This is a smart move from UConn. They are a bball school and finally recognized it. Bball program was going down trying to chase football money. Good for them. Hopefully they will be relevant again.
I don’t think it will have a trickledown effect. Big East will be happy with 11 teams, 20 game schedule. AAC will find a much better football school that will contribute unlike UConn football.
There's always a trickle down effect with realignment though. Unless they grab a current independent as a football only member(Army, BYU, or UMass) there are going to be trickle down effects. The front runners I'm seeing mentioned most right now are:
Buffalo (MAC)
Old Dominion (CUSA)
UAB (CUSA)
Southern Miss (CUSA)
Each of these are being mentioned as all-sports additions and don't make sense otherwise. What that would do is open up a spot for a school in the conference that got raided as none of these conferences could keep their conference championship game in football without backfilling under current rules. If it's a CUSA school that goes to the American, it's basically a done deal that JMU would be the backfill addition. In that case JMU is out of CAA football and the conference is wide open once again.
If Buffalo gets the spot, there's speculation all over that we could be the school chosen to replace them in the MAC. Would the MAC do that? Who knows. I doubt they go for Umass after last time. I speculate that Marshall would leave CUSA for the MAC if invited, but that's just my opinion. Illinois State would also get a look. In any case, I expect Shawn's phone to be ringing profusely over the coming days and weeks as we're certainly on the radar of several of these conferences.
Another interesting twist in all of this is what if Uconn isn't the only school the Big East adds? St. Louis and/or Dayton have been rumored to the Big East for a while. VCU could go to the AAC too. If they all leave the A10, it's not out of the question that we get a look to plug a hole there (Vermont, Albany, and others would get looks too). That wouldn't get us to FBS, but it would certainly get us out of the AE which would be a welcome change. This conference gets no respect.
No matter how this breaks, expect ALOT of conference movement being announced over the coming weeks as schools sort this stuff out. I'd be frankly shocked if this doesn't impact SBU in some way shape or form.