by Dick Weiss
NEWPORT, R.I. — The American Athletic Conference has always had the best media day setting in college football. It’s hard to beat this locale, located on the scenic New England coast, for its beautiful sunsets.
But The American wants to be known for more than its hospitality or famous lobster bake.
The league has started a campaign designed to cut the perception gap between this all-sports conference and the more-entrenched group of the SEC, Big 12, ACC, Pac-12 and Big Ten, giving it a chance to have a bigger voice in the national championship discussions.
There were P6 flags flying everywhere at the Gurney’s Newport resort on Goat Island, as well as “American Pow6r” banners. The American’s innovative commissioner Mike Aresco even had a P6 pin on the lapel of his sports jacket as he advocated more of an equal playing ground in football for his league, which he feels is competitive with the conferences that have guaranteed spots in the New Year’s Six games.
The American’s bold strategy includes scheduling the “top teams’ in the country, an average attendance of 70-80 percent stadium capacity, a college football playoff contender, one top-10 team, a New Year’s Six bowl game, two-to-four top-25 teams and TV ratings equivalent to autonomous conferences.
“We started talking about it a couple years ago,’’ Aresco said. “What about Power 6? We thought we had accomplished enough we could make this a Power 6. We said, ‘Let’s be bold.’ If we don’t proclaim ourselves a P6, nobody else is going to. The media isn’t going to pick up on it and perception can become reality.
“I do it because we have a foundation. I can do it because of what we’ve achieved and what our schools are. They’re in big markets. They have attendance. They have a pedigree. People know who they are. Now, we have to keep winning. You don’t have to win them all, but you have to win your share.”
The American has already had two defining moments in New Year’s Bowls. In 2014, UCF outscored Big 12 champion Baylor, 52-42, in the Feista Bowl. Then, two years ago, Houston blew out perennial ACC power Florida State, 38-14, in the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl.
The American has also had 19 wins against other Power 6 schools or Notre Dame in the last two years. There have been 32 games with television viewership of 1 million or more in the past two years, and the league had a record 15 players selected in the 2017 NFL Draft, fifth among FBS conferences. It has become a cradle for rising stars in the coaching profession.
The landscape of college athletics is changing and The American, which has only been a league for four years, is benefiting from it.
“We couldn’t have done this 30 years ago,’’ Aresco said. “Some of our schools could have pockets of success, win a big game here and there. Memphis beat USC in 1989, beat Tennessee in 1996. Temple had a few good years in the Wayne Hardin era, but it wasn’t sustainable. Scholarship limits were huge. But the world has changed. It’s a bigger country. We wouldn’t have been able to get exposure in the old days. But now with all the platforms you have - ESPN, CBS, ABC, ESPN2 - and games on Thursdays and Fridays, our brand is out there. There are fans out there.”