Commissioner Mike Aresco kicked off the second day of the 2023 American Athletic Conference Media Days Tuesday, July 25, at Live! by Loews in Arlington, Texas.
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Good morning and a warm welcome to all. We are pleased that you have joined us today at this state-of-the-art venue to celebrate our reinvented conference and to look ahead to an exciting football season. We are proud of the student-athletes and coaches who will be representing us here today.
The DFW area and the state of Texas have become an important part of the fabric of our conference. We now have two outstanding institutions - SMU and North Texas - located near our headquarters. Our men’s and women’s basketball championships are held annually at Dickies Arena in Fort Worth. And we are proud to share a home and a region with many of our key bowl partners. I would like to extend a special thanks to Rick Baker and his staff with the Goodyear Cotton Bowl and Sean Johnson and his team from the Frisco Bowl. And I would like to welcome Alan Gooch from the Cure Bowl and Missy Setters from the Radiance Technologies Independence Bowl for their support and partnership.
I also want to recognize some individuals who have been instrumental to our conference’s success. Mike Fitts, the president of Tulane University, recently completed his term as our Board Chair, and no one has made a bigger contribution to the conference. Mike has enthusiastically supported our important initiatives and his wise counsel has guided my approach to the issues we face. I also hope Mike is still basking in the historic success of the 2022 Tulane football team. More on that success later. I also want to recognize Philip Rogers, Chancellor of East Carolina University, who has succeeded Mike as our Chair. Philip is committed to the success of this conference and will do a great job as Chair and also as our member of the NCAA Division I Board of Directors. I want to thank Rick Hart for his outstanding ongoing service as our Athletic Director Chair. We are also fortunate to have Jaime Hixon as our Associate Commissioner for Football. No one does a better job. Jaime has earned the respect and trust of everyone in this room. I would be remiss if I did not thank Chuck Sullivan and LeslieAnne Wade for their excellent work in organizing our football media days. My executive assistant, Mykel Read, has also contributed significantly to the effort.
There are four individuals whom I would like to recognize posthumously. The first is Jeff Charles, the long-time ECU “Voice of Pirates,” who called East Carolina football, men’s basketball and other sports in radio and television for three decades. Another is the longtime Dallas Morning News football correspondent, Chuck Carlton. Legendary coach Mike Leach, a unique and brilliant voice who changed the face of college football. Lew Perkins, who passed away last week, was a highly successful Athletic Director at Wichita State, Maryland, UConn and Kansas.
Bill Hancock recently announced his retirement year, and we wish him well. He has done a magnificent job with the College Football Playoff and we are all in his debt.
I also want to give a well-deserved shout-out to Tulane Athletic Director Troy Dannen, who has ably served on the NCAA’s Constitution and Transformation Committees as well as representing our conference on the Football Oversight Committee, in addition to chairing our conferences Strategic Planning Committee. I don’t know how Troy gets any sleep. Kudos to him!
I want to thank ESPN for all they have done for us and have meant to us. President Jimmy Pitaro and Executive Vice President Burke Magnus are outstanding and visionary executives who have been staunch supporters of our conference. Nick Dawson and his team do a great job day-to-day working with our conference staff to maximize our TV and online opportunities. ESPN played a pivotal role in the success of our first decade and will do so in our second decade.
I am also pleased today to applaud the recent announcement of our officiating partnership with the Big 12 conference, which will deepen our pool of top-flight officials and enhance their training. Our own Bryan Platt will continue to oversee our officiating, and we look forward to working with Big 12 Football Officiating Coordinator Greg Burks.
Thanks go to Big 12 Commissioner Brett Yormark, who has become a good friend and who has been a dynamic leader for the Big 12 Conference, and also to our former Associate Commissioner for Football, Scott Draper, who now has that role in the Big 12. We enjoy a strong bond with Scott, who did a great job for us, for many years.
We call today our Football Media Day for a reason, and I would like to welcome our media friends including Steve Richardson, Executive Director of the Football Writers Association of America. Steve and the FWAA are strong advocates on behalf of the media, but they also recognize those schools who provide great service to media - and I am pleased to recognize Scott Strasemeier and Stacie Michaud of Navy, and Ted Feeley and his staff at UAB, who were honored with the FWAA Super 11 award last season. Congratulations to all.
I want to take this opportunity to congratulate Tulane on its historic season, its AAC Championship, its stirring, virtually unprecedented come-from-behind victory over eighth-ranked USC in the Cotton Bowl and its ninth-ranked finish in the polls.
