UConn fans are realignment victims

People shouldn't have to care this much about this stuff

Photo credit: Getty Images

Of all of the annoying things about the endless churn of collegiate athletics conference realignment — and there are so many annoying things — maybe the very worst is folks who use the topic to assert their own savvy.

You know the type. People who respond to “aw, sheesh, this sort of sucks” with a long list of reasons why you shouldn’t let your emotions get in the way of the facts, why this is just how it works in the real world, why if you actually consider the overall market and the long-term projections for various television rights deals and the changing landscape of blah blah blah that actually it makes perfect sense for Oregon and Washington and USC and UCLA to be in the 18-team Big 10 now, that it’s really the Pac-12’s own fault that it doesn’t exist, because college sports is business, duh, because if you actually use your brain and realize that all of this is fundamentally entirely about producing ever-increasing sums of money at the expense of almost everything that makes it interesting — like that silly emotional attachment you keep talking about — then you, too, can understand the harsh truths that govern our world.

Maybe it’s just a matter of reading too much Twitter, but every post on the realignment topic seems to attract these types of people in droves. Still: You do not normally expect to find these people in the replies to a tweet made by the junior United States Senator for Connecticut:

Murphy’s relatively innocuous reaction to the idea of UConn leaving the Big East for the second time in a decade Tuesday produced an almost entirely negative string of responses, a torrent of (paraphrasing here) “well then clearly you don’t care about the program” and “actually here are five positives about the move you haven’t considered” and “stick to politics.” Being a US Senator, Murphy is surely used to far worse, but both the post and its replies were a pretty handy summation of what the UConn conversation has become. One person says they’re not sure about leaving the Big East again because they like going to the Big East tournament at Madison Square Garden with friends, and a whole bunch of people absolutely insist UConn has to leave for the Big 12, preferably tomorrow morning, lest the entire university implode by the afternoon.

Folks are allowed to have different views. That’s the thing: The argument doesn’t even have to be wrong! Is the UConn to the Big 12 argument wrong? Arguably not!

More than any specific view, what actually sucks about this whole thing is that fans have to care about this stuff at all. Realignment has turned the diehard supporters of the two-time defending national men’s basketball champions into pro bono brand managers and amateur athletics administrators; it has made them unnaturally invested in revenue sharing agreements; it has forced them to be more preoccupied with Brett Yormark than Alex Karaban.

Hot take: This is bad.

Because, again, the argument for the move is at least fair. Folks’ hearts are in the right place. The Big 12 does represent a significant long-term opportunity for UConn athletics!