Big East Commissioner Val Ackerman said UConn's return to the conference this summer "wasn't anything we sought out," though she admitted the league was "certainly happy to listen." Ackerman said conference officials "thought it would be beneficial to have the conversation, and things really just progressed from there.” UConn is set to re-join the conference in the '20-21 school year, and Ackerman said there was some “fair debate” as to whether the school was a good fit in the reshaped league. However, she noted current member schools decided to move forward when looking at UConn's "history (and) what they brought from a basketball standpoint." Ackerman: "We’re now six years into our national TV agreement with Fox. We know it’s not too soon to start thinking about where we’re going to be as a league in six years and beyond. The thing that kept coming back to us was, we’re not going to be a football conference again -- those days are over -- so we’re going to try to stay as strong a basketball conference as we can be. We know we have to keep that sport, particularly, healthy.” She added, “In our minds collectively, we came up with the conclusion, who better to fortify our future and secure that than the University of Connecticut?” ("UConn Insider Podcast," COURANT.com, 10/3).
