“Back then, UConn didn’t have the prestige it does today with academics. … For a lot of us that got into business at the time, it was a good education but it wasn’t perceived to be the school it is today. It was hard to crack into financial services. You just had to kick and […]
“Back then, UConn didn’t have the prestige it does today with academics. … For a lot of us that got into business at the time, it was a good education but it wasn’t perceived to be the school it is today. It was hard to crack into financial services. You just had to kick and scream and do anything you could to get someone to listen because you weren’t perceived like Michigan or Virginia or Carolina or any of the Ivies. We bonded over a lot of that stuff. We had a chip on our shoulder.”
For years, college athletics felt like a borderline untenable financial quagmire for many institutions. UConn is hardly alone in feeling some constraint. The fact that the Huskies compete and win the way they do across the board while living outside the lucrative power conference world is among the most remarkable things going on in sports. It was a difficult fight for a long time and then revenue sharing came along to further complicate everything, allowing schools to pay out another $20.5 million annually — demanding they do so, really, if they want to remain competitive. That figure that will only increase in the coming years.
“These people had such an effect on me — work ethic, how you carry yourself, what you can accomplish in life,” he said. “I’ve just been so inspired, my whole career, by: Do what you’re not supposed to do. Put yourself in a place for success. Be extraordinary at your trade and practice. That was the thing about Calhoun and Geno — you just have to work harder than the next guy. It just inspired me that, if you worked really hard your dreams could come true … and my career kicked off.”
UConn athletics every year goes about making ends meet with the type of university subsidy that many schools, even power conference schools, use every year. Imagine what UConn could do if it pulled in, say, $35 million a year instead of $5 million from media contracts alone? That’s why long ago, even when a second stint in the Big East still felt new, a move to the Big 12 was explored and pushed for, and why UConn will try to push itself into all sorts of conference realignment scenarios when that game of musical chairs begins again.…Read more by Mike Anthony