On the surface, it would seem as if UConn should be a sought after program in the high stakes conference movement game. Yet, Syracuse and Pittsburgh are the Big East programs who were the ones who got out while the getting was good and have been accepted as members of the Atlantic Coast Conference.

Now UConn is in a state a limbo. There have been reports that new UConn president Susan Herbst is actively pursuing an invitation to be the next school to jump from the Big East to the Atlantic Coast Conference. My take on that is "I certainly hope so."

For all of UConn's basketball accomplishments and those accomplishments are quite extraordinary, the conference shakeups are all about football and have been for quite some time. There are those inside the Big East who could foresee the problems facing the conference with so many programs who aren't BCS football schools long before teams started leaving the conference for greener pastures. Now the remaining BCS football programs remaining in the Big East are in danger of being on the outside looking in.

Could the Big East try to get other programs to join like it did with TCU to keep the Big East a viable BCS football conference? Sure. But what guarantees that a West Virginia, Louisville, Rutgers, Cincinnati or South Florida is not the next school to see the writing on the wall and abandon ship? Sorry to say it, but the Big East seems destined to become what it was founded to be - a basketball-first conference. Even before the news that Syracuse and Pitt are leaving, there were calls that the Big East not be granted an automatic berth in a BCS bowl game. I'm not sure the conference has the ability to pull in a big-time football program to replenish the football portion of the conference and will be left trying to entice the Central Floridas and East Carolinas of the world or perhaps even an Army and Navy if it intends to remain a BCS football conference.

I am certainly not a favor in seeing the geographic boundries being blurred all in the sake of conferences trying to pilfer enough teams to have a conference championship game in football. However, that is the way the college sports world is headed as there is big money in conference title games and if Herbst truly has the best interest of her university in mind, she needs to make sure the Huskies remain in a place of prominence in the world of big-time college athletics.

This is probably the worst time for UConn to have a brand new president and interim athletic director but it will certainly be an early test in Herbst's tenure at Connecticut.

Stay tuned.