Barry Tramel on the Big XII is a fair analog to Jon Wilner on the PAC-X.

Tramel: Connecticut not the best idea for Big 12 expansion

Any surge in conference realignment brings a concurrent surge in freezing cold takes.  

Predictions, declarations and statements, all made with boldness and conviction, returning from the past, to give us all a good laugh. 

In this part of the country, the current Mister Freeze is The Athletic’s Stewart Mandel, a longtime college football scribe who two years ago tweeted about the Big 12’s “carcass.” 

Didn’t hold up well, of course, with the Big 12 staging a rally for the ages, complete with the Colorado vote Thursday to return to the conference, a move that makes the Pac-12 worry about its own carcass. 

But forgive Mandel. He’s a member of a big club. We all say things that depart the rails. We all have our “Dewey Beats Truman” moments. 

And here’s one of mine. 

In August 2016, with the Big 12 staging a casting call for expansion, I wrote that the league should add Brigham Young and Connecticut. 

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One of my preferred candidates, BYU, has indeed joined the Big 12 and is going to be a home-run addition. [I agree.] The other, UConn, is being promoted by whizbang commissioner Brett Yormark. 

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Reports that the Big 12 is capping expansion at 14 likely is a Yormark negotiating tactic. Make the Pac-12 candidates believe there’s only one seat left on the lifeboat, when three actually are available. 

[Oh, that is a HOT take from a guy who knows Yormark well!]

And Big 12 loyalists should hope that Yormark also is bluffing about Connecticut. Safe to say, my UConn enthusiasm has waned.  

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…Connecticut football has cratered since my 2016 endorsement. Cratered worse than Kansas. 

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That 0-0 season was most telling. While the rest of the nation was scrambling to play football any way it could during the pandemic, Connecticut gave up the ghost. Just canceled the season. 

[Another perceptive point.]

…UConn’s indifference to football is a massive warning sign. 

Connecticut left the American Conference in 2020 to return to the Big East, which doesn’t even sponsor football. …

UConn made the decision to be a football independent. The American was a solid football league — Houston, Cincinnati, Central Florida, Memphis, Southern Methodist — but Connecticut kicked its own football program to the curb. 

Is that the kind of athletic department that would enhance the Big 12? 

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And as I reported a couple of months ago, Big 12 administrators are alarmed by a $50 million subsidy UConn grants its athletic department. One change in Connecticut administration could wipe out that support. 

[Tramel doesn’t mention another UConn demerit. The “Huskies” community is torn on the Big XII and the debate is hot. The Nays don’t want to abandon the new Big East basketball-only conference to accommodate a football program that they reasonably view as dead weight and Yormark does not want to go where he is unwanted.]

…New England’s traditional sports passions lie with the professional ranks and college basketball. 

[Another. One could say similarly of the entire Northeast. Schools in smaller places like UConn and Syracuse struggle for inelastic attention. Those in bigger cities, Boston College, Pitt, Rutgers, Temple, Villanova, Maryland are swamped by the popularity of pro teams in all sports. New York City has not had big time college football in my lifetime.]

….all of Connecticut’s potential value to the Big 12 resides in college hoops. 

…Yormark sees unearthed potential in basketball. 

That’s a brave theory in modern times, when college hoops has taken a massive hit in popularity. The NCAA Tournament remains a big moneymaker, but pre-March college basketball is a tough sell on most campuses and most networks. In the 1980s, yes. In the 2020s, no. 

Still, the Big 12 has emerged as the nation’s strongest basketball league. …

Put UConn in the Big 12…and there is no debate. Big 12 basketball would be a runaway train. 

How does that equate to increased financial bounty? Don’t know. Maybe it doesn’t. 

[Oh, fabulous! That’s the bottom line question.]

But Yormark deserves some slack here. He’s had the Midas touch in his year in office. Even when his presidents and athletic directors disagree with him, they are deferential to their leader. Sometimes awed. 

And Yormark is adamant that basketball should be separated from football in the next television contract. Since the OU/Texas news hit, Big 12 schools have scrambled to produce other revenue streams, to account for the lost value of the league’s signature schools. 

[And there Yormark may be visionary agayne. I read recently that this decoupling is gaining currency in other precincts as well and didn’t understand it. Gonzaga to Big XII? I am stuck in the 1980’s when the original Big East had two separate memberships, one in each sport. Was the Big East just forty years too soon?]

What if basketball can be one of those revenue streams? What if Yormark — a master marketer and basketball guy, from his days with the Brooklyn Netropolitans — can turn Big 12 basketball into a much-bigger moneymaker? 

I wouldn’t put it past him, and Connecticut would be a big help. 

Still, UConn is a tough sell. The Big 12’s networks are not required to bolster their payout if the league adds an addition from outside a Power Five Conference.  

[Another key point in the here and now. If you add UConn now in all sports you get dilution of the media contract. If you add e.g. Arizona you don’t.]

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…even…with Yormark’s golden touch, Connecticut can’t match what Pac-12 defectors would bring to the Big 12. 

Forget what I said in 2016. Don’t settle for UConn. 

[I am as “awed” by Yormark as the next guy and I would “defer” to his judgment but these are all strong points.]