Major college football is settling into a strange period with lame duck memberships and frayed allegiances that could last another season or even two as conferences sort out the latest shifts and turns of realignment.
The American Athletic Conference became the latest to act in the trickle-down effect caused from Oklahoma and Texas announcing this past summer that they will move to the Southeastern Conference by 2025.
The AAC, in an expected move previously reported by The Associated Press, announced Thursday that it will add six schools – Charlotte, Florida Atlantic University, North Texas, Rice, the University of Alabama at Birmingham and the University of Texas at San Antonio – to replace three schools – Cincinnati, Houston and the University of Central Florida – that are eventually leaving for the Big 12 Conference.
“I think they will definitely take great advantage of the exposure and the platforms that are going to be provided by this conference,” AAC commissioner Mike Aresco said. “So we look forward, down the road, and we’re not certain when they’re going to come in yet. That’s still to be decided.”
It’s complicated because the conference doesn’t realistically have room for the newcomers until the outgoing schools have left. Those within the AAC believe 2023 is a realistic target for the transition to a 14-team league after swiping six schools from Conference USA.
But it all starts with Oklahoma and Texas. The Sooners and Longhorns are contractually obligated to the Big 12 until July 2025. The SEC has made it clear that while it is looking forward to having the two new members on board, the league is also fine with waiting until then.
Breaking the contract would cost Oklahoma and Texas tens of millions of dollars in exit fees paid to the Big 12, but it is understood that everybody involved would benefit from not stringing out this broken relationship for three more seasons.
The Big 12, after all, already has replacements lined up. The conference in September announced that Brigham Young University and the three aforementioned AAC powers would be joining.
BYU, an independent in football with other sports in the West Coast Conference, plans to join the Big 12 in 2023. The three AAC schools are required to give their current conference 27 months’ notice and pay $10 million exit fees. The Big 12 said it expected them to join no later than summer 2024.
The Big 12 also left the door open to add more schools down the road.
“We’re living in a very fast-changing athletic environment, and we will be at 14 for a while, we will drop back to 12, and as there are targets of opportunity or as there are situations that dictate that we change composition, we’ll be prepared to do those things,” Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby said in September.
Aresco conceded growing to 14 was a way for a conference that has become a feeder league for the Power Five to be prepared for future poaching.
“We decided that there was strength in numbers,” Aresco said. “We also looked around and said, ‘You know there are some schools that we might be interested in later on – why not, you know, think about taking them now?'”
C-USA and the Sun Belt Conference are next up in realignment. With only eight remaining members, C-USA needs to both protect its assets and add on. A request for comment from C-USA commissioner Judy MacLeod was not immediately returned Thursday.
The Sun Belt continues to publicly say it will explore its options, but commissioner Keith Gill told AP the conference feels no pressure to act now simply because the AAC has made its move.
“There is no timetable,” said Gill, who declined to comment on reports the 10-football member league is eyeing some of C-USA’s remaining schools such as Marshall, Old Dominion and Southern Mississippi, along with James Madison – a powerhouse in the Football Championship Subdivision, the second tier of NCAA Division I competition.
No matter. The map is unlikely to be redrawn for 2022, which means another full season of potentially uncomfortable moments that have already started to play out.
Earlier this week, Bowlsby told The Austin (Texas) American-Statesman newspaper that Oklahoma and Texas secretly planning to leave the Big 12 felt like a “personal betrayal.” He als said the Longhorns’ recent football struggles have nothing to do with the conference in which they play.
Oklahoma, currently No. 3 in the AP Top 25, is on target to play in yet another Big 12 title game in December. A seventh straight conference championship for the Sooners could make for an awkward trophy presentation with the commissioner at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas.
Same goes in the AAC, where No. 2 Cincinnati is positioned be the first team from outside the Power Five to make a serious run at the four-team College Football Playoff, which debuted in the 2014 season and has never included a Group of Five team.
Aresco did not attend Cincinnati’s game against Football Bowl Subdivision independent power Notre Dame earlier this month, but he is not about to disown the unbeaten Bearcats.
Said Aresco: “Cincinnati if – you know, we don’t know what’s going to happen – but if they make the playoffs or they do something remarkable, they will have done it in the American Athletic Conference.”