Interesting comments from Dave Benedict, UConn AD, on the AAC yesterday:

"We’ve got to focus on winning and competing for conference championships in the conference we’re in,” he said. “This isn’t to suggest people shouldn’t long for the days of the old Big East. I get that, and how important rivalries are. When you start talking about the rivalries we had, it’s very understandable that our fan base would long for those days. But let’s not take anything away from the remarkable amount of success [the AAC] has had in a very short period of time. The basketball is also making strides. It’s not to say we have the same type of rivalries we had in the Big East, but you can’t deny that things have improved on an annual basis in this conference. But I totally get where our fan base is coming from.”

"Everybody knows we are challenged from a budget standpoint,” Benedict said, “and the loss of the Big East dollars is just another piece that we’re going to have to deal with. I’m having conversations on a day-to-day basis with the leadership at the university and we’re working very hard to figure out what our long-term plan is."