What Does the AAC's Next Leader Need to Prioritize? | College Underdogs | Ep. 82 

Trey your interview with Commissioner Aresco during AAC basketball media day was stellar . Hopefully more to come.

I’m curious if Oliver luck would be interested in running the AAC. I know his UAC venture hasn’t gone as he planned because CUSA just keeps poaching them. He would be the perfect guy to help rally fanbases and donor support based on his time in the Xfl from 2020. He also was a crucial consultant to help SMU make the ACC.

Hadn't thought about Gloria Nevarez, but 100% in agreement with you.

Liberty had a cupcake schedule and will get blown out by Oregon.

I just want a commisoner who will prioritize bringing in good proven programs and not basing everything off market size

Once Aresco saw all he had left was Usf and Charlotte he checked out.

Trey for AAC commissioner 🎉

You right Try for Commissionrr

Time to go all in on Air Force, Liberty, and Appalachian St all sports and VCU and Dayton bball only

There's not much for the Commissioner to do from an operational standpoint, its all strategy and revolves around TV and conference realignments. Probably makes sense to get an Aresco 2.0. We need that sports TV exec type to take on and keep the AAC up at the top of the G5. A lot of people don't know that we could have gotten more from ESPN if we had granted our rights to the conference ala ACC, and if we reduced the amount of national TV games that were guaranteed. I don't know if the current make up of the conference still supports that.

Trey, correction, Yormark did NOT bring in Houston, or Cincinnati for that matter. However, I do agree about the job Mike Aresco did. Without him, college football and the AAC would not look the same today. No other conference leader was capable of going head to head with King Sankey. (Well, except for Delaney of the B1G.) I don't think that the AAC needs a con man like Yormark, but I do think that it needs a fighter to defend its interests against King Sankey. Nevarez could be that person, I just don't know.

College Game Time, in your opinion with landscape changing. Do you think its possible that the AAC and Mountain West will merge into 1 big G5 Conference (Especially Having Air Force,Navy And Army) . Especially there talking about in the near future the Big 12 and ACC leftovers (After Florida State,Clemson, Miami,North Carolina Leave) mergering. Basically making a P3 Conference.

If AAC team has that cupcake schedule so they get the bid

It’s hard for me to care about Bowl Season after the Subdivision chatter. It’s just a different version of the NFL

Hardest working commissioner I've seen in the last 10 years

What kind of a replace Commissioner should the AAC hire needed its own reply. We have a 2034 media deal. This is solid work by Commissioner Aresco to secure the media front. He also closed Army as an add. This helps a lot also. The next Commissioner has a good starting position. The real question is what future path works best? Then comes the question what person can make this future a reality. Trey raised 1 nightmare future: a Conference split by All Sports and All Sports but football schools. This is dog won’t hunt for me. Why? Because the Catholic 7 were not happy with their 80%-20% split with was determined by ESPN viewership and their valuation. Even when Commissioner Arensco offered 75%-25% they would not stay. Therefore, this is not a good policy to add many non-Football schools. Having posted this, balance Football Only Army with a large enrollment, bigger market school line VCU is great idea. It would raise the quality of all Basketball games. Should the AAC go national, maybe become the The American National Conference? If the AAC want to go national, many MWC schools would work. The AAC has 14 schools for football. Adding SDSU, SJSU, UNLV, Boise State, Utah State, and Air Force gets you to 20 schools. Adding Georgia State gets you to 21. This size Conference plays no OOC games. Each Division plays 6 games, and 3+3 Conference games. The Division Champions and best record, then net points runner up is the Wild Card. The Semi Final is Championship Weekend and the Championship is the Saturday after the Army-Navy game. For M/WBB, Teams play 12 Division games, 4+4 Conference games, and up to 10 OOC games. The away Conference games are played on 2 travel weekends. The Conference Tournament would be the Top 8 schools by record and then net points. This type of Conference expansion might require a connected AAC Commissioner like Gloria Nevarez. This is not the only AAC option. The AAC could also become an eastern powerhouse Conference. For this type of Conference you need to add 4 bigger markets with larger enrollment schools. MAC schools Toledo and Buffalo would be good adds. Georgia State and Air Force would be the other adds. To promote this type of Conference, maybe Tennessee AD Danny White is a better fit. He could be leave no school behind promoter while also being forceful to get schools to spend more on Athletic Departments.

The AAC needs a new commish who can figure out how to get these schools not named Memphis and USF to get all their money in order. And the service academies where money isn’t an issue, it’s just finding a reason to spend it. And Memphis probably has the wrong head coach with how they let that defense decay. Literally all the others are struggling with facilities, NIL, or both. The new schools it’s mostly both. And until it’s fixed, the American will struggle to even keep up with the top of the sun belt, the new mountain west, and Liberty. Even USF, Memphis, UTSA types will struggle because the bottom of this conference is so bad and they don’t have the talent to be undefeated. Tulane will also struggle to maintain what fritz built.

He destroyed two conferences, The Big East and the American Conference. Good riddance. Headquartered in Rhode Island, good grief.