The American just raided the USA, from a college sports perspective.
On Thursday, the American Athletic Conference officially announced the addition of six new schools, all of which come from Conference USA, in what was the latest development in college sports realignment.
Texas schools Rice, UNT and UTSA, along with Alabama-Birmingham, Charlotte, and Florida Atlantic, will now join SMU in what expects to be a 14-team conference as soon as 2023. The moves come in response to the loss of Cincinnati, Central Florida, and Houston to the Big 12.
In a statement, AAC Commissioner Mike Aresco called the move a “strategic expansion that accomplishes a number of goals as we take the conference into its second decade.”
“We are adding excellent institutions that are established in major cities and have invested in competing at the highest level. We have enhanced geographical concentration which will especially help the conference’s men’s and women’s basketball and Olympic sports teams,” Aresco wrote.
“And we will continue to provide valuable inventory to our major media rights partner, ESPN, which will feature our members on the most prominent platforms in sports media. Additionally, we increase the value in live content options for CBS Sports, which features selected men’s basketball games on CBS Sports.”
The AAC will now include 15 schools, but only 14 teams in each sport because Navy only plays football in the conference, and Wichita State only plays basketball and Olympic sports.
Conference USA is now left with eight teams, including UTEP, but multiple media reports suggest other conferences could try and add some of Conference USA’s remaining members in what appears to be the next domino of realignment.
Realignment has proven to be the arms race that never truly finishes, but Thursday’s expansion offers some initial closure to what’s been an interesting journey for the AAC.
Nearly three months ago, just before Texas and Oklahoma officially left for the Southeastern Conference, Big 12 commissioner Bow Bowlsby sent a cease-and-desist letter to ESPN accusing the network of conspiring with another conference to take 3-5 remaining members of the Big 12. The unnamed conference in the accusation was reportedly the AAC.
It made sense. Since the AAC’s inception it has strived to break its Group of Five moniker and be one of the “Power Six” conferences in college athletics. The Big 12, at the time, appeared to be vulnerable.
Ultimately, instead of the American taking members of the Big 12, the opposite happened. The Big 12 added three AAC schools, in addition to BYU.
That turned the realignment attention to the Group of Five. It appeared the AAC was going to cast a wide net for potential replacements, but among them – according to multiple reports – were four schools from the Mountain West Conference: Air Force, Boise State, Colorado State and San Diego State. All four schools eventually announced their intention to stay in the MWC. Aresco, in a statement earlier this month, said the AAC hadn’t offered invites to its conference to any school at that time.
On Thursday it officially did. And when 2023 rolls along, the AAC is set to look a lot different.
This is a developing story. More to come.
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