AAC members focus on the near while glancing afar

KEY BISCAYNE, Fla. — There is nothing dramatic about the agenda for this year’s American Athletics Conference meetings; mostly the standard sampling of budget talk, scheduling models and NCAA minutiae. The most significant thing that will emerge from the league gathering is formalizing a long-term, strategic plan for the league that commissioner Mike Aresco said is “going to be bold.”

The irony, of course, is that any talk about the AAC’s future at this five-star resort in South Florida is clouded by simultaneous discussions this week at the Big 12 offices in Dallas.

If the Big 12 expands — and it’s still unclear to everyone, even the Big 12 itself, whether it will actually happen — it seems likely to impact the AAC in some way.

UConn and Cincinnati? Memphis and Houston? South Florida and Central Florida? All of them have been mentioned as candidates and could make sense for the Big 12 under certain circumstances. All of them have made moves recently, both subtle and overt, designed to catch the Big 12’s attention.

Which makes for an interesting week here, as representatives of those schools including presidents and athletics directors try to focus on the future of the conference they’re currently in while theoretically clawing over each other to get out.

“Everybody’s aspirational, just like the conference is aspirational,” South Florida athletics director Mark Harlan said. “We’re also very committed to making sure we’re really focusing on this conference being great. There’s certainly tensions in that. It is strange they’re meeting at the same time.”

The AAC knows plenty about the upheaval and uncertainty of realignment. This league was, in fact, born out of it when the Big East’s basketball schools broke away in 2013 and left a hodgepodge of schools with very little common history or geographic continuity.

It could have fallen apart completely. Instead, it regrouped, reformed and established instant credibility by winning at a fairly significant level in football and men’s basketball.

The AAC isn’t in the “Power Five,” but it has been a relative success story. In everything from what schools pay their football coaches, to number of Power Five opponents they’ve beaten to NCAA tournament bids (and UConn championships) in basketball, the AAC has separated itself from the Mountain West, Conference USA, the Sun Belt and the Mid-American Conference. A “Power Five and a Half,” if you will.

“No one denied we were in a lot of turmoil three years ago,” commissioner Mike Aresco said, “but look what we’ve done.”

The problem is, the league’s long-term stability remains at the mercy of a huge financial gap with the Power Five and the lingering issue of whether the Big 12 will expand. And until the latter is resolved, it’s always going to hang over any gathering of AAC officials.

“I think everybody in this room, we can’t control anything that’s going on in Dallas,” Houston athletics director Hunter Yurachek said. “What we can control is what goes on here and what comes out of this room, and we’re in the middle of working on our strategic plan. There’s not any mention in our strategic plan about new members, losing members or anything. It’s about forging ahead with the 12 members we have in football trying to make ourselves into the Power 6.”

Aresco said he does not talk with Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby about the league’s ever-evolving attitude on expansion, nor does he plan on discussing contingencies this week should one or two schools leave the conference.

There’s just too much uncertainty right now about whether the Big 12 will even add teams, much less who or when, to start worrying about it. Plus, Aresco said, the AAC is in a strong enough position now that it won’t have to make any quick moves — or, perhaps, any move at all — in response to potential losses.

“It’s almost like a studied indifference in the sense that we have an expansion database,” Aresco said. “We’ve always had it. You kind of know what’s out there should the situation arise, so consequently if something happened we’d be ready to discuss it. But there’s no rush to do anything.

“We don’t know what’s going to happen (with the Big 12). There may be some clarity. There may not be. It could go on for a long time. We just want to make sure we’re focused on this conference.”

And there’s no doubt they will. Schools in the American might aspire (or even deserve) to be part of a more lucrative league, but none of them have a guaranteed exit strategy as of today. Which means they have to make this home as comfy as they can, for as long as they need to.

“You can look at it differently from the standpoint that, of the universities that are being talked about as potential prospects for realignment, they’re all in this league,” new UConn athletics director David Benedict said. “So what does that tell you about our league? It tells you we’re pretty strong.

“I’m sure the Big 12 is done with (this topic) as much as anybody. I’m sure they can't stand the continued conversation, but I think it strengthens the brand of this conference to talk about the schools in this league. We can’t control what that league is going to do, we can’t control what those presidents are going to do and certainly I want to do everything we can to make this conference strong, because right now this is our conference, and that’s all we can control.”