Sanity has prevailed in the Big 12 offices alongside Highway 114 in suburban Dallas, as commissioner Brett Yormark announced Thursday it has "paused" expansion discussions with the University of Connecticut.
"As Commissioner, it is my responsibility to explore a variety of value-creating opportunities on behalf of the Big 12," Yormark said in a statement. "Following detailed discussions with my conference colleagues alongside UConn leadership, we have jointly decided to pause our conversations at this time. We will instead focus our attention and resources to ushering in this new era of college athletics."
The plan would've been to add UConn basketball ASAP, while football would wait until the expiration of the current TV contract, delaying the addition of Huskies football until 2031.
Frankly, 2131 would've been too soon for me as an AD or head football coach at a football-minded institution to attach my brand to UConn's. This is a program that, in Game 1 of Year 3 under Jim Mora, lost 50-7 to Maryland. This is a program in its 25th season of FBS membership and has been competitive for six of them. In fact, in 12 seasons since Randy Edsall left UConn for Maryland after winning the Big East championship in 2010, the Huskies' best record to date is 6-7, with eight seasons of nine or more losses.
Most concerning, this is a university that willingly orphaned its football program into the purgatory of FBS independence so basketball could re-join the Big East.
As I wrote more than a year ago, Yormark is an ideas man, and he's succeeded in his primary objective of bringing money, attention and energy to the beleaguered league. He's also not necessarily wrong in his belief that college basketball is undervalued as a television product.
But Yormark is a career climber, and it's incredibly unlikely this New York-based executive who spent most of his career in professional sports and entertainment is still running a Heartland-based collegiate athletics conference at the end of the decade. If I'm a Big 12 president, I'm skeptical that Yormark's long-term priorities align with my university's, and his dalliance with UConn football is Point No. 1 there.
If UConn decides to ever get serious about competing in major college football, the Big 12 can always resume discussions about the cost/benefit of sending Arizona, and BYU, and Houston, and Oklahoma State to play conference road games in Storrs, Conn.
Until then, though, there's zero reason for a conference with very real aspirations of establishing itself as the Best Conference Outside the Big Two to associate itself with UConn.
As always, stay tuned to The Scoop for the latest.