There are a lot of challenges in college sports these days, and some unpleasant issues we have to deal with, but Tulane’s story – the special season, the greatest one-season turnaround in NCAA history, defeating all three teams which left for the Big 12, defeating Big 12 champion Kansas State on the road, the Cotton Bowl – makes it all worthwhile. Just to stand on that podium and see the looks on the faces of the players and coaches – a supreme moment. Willie Fritz has done a superb job at Tulane, and I applaud his hard-earned success. We have had many memorable moments in this league, big wins in big bowl games on the biggest stages, a playoff team, to boot; but that victory was among the best.
We have two head coaches in our ranks who won conference championships last season. Congratulations to Willie Fritz and the Tulane Green Wave, who orchestrated the greatest one-year turnaround in college football history to win the American Athletic Conference Championship before going on to beat USC next door in the Goodyear Cotton Bowl Classic.
And congratulations also to Jeff Traylor and the UTSA Roadrunners, who come into The American as the winners of back-to-back conference championships.
I would also like to acknowledge the seven head coaches who are beginning their tenures with their new teams this season: Trent Dilfer at UAB, Biff Poggi at Charlotte, Tom Herman at Florida Atlantic, Brian Newberry at Navy, Eric Morris at North Texas, Alex Golesh at South Florida and Kevin Wilson at Tulsa. They join an outstanding incumbent group to form a contingent of coaches that I would compare favorably with any conference.
The expanding College Football Playoff set to debut in 2024 creates a long-overdue opportunity for our conference. Had the 12-team 6-6 playoff model existed from 2013 onward, we would have been in it eight times in ten years.
And make no mistake, the significant accomplishments of our teams, The American being a force and constantly knocking on the playoff door and finally making it in 2021, all of which could not be ignored, helped lead to the 6-6 model whereby the top six ranked conference champions earn automatic playoff spots, not simply the so-called P5 conferences and not five plus one either. I want to recognize and thank SMU President Gerald Turner for his steadfast support for the 6-6 model. His eloquent lobbying with the management councils of the CFP definitely made a difference.
We are thrilled to be welcoming six new member schools, but I also want to recognize our departed schools – Cincinnati, Houston and UCF – who did so much to help build our brand and who were committed to what this conference was trying to achieve. Realignment is the elephant in the room, as it has been for decades, and although it is a tough and unforgiving business, it can be managed in a civil and respectful way. The three departing schools leave as friends, and we will root for their success in their new conference except, of course, when we compete against them!
Further realignment and consolidation may occur, but whatever happens, whether there is a media driven P2, or P3, or P4 or P5, we will consider ourselves part of that group, not because of a manufactured label that is viewed as written in stone, but because we earned it on the field and court.
Today represents a new beginning for our distinguished conference as we welcome six outstanding new schools to our football media day. UAB, the University of North Carolina Charlotte, Florida Atlantic University, the University of North Texas, Rice University, and UTSA. These schools will bring energy and excitement to the conference and, together with our eight outstanding incumbent schools, will form a formidable 14-team conference. They bring excellent football programs, accomplished student-athletes and coaches, and talented and dedicated administrators and staff.
We also celebrate today our decade of remarkable success. Eight out of ten years playing in the New Year’s Six, including four wins (and close to a fifth) over top ten teams, and including a playoff team in Cincinnati that no one thought possible. 63 wins over P5 teams, six top ten teams, major national award winners.
I would remind everyone who follows college football what this conference has accomplished. It is hard to understand how some in the media have continued to call us a non-power or mid-major conference. Nothing could be further from the truth. Has anyone forgotten the big New Year’s Day wins over top-5 and top-10 teams Baylor in 2013, UCF defeating the Big 12 championship, Houston over Florida State in 2015. over UCF over Auburn in 2017? Tulane over USC in 2022, with close calls against Georgia in 2020, Penn State in 2019 and LSU in 2018. Has anyone forgotten that we produced a playoff team in Cincinnati in 2021 and had several other teams worthy of a playoff spot? Has anyone forgotten the convincing Memphis win over an Ole Miss team in 2015 that had just defeated mighty Alabama or a UCLA team in 2017 that had just defeated Texas A&M? Or the Temple win over Penn State and the epic late loss to No. 9 Notre Dame in 2015? Or the many wins over P5 teams? Our schools have hosted four ESPN College Gamedays. Our players have won numerous national awards such as the Outland, Trophy, and the Nagurski Award and Bednarik Awards, among others. Mid-major simply do not do that, and to call such powerful performances non-power is utterly silly. Major media outlets have recognized our success. Sports Business Journal in 2016 nominated us as Sports League of the Year and Sports Illustrated nominated us as one of the best football stories of the decade.
