Category: American Athletic Conference

American Athletic Conference in 2014…and beyond…

On By slhnavy91In American Athletic Conference, bowls, conference talk, navy football2 Comments

Anyone else holding his breath when Brigham Young head football coach Bronco Mendenhall made a blatant pitch for Big 12 membership? Fortunately, we didn’t have to hold our breath long before Big12 athletic directors firmly stated that the Big12 was not interested in expansion. Navy football fans are spared another white-knuckle offseason of conference re-alignment. For the moment, the college football landscape will remain unchanged.

That’s not to say that the current conference alignment and College Football Playoff will last forever. I won’t predict the exact shape or the timeline, but the five College Football Playoff conferences will likely grow richer and increase their separation from the Group of Five. Until then, the American can work toward success in the current picture.
American commissioner Mike Aresco appears to be committed to fighting for the top of the heap in the Group of Five. The American claims the reigning mens’ and womens’ basketball champions, both at Connecticut, but football remains the straw that stirs the drink. “We’re going to talk a lot about the position of our conference as we move forward because I think we can position ourselves as a power conference,” Aresco said. “I see no reason why we can’t.”

The American closed out the BCS era in style, with UCF beating Baylor in the Fiesta Bowl. In order to start the College Football Playoff era well, the 2014 American Athletic Conference champion needs to be ranked ahead of the other Group of Five champions to get the access bowl bid. The perception and money that comes with that can maintain momentum. A bid to the Fiesta/Chick-fil-A/Cotton Bowl for Cincinnati, UCF, Houston, or ECU will keep Navy and the American as well positioned as they can expect for the next upheaval in conference alignment.

Could Navy compete in the ACC?

On By MikeIn air farce, American Athletic Conference, army football, navy football12 Comments

One of the Mountain West’s biggest talking points through all the conference realignment turmoil has been their “stability.” That’s just spin, of course. All “stability” really means is that you don’t have anyone left in your conference that another league might want.

The American Athletic Conference doesn’t have that “stability,” which is both a blessing and a curse. It’s a blessing because it means that the conference still has some name-brand programs adding to its appeal. It’s a curse because, well…

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Let’s talk scheduling

On By MikeIn American Athletic Conference, army football, navy football6 Comments

There were several reasons for Navy’s planned move to the American Athletic Conference. One of the most significant was scheduling; it’s getting harder and harder to line up teams for the Mids to play. Critics of the move don’t buy it. They point to Army, who apparently has no problem filling schedules as an independent:

Despite the changing landscape of college football at the Division I level, Corrigan said Army isn’t having trouble filling its schedules.

“As you look who it is and who West Point is, people want to play us,” Corrigan said. “There’s no shortage of those teams that I mentioned or bigger schools that want to play West Point. We help fill stadiums. We have a role in college football and a place in college football.”

So who are these schools?

“Our goal is to play people that we look like, that have a similar-type mission that we do,” Corrigan said. “As you look at that, be it Rice, be it Tulane, be it Duke, be it Wake Forest, playing some of our more traditional rivals with a Colgate or an Ivy or other Patriot League teams mixed in there, it’s going very well. We are excited about that.”

A couple of things about that…

Boo Corrigan wants to play schools with similar academic standards. The reason he wants to play those schools is because in theory they’d be about as close to an even matchup as Army can get outside of the other service academies. In other words, he wants to win. Of course, that’s exactly why those schools want to play Army, too. If you’re Wake Forest and have an ACC schedule in front of you, winning your out-of-conference games is crucial to earning a bowl berth. I’m sure Corrigan’s phone is ringing off the hook with other athletic directors looking for a game. That’s what happens when you have one winning season in the last 15 years. The phone gets a lot quieter when you’ve been to 9 bowl games in 10 seasons. Rice, Tulane, and Wake Forest used to play Navy all the time. It’s no coincidence that they’re turning to Army now. We got a great reminder of that this week as Indiana’s coach and AD are basically carrying out a public argument over why Navy was even on the schedule in the first place. Don’t think that they’re the only ones having this conversation.

On top of that, what Corrigan says isn’t the whole truth. While I don’t doubt it when he says there are plenty of programs willing to play Army, that doesn’t mean that the pool isn’t shrinking. Rutgers has been a staple of Army schedules for decades, with the two having met 33 times in the last 50 years. The series is now in jeopardy, though, thanks to the Scarlet Knights joining the Big Ten. Conferences want more games against each other, and they especially want them in the second half of the season. Army might be able to shift games against Rutgers to earlier in the year in order to save the rivalry, but then they’ll just be left with the same problem for anyone else they want to schedule for the original date. Just look at their future schedules now. September and early October dates are filling up quite nicely. Later dates are already taking a bit more work to fill.

The problem is real, guys.

Knowing What Needs Fixing

On By MikeIn American Athletic Conference, navy football1 Comment

By now you might have seen this piece in the New York Post suggesting that the conferences outside the “power 5” host their own 16-team playoff:

So here’s a thought for the Group of Five — the MAC and the independents, the Sun Belt and Conference USA, the Mountain West and the American Athletic Conference: Toss out from your tent those high ‘dolers’ and create your own 16-team college football playoff.

March Madness is the greatest three-week ride in American sports. December Delirium might be pretty thrilling as well.

No, it wouldn’t be.

I’m sort of picking an easy fight here, because it’s an absurd idea that nobody in any position to make such a decision would ever consider. The answer to college football’s problems is not to create their own NIT. You think teams lose money on lower-tier bowl games? Imagine how much they’d lose going to four rounds of lower-tier bowl games. Nobody would watch, it’d be a money drain, and the winner would claim the title of… meh. It’s a non-starter.

Continue reading “Knowing What Needs Fixing” →