The longer I can keep this up, and the longer you stick around, the more you’ll understand that outside my emotional maelstrom I can talk about normal things. These are my favorite:
- Making people laugh
- Boxing
- College basketball
And specifically, Big East basketball.
In what’s been the worst-kept secret for about a week it today became official that the UConn Huskies would again be joining the Big East, the conference its administration once felt fine abandoning for its woebegone football program. Well.
I don’t know if the same administration has any understanding about sunk costs and throwing good money after bad and things that just aren’t going to happen, like a successful Connecticut FBS football program, but it’s nice to have a founding member of the Big East back home, even if home is now on the side of the street with the big cathedral on it.
The Big East is different now.
I get it though. A Big East alumni who grew accustomed to watching her team play Louisville through various conferences for around 30-odd years, I know it sucks when a serious rivalry goes away in the name of ESPN conference alignment goals.
So to my Big East sister schools who’ve been playing UConn since the early 80s? Freeze ’em out at the Dunk, Cooley. Jay Wright, just do your super-model thing. Georgetown, if you could pull one out, that’d be great. Make them as welcome as ever in Jersey, Seton Hall. St. John’s, um, I kinda don’t know what to say to you right now.
Or vice versa! It’s great either way. Plus, I’m looking forward to seeing UConn play new foe Xavier. That’s probably gonna hurt for a while.
Women’s basketball
Here’s where UConn really helps the Big East basketball product if it doesn’t eat it alive first.
It’s not as though the better women’s teams aren’t spread out anyway, but only two have stood out of late in the Big East: DePaul, which does nothing else right, and Marquette, which has two state-of-the-art athletic facilities across the street from each other. Which is to say, the women’s game may have improved there despite what Marquette hasn’t done for it.
With UConn women’s basketball in the fold, shining a big bright Maglite on how little gets put into women’s sports everywhere but there, we may see some additional resources allocated to the women’s game. I’d like to think so. The Big East might be focused exclusively on basketball, and that’s great for those of us who could care less about football. But it’s the men’s game. And see, women play basketball, too.
I watch a lot of boxing, including (or especially) women’s boxing. Unlike many of the men (Anthony Joshua?), I’ve not seen one woman boxer lack heart. They all want to win. Bad. Man, do they work. (Same’s true for women MMA fighters, if that’s your gig.) But training resources? There’s a wide gulf between a lot of them, and it shows up in skill and entertainment value.
Imagine what women’s basketball might look like if more were invested in it nationwide. Or just conference-wide. If there was a palpable sense that the NCAA, university and fans cared. By “palpable,” of course, I mean American dollars. The outcomes may never be the same. The product may never be as “good” as the men’s game. It’d be nice to have the opportunity to judge for myself.
Welcome, UConn!
Ok, enough time on the soapbox. Bring your heathen fans, UConn! Bring your mean women’s team, tall in their black hats, to kill us all! Bring your rebuilding men’s team which, no doubt, is on the way up. Get Shabazz Napier to some of the games – I always liked that guy. Any lacrosse? Bring your bad grammar to our small-school message boards. A good time will be had by all, I know. Here’s to 2020-21! It can’t get here fast enough.
thingspeoplelookup.com 