This conference will continue to achieve at the highest level. We will continue to upset the P5 narrative, we will continue, as an ESPN announcer said, to provide rocket fuel to our members. We will continue, as a P5 Commissioner mentioned to me, will our conference to greatness. All credit goes to our gritty teams and outstanding coaches and administrators, who day after day put in their sweat equity, displayed their fearless determination, and against all odds, took down the best of the best. I did not play a down, but I am proud to give voice to these brilliant accomplishments and will continue to do so.
This conference has always challenged itself. It has been and is a power conference. Our teams are playing the best of the best in nonconference - Alabama, Notre Dame, Georgia, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Michigan, Washington, Ole Miss, Clemson, Texas - the list goes on.
We are a battle-hardened, resolute group. We refuse to embrace a stereotype that our achievements have clearly put a lie to. College football comprises a big tent and upward mobility should be applauded, not ignored or denigrated. Money is important, but competitive success is more important. If money were the only determinant of power or elite status, then why play the games?
As you know, I am pushing for the abolition of the Power 5 nomenclature, as it is manufactured and is inaccurate in the world of an expanded playoff, realignment and media rights. We hear a lot about student-athlete health and well-being, we should not tolerate a caste system This is flat-out wrong and I call on the media and the P5 to support doing away with it. There are 10 FBS conferences and any division at five is unhealthy.
The American has been and is a Power conference, we have separated from the other so-called Group of Five conferences, our conference branding will continue to embrace the word POWER. Out DNA aligns with the so-called Power 5, and not the group of 5.
A related but important initiative will be our continued campaign to be recognized as an autonomy conference. I know this is inside baseball to most fans and observers, but we belong with the five conferences granted a measure of autonomy in passing NCAA legislation. We have earned that designation. Back in 2021, we sent a long, well-reasoned brief to the A5 presidential chairs making the case for autonomy inclusion, but realignment in the summer of 2021 intervened and disrupted our efforts. Our conference is now back to strength, we will be stronger than ever, and we will be aggressive in making our case for autonomy status if that status even continues in the NCAA transformation era.
Today is about our future. There are new names and collegiate sports brands joining our membership. These schools, along with our long-standing members, own a competitive DNA, specific and proven in the American. Our American Athletic Conference DNA is marked by Do Not Accept, Do Not Allow, Do Not Acquiesce to the manufactured labels and media mantras currently dividing college sports.
The next undefeated UCF teams, the next CFP Cincinnati team, the next several top-20 and top-10 nationally ranked football teams are represented here today, along with the Cotton Bowl Champions from Tulane. The DNA, of this conference is our desire proven ability to compete and win at the highest level.
We are not one team or one story. We are a new and winning national story each year. We are here to compete at the highest level each year. We are every bit a power conference. Our cities are power cities; we have coveted media markets. Our student-athletes are power players, our coaches are power coaches, proven names and champions. Our partnering media platforms are power platforms.
The P5-G5 divide was manufactured. With questions still looming in a destabilized landscape, it is increasingly clear that there is more distance between the second and third conference in college athletics than between the third and the American.
Before closing, I would like to address some of the important macro issues facing our conference and college sports. I admire NCAA President Charlie Baker, I applaud his commitment to student-athletes, and respect what he is trying to accomplish with Congress with respect to NIL and other key issues.
We have to acknowledge the difficulty of getting any NIL legislation passed by Congress. However, what I believe is more important at the moment is getting federal legislation or a court decision that prohibits states from negating NCAA rules and protocols. We now have a patchwork of state laws, some of which seek to deprive the NCAA of its authority or enforcement power. College sports is a national endeavor, a national enterprise, and requires uniform rules, protocols and penalties. Otherwise, you have chaos, and that is what we are approaching now with some of these state laws. The situation is fast becoming ridiculous. This is not a revelation. It is easy to see the slippery slope here. If the NCAA is denied broad authority on legitimate and necessary rule-making and enforcement, what is to stop a state from allowing 200 football scholarships for schools in its jurisdiction, from allowing 100 coaches, from allowing complete pay to play, from changing the recruiting calendar – the list is endless. Do states dictate to the NFL the size of their taxi squads, or their commissioner’s ability to enforce NFL rules?
