Katsouleas (r) said he has no plans to move UConn into a Power Five conference from the AACGETTY IMAGES
Incoming UConn President Thomas Katsouleas said that he is "committed to a major college football program and doesn't plan to move the school" out of the AAC, according to Pat Eaton-Robb of the AP. Katsouleas was appointed yesterday and will take over in August. The school recently reported that athletic expenses "outpaced revenues" last year by more than $40M. That led to "editorials and calls from some in the university community to cut football or scale back the program to the FCS level." However, Katsouleas said, "I'm committed to football. I think it's part of the identity of who we are as a major, broad-context university and I don't think the savings from cutting it are as great as people think. In fact, it has ancillary value for the other sports and for fundraising overall." He added that he has "no plans" to move UConn into a Power Five conference. Katsouleas: "We're in a good conference and we're committed to building that conference up" (AP, 2/5).
NO CASE: In Hartford, Alex Putterman in a front-page piece notes U.S. District Court Judge Kari Dooley dismissed former UConn men's basketball coach Kevin Ollie's lawsuit against the school in which he "accused the university of illegally deterring him from filing a racial discrimination complaint." Dooley ruled that the lawsuit was "not 'ripe for adjudication' because Ollie had not yet suffered harm as a result of UConn's inclination to withdraw from the salary-grievance arbitration process if the coach submitted a racial discrimination complaint to a state or federal agency." Dooley on Monday did not rule on the "merits of Ollie's discrimination claim itself or on his claim that UConn could not legally pull out of arbitration." Dooley instead asserted that Ollie did not have standing to sue "at this stage" (HARTFORD COURANT, 2/6).
