticut faces, we're in a mess even bigger than a 5 p.m. drive through the I-84 Mixmaster.  The extra $15 million or so that this move will cost won't help our tax dollars fix the state's transportation infrastructure.  It won't appease corporations from fleeing for the bright lights of Boston.  It just gets added into a deficit column that compounds the erroneous judgment that makes Connecticut a great place not to retire.

With all that negativity out in the open, I see a glistening future for basketball, particularly the women's program.  Thanks to Geno, Chris Dailey and assists from their magnificent array of alumnae, the Huskies have overcome the lack of competition in the AAC to remain the finest program in the nation.  Given their brilliant scheming to shore up last year's lack of depth, the excellence will continue.  The common-sense based strategy fomented by Auriemma and Friends is as refreshing as it is effective.

I don't foresee the same future for the men.  Coach Dan Hurley's sideline antics are far too over-the-top for my tastes and I don't see him being competitive for the elite high school players, no matter what The Hartford Courant chooses to project.  I see the athletes that Kentucky, Duke, North Carolina, Kansas, Florida, Gonzaga, Villanova and now AAC foe Memphis vie for and their names don't seem show up when they post their college lists.

As my astute friend and founder of UConn Daily John Silver capably debates, the Huskies don't loom as one-and-done proponents but can still hold their own.  After all, he says, they've won four national championships.

Can they do it again?  Sure, anything is possible, but we'll have to see if Hurley can pass up the one-and-done talent level and coach the kids who hang around for two, three years to the top of the brackets.  There may be another Kemba Walker, Shabazz Napier or Jalen Adams out there who slips through the cracks, but it took a Hall of Famer to find them, and he's at St. Joseph in West Hartford now.

But regardless of where the Huskies of the Hurley Era land, seeing Villanova, Georgetown, Seton Hall and St. John's back on the slate will be a nice lift.  Few will pine for Central Florida, South Florida, Tulsa, Tulane and East Carolina, although I must say it is going to be a treat to watch Memphis and the games with Cincinnati were always competitive.

It's also great that UConn games will remain available on what modernists call "linear TV" instead of this ESPN+ streaming folderol.  I'm not an advocate of New York City media entity SNY portraying UConn as its very own but at least I can still get it by using the television in my living room and not sending ESPN any money.  I would imagine the sweet SNY deal that UConn probably would have lost was more tantamount in returning Big East-ward than nostalgia.

The sports end of what's transpired suits me fine but as with the reconstruction of the XL Center and all the other million- and billion-dollar projects, I have one burning question: Can we afford it?