As for NIL, the larger issue is maintaining the NCAA’s ability to set guidelines around it. NIL is often disguised as pay to play or pay to recruit or pay to retain. The joke now is that the acronym stands for “Now It’s Legal.” But unfortunately, this is no joke. It was entirely predictable. The collectives are sometimes a clever way to facilitate paying for players. This is not NIL. The states are looking to provide recruiting advantages for their schools and some are brazenly defying the NCAA by legislating noncompliance to NCAA rules that may thwart illegal NIL schemes.
We all should care about the integrity of the process, but I realize that it is hard to put the genie back in the bottle.
The battle we need to fight now is for national rule-making through the NCAA, which would also encompass NIL. We need simple, easy-to-understand rules for NIL. We can permit all forms of NIL monetization for our student-athletes, and there are a wide variety, but we should target obvious recruiting abuses – money paid without a real NIL quid pro quo – with significant penalties for violation by schools and donors. We believe in student-athletes rights to NIL, but now we have to do the best we can to get a handle on it, conform it to true NIL. We cannot roll back the ocean. Doing away with the year in residency requirement for first-time transfers, together with NIL, has created a perfect storm. The year in residency caused student-athletes to think harder about whether they wanted to transfer, prevented a portal with hundreds of potential transfers with no place to land, created roster stability. Although there were reasons for abolishing the requirement, immediate freedom of movement, among the most important, but is the unfettered free agency, tampering, roster instability and other fallout that resulted worth it?
We are looking to Congress for answers to NIL and other questions, but I believe we need to be very careful with that approach. The current Blumenthal-Booker-Moran draft bill concerns me. Any such bill should be subject to great scrutiny. The establishment of a third party governing body overseeing college sports concerns me. WE should be controlling our affairs. Yes, we need some federal legislative or court protection, but WE need the ability to execute whatever reasonable plan that WE adopt.
In closing, there are a few overarching issues that will determine what college sports is going to look like over the next decades. One is the ability, as I said, for the NCAA to establish and enforce uniform rules. Another is the question of employee status for student-athletes, which we all oppose, of pure pay to play, of the professionalization of college sports, especially football and basketball. We are almost there now. The big money era is here and likely will get worse before it either settles down or accelerates to another arms race. An NFL-like college landscape spawns many wrong incentives for young people – money over choosing a school or coach they really like, money over staying at a school or with a coach they really like, money over trying to get a good education. And often money that is not life-changing. One could argue that this is not a good thing. Will fans eventually revolt? Hard to say, we all like watching sports.
We need to keep education in our mix and continue to emphasize it. The government, the courts and the media seem to think that education does not much mater in this new world and that referencing it is rather quaint and outdated. But we are universities playing sports, and sponsoring teams, not club sports loosely attached to a university. Let us not forget that the biggest win a college athlete can achieve is earning a diploma on graduation day.
Other student-athlete issues are becoming more acute. Gambling is a major issue on the horizon, it potentially strikes at the heart of on-the-level play that is integral to any sports competition. As the stakes get higher, we need to be more vigilant than ever and make sure we educate our student-athletes, coaches and administrators to the dangers. Student-athletes' mental health and well-being is also a major issue, a major focus of our academic consortium, and is now getting the attention it deserves nationally. A big-money, NIL-driven world has the potential to exacerbate mental health issues. Combine that with often vicious social media and you have a perfect storm affecting our student-athletes.
Attention to these issues is critical to our mission. And what in the end is our mission? At its core, it is providing a great, safe and memorable experience for our student-athletes. Providing them with outstanding competition that permits them to be in the arena, battling, learning life lessons. College sports is part of our national cultural fabric, it is important to millions of us, if done right it is one of our greatest joys. It binds campuses and communities together and galvanizes them. Our student-athletes want to compete. They and we love college sports. A new age is dawning, and we must shape it to our better instincts. Our conference has provided opportunity at the highest level, the fruits of our success are all around, and we will navigate the shoals ahead. We will remain an important force in the governance of college sports, while also competing successfully as we have in the prior terrific decade of this conference.
Today is a day to focus on our teams, their hopes and dreams for this season. I wish you all much success in the upcoming season and in the academic year ahead.