Ohio billionaire Larry Connor is planning to take a trip to visit the Titanic in a submarine. It could crater the University of Dayton basketball program if it goes as poorly as the doomed OceanGate submersible that imploded last year.
The head of Connor Group, a real estate investment firm in the Buckeye State, insists that the industry is safer now than it was a year ago but only time will tell.
Connor co-founded Triton Submarines with Patrick Lahey. They will plunge more than 12,400 feet to visit the shipwreck in a two-person, $20 million vessel dubbed the Triton 4000/2 Abyssal Explorer. Their goal is to prove that the trek can be done successfully, without disaster, despite what happened with the Titan sub back in June.
I want to show people worldwide that while the ocean is extremely powerful, it can be wonderful and enjoyable and really kind of life-changing if you go about it the right way.
— Larry Connor, via the Wall Street Journal
Lahey is apparently the brains of the operation. This submarine is his brainchild.
Patrick has been thinking about and designing this for over a decade. But we didn’t have the materials and technology. You couldn’t have built this sub five years ago.
— Larry Connor, via the Wall Street Journal
Neither Connor nor Lahey have said when the voyage took place. However, the process was expedited in the wake of last year’s Titanic incident.
[Larry said], you know, what we need to do is build a sup that can dive to [Titanic-level depths] repeatedly and safely and demonstrate to the world that you guys can do that, and that Titan was a contraption.
— Patrick Lahey, via the Wall Street Journal
This new submarine could change oceanic tourism forever. But what does it have to do with Dayton basketball?
Larry Connor is a huge booster.
Although Connor graduated from Ohio University, he resides in Dayton today and has become a big financial backer for the university. Especially in athletics.
The 74-year-old often sits courtside with his dad at basketball games. He spearheaded a new sports arena for the school back in 2017. His money has also been a crucial piece of the NIL equation.
College athletics cannot succeed without a financial foundation. However, that is more true today than ever before in the era of Name, Image and Likeness. Teams that have more money to pay athletes through NIL deals can recruit and retain better talent. Better talent obviously leads to a better chance of winning.
Connor has been a big donor to Dayton’s NIL operations.
God forbid this Titanic venture go poorly, the money might immediately dry up. That could legitimately crater the Flyers’ basketball program overnight.
On the flip side of things, if Connor and Lahey’s submarine revolutionizes the industry, they would be even more rich than they already are. Dayton could be a beneficiary of that success. Connor may want to spend his money now and get his favorite team to a point where it can compete for a national championship before it’s too late.
Although this might be drawing some false conclusions and completely overreacting. Hopefully, for everybody’s sake, it is a non-issue. However, you would be wrong if you think that the people in and around Dayton aren’t thinking about the possibility of a worst-case scenario.
Good luck, Larry Connor!