UConn To The Pac-12? Let’s Look At The Numbers (And Quotes)

There has been plenty of smoke over the last few weeks around Pac-12 expansion and the possible addition of UConn, specifically for football.

It is no secret that the revamped Pac-12 is still exploring what the next version of the league will look like. It is also no secret that the conference has courted multiple schools.

I’ll preface this, as always, by saying I think any expansion involving current Mountain West schools is likely off the table until the legal battles are resolved and the dust settles. That could take months, but more likely years. Additionally, any American Conference school would have to consider the financial gap and ask whether the move is worth it, especially if the rumored value of the new PAC television deal is not dramatically higher.

Thus, we are having this conversation again.

Football conferences have no real boundaries anymore. At the power-league level, those boundaries have disappeared for all sports, too. But the cracks are showing, especially when decisions driven by football and television windows negatively impact every other sport on campus.

That brings us to UConn.

UConn is independent in football, but this is not a Notre Dame-style independence. They don’t have millions of dollars coming in from NBC to be independent.

As I noted on Twitter/X, let’s start with the financials to paint a clearer picture.

Here are some Fiscal Year 2025 financial data for the future Pac-12 membership, courtesy of Extra Points Library.

Average Pac-12 Football Budget: $25,092,033
UConn Football Budget: $20,651,432

Average Athletic Department Budget: $76,619,213
UConn Athletic Department Budget: $109,674,008

Let’s pull on that thread a little more.

Here are the future Pac-12 football budgets from Fiscal Year 2025:

Colorado State: $37.7 million
Boise State: $30.7 million
Oregon State: $23.8 million
Texas State: $23.1 million
Washington State: $22.8 million
San Diego State: $22.2 million
Utah State: $22.1 million
Fresno State: $17.9 million

From a football budget standpoint, there are clear similarities. UConn is not wildly out of range compared to the future Pac-12 membership. In fact, the Huskies would sit in the same general financial neighborhood as several league schools.

That does not mean it makes sense. It just means the football budget is not the immediate disqualifier.

The larger question is whether the move makes sense for UConn’s broader athletic department.

And that is where things get a little more complicated. Or, to put it another way, this is where the Huskies’ sled starts getting harder to pull.

Could the Pac-12 invite UConn and try to get the Huskies to join as a full member?

In short, I highly doubt it.

UConn in men’s basketball reported roughly $21.5 million in expenses from fiscal year 2025. The leader of the next iteration of the Pac-12?

San Diego State at $9.1 million.

Yes, that doesn’t include Gonzaga, because they don’t have to disclose as a private school, but the pictures become clearer.

Could there be some sort of non-conference basketball scheduling alliance?

Maybe. For one game? Sure. But UConn does not really need it.

More on that in a second.

To understand why, you have to go back to UConn’s decision to return to the Big East.

UConn announced in 2019 that it was returning to the Big East and officially joined the conference again on July 1, 2020. The Huskies were previously members of the Big East from 1979 through 2013.

The move made sense then. It still makes sense now.

The Big East offered a far better competitive and cultural fit for the Huskies. UConn basketball is UConn athletics. Football is secondary, and maybe even tertiary, behind both basketball programs. When UConn returned to the Big East, football was deliberately left behind.

That was the tradeoff.

The Big East gave UConn what it needed most: a Northeast-based league that values basketball above all else. It restored historic matchups against schools like Villanova, Georgetown, and Providence. It helped boost ticket sales, national exposure, and recruiting pipelines in traditional strongholds like New York, New Jersey, and New England.

UConn athletic director David Benedict has been pretty clear about that commitment.

“We didn’t join the Big East to leave,” Benedict said. “They didn’t bring us in to leave, and we didn’t join to leave.”

That speaks volumes.

Regardless of what kind of basketball league the PAC could eventually become, it is still a league built around football-playing athletic departments. Those football programs eat up revenue share, assets, time, money, management attention, and institutional focus.

The Big East is the opposite.

Yes, you can point to Villanova or Butler’s non-scholarship football programs. You can mention that St. John’s or DePaul doesn’t have football at all. But that is exactly the point. Those schools are not trying to fund Boise State football, San Diego State football, Texas State football, or Utah State football.

The Big East is not asking UConn to share the room with football.

That is a pretty strong sales pitch.

Now, could UConn schedule Pac-12 schools in men’s basketball as part of a broader football scheduling deal?

Absolutely.

But UConn does not necessarily need that either.

The Huskies are competing for national championships. They already understand the game within the game, which is the NET. They already get the needed Quad 1 opportunities in conference play. The Big East had an average NET of 66 and 11 teams in the top 101.

That is more than enough to build a national schedule.

UConn also already has a clean non-conference scheduling model. I’ll leave it there, but the Huskies have not been afraid to challenge themselves. Historically, UConn has been an outlier in non-conference scheduling. Yes, the Huskies will mix in a few buy games. Everybody does. But this is not a cakewalk. Last year, they went against preseason top-10 BYU, Arizona, and Texas, along with then-No. 13 Illinois and a road game at Kansas. The Huskies also had a Jimmy V Classic matchup against Florida.

Compare that with many other power programs or blue bloods, and UConn’s schedule is going to sit near the top in terms of competition. Even with that, UConn does pay for home game guarantees. Just eyeballing recent schedules, the average for those home games appears to be around $120,000.

So again, would a PAC basketball scheduling piece be interesting?

Sure.

Would UConn need it?

Not really.

That is the central issue with this entire conversation.

From a football-only lens, you can make the case. UConn’s football budget is in the range of the future PAC. The school has a much larger overall athletic department budget than the average future Pac-12 member. It has a national brand. It has television value. It has name recognition.

There is a reason people keep circling back to Storrs. This is not just a random dart thrown at the expansion board.

But once you step outside of football, the argument gets much harder.

UConn already got what it wanted by returning to the Big East. It restored its basketball identity. It reconnected with its historic rivals. It put its best assets into a league designed to maximize them.

A full PAC move would put UConn back into a football-first ecosystem, even if the football piece was the reason for the conversation in the first place.

That does not mean it cannot happen.

College athletics has taught us not to say never. Geography is optional. Tradition is negotiable. Rivalries are apparently transferable assets. Common sense often gets left at the gate without a boarding pass.

So yes, UConn football to the Pac-12 could happen.

But the data and the quotes tell a more complicated story.