Editor's Note: Dick Weiss, a member of the U.S. Basketball Writers Association Hall of Fame, has covered college sports in Philadelphia and New York for more than 40 years. He will be providing regular commentary for the American Athletic Conference during the 2014-15 season.
NEWPORT, R.I.-- Mike Aresco is tired of hearing the American Athletic Conference is no longer a power league in college sports. And the league's third-year commissioner is not afraid to voice his opinion on a sensitive subject.
Aresco was at his best Tuesday during a passionate, 25-minute state-of-the-conference speech at The American's preseason football media day, hammering home the point that the league had exceeded everyone's expectations -- except maybe his own -- in its first full year of operation.
UCF defeated Big 12 champion Baylor in the BCS Fiesta Bowl and UConn’s men's and women's basketball teams touched the stars again by winning NCAA titles. SMU was the runner-up in the NIT. The league also had a team win the women's NIT and another participate in the College World Series. All told, 21 of The American's men's and women's teams produced a combined 34 NCAA postseason bids and the league had top-10 finishes in football, men's and women's basketball, men's soccer, baseball and men's golf.
This hardly sounds like a decimated league floundering in the wilderness.
Aresco said what his ADs, coaches and players wanted -- and needed-- to hear. The American is not about to let anyone else define what it is. The league wants to create its own narrative.
"How do you spell power?'' Aresco asked. "What does power mean in today's collegiate landscape? What should it mean?
"We are speaking of power here when you do as well as we have done. As I look at our journey, I'm reminded of something St. Francis of Assisi said, 'You should start by doing what is necessary, then doing what is possible, then suddenly you are doing the impossible.’
"We put our heads down, tuned out the distractions, laid the foundation and began competing, and we pretty much did the impossible - an emphatic victory in the Fiesta Bowl when few people gave our champion a chance, upset win after win in the NCAA tournament for the UConn men, beating teams like Michigan State, Florida and Kentucky. The exception of course, is the UConn women. They do the impossible routinely.''
In the past year, the SEC, the ACC, the Pac-12, the Big Ten and the Big 12 have campaigned hard for more autonomy in governance. In a year where there will be a four-team national playoff in college football, with teams chosen by a 13-member selection committee and the semifinals being held at the Sugar and Rose bowls, those five conferences have aligned themselves as anchor teams with the Sugar Bowl, Rose Bowl and Orange Bowl. The fact that some of the power conferences will not even schedule teams outside the inner circle during the regular season makes it more difficult to provide persuasive statistical data for the selection committee.
But The American, to its credit, refuses to fade quietly into the sunset and its teams will challenge themselves by playing the most difficult nonleague football schedule of any conference in the country. The American champion, then, would have the opportunity to play as part of the New Year’s Day bowls, either in the Peach Bowl, Cotton Bowl or Fiesta Bowl, if it is the highest-ranked among the champions of the Mountain West, Conference USA, the MAC or the Sun Belt.
Aresco has had faith in what this league can accomplish ever since he took over as commissioner. He has every right to feel vindicated by what his teams accomplished. Based on the conference’s preseason media poll, The American has four competitive teams -- Cincinnati, UCF, Houston and East Carolina – which all deserve to be part of the conversation..
"We believed in the idea of this conference, what it could achieve,'' Aresco said. "We will be judged and measured by how we perform. We relish that. We don't flinch from that challenge.
"Houston and Tulane will open new, state-of-the-art, on-campus stadiums next month, bringing the energy and passion of college football to their communities. Cincinnati is renovating Nippert Stadium, which will transform one of the most historic stadiums into a modern marvel of engineering. Other schools in our conference are considering new stadiums.
"We all hear a lot about the Power 5 conferences, the Equity 5, the High Resource 5, the Group of 5, the Autonomy 5, whatever you choose to call them, but we consider ourselves a power conference as well. We will not take a back seat to anyone. We see the landscape as five plus one and we are knocking on the door. Our goal is to be in the conversation as the sixth power conference. I believe by virtue of our performance that we already are.
"As I said, we are knocking on the door and we will eventually knock it down.
"We hear that the new NCAA governance system -- which allows autonomy, in limited areas, to the equity five conferences -- will cause us somehow to be left behind, that resources of those conferences are too great, that we will not be able to keep up and compete. I don't buy that for a minute.. When our schools won the Fiesta Bowl and the national basketball titles, reporters asked about power conference status and my response was, 'Look at those student-athletes on the podium. Tell those kids they are not power teams in a power conference. They just won the national championship. They just won a BCS bowl game.' This is America. We believe in upward mobility.''
To that end, Aresco plans to run ads in both USA Today and Sports Business Journal, highlighting the world "Power." He also said his conference supports NCAA health and safety initiatives and guidelines and reiterated on behalf of the presidents The American’s conference-wide commitment to funding student-athlete scholarships to the full cost of attendance.
"We have also heard the notion that the level playing field should be abandoned, that it is antiquated,'' Areso said. “I do not buy that and this attitude plays into the hands of those who litigate against us.
"None of us believes there can ever be a truly level playing field. We know life doesn't work that way. Schools have profoundly different levels of resources, branding and fan support. But we have strived to make the playing field more level and we have done so. This has been a decades-long effort. It enhances competition for countless schools. Our efforts in this area over many years have had an impact. We have seen programs emerge. We have seen stunning upsets. It is all part of the wonderful tapestry of college athletics.
"You have to compete. You don't simply win by showing up, by being favored. Remember UCF in the Fiesta Bowl. The impact and glow and memories of those upsets endure, often for lifetimes, and extend well beyond the fields and courts."
Mike Aresco has certainly put himself out there for this conference. Now, it's time for The American to back him up.