American pushes its Power 6 game plan
NEWPORT, R.I. — The message was crystal clear.
The P6 logo was displayed on the walls of the Gurney’s Resorts and on the helmets positioned along the main stage. It even found its way onto the lapel pin worn by American Athletic Conference commissioner
The league continues to emphasize its Power 6 initiative, arguing AAC should be considered an elite conference alongside the traditional Power 5 — the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12, SEC and independent Notre Dame.
“We want to be accepted eventually as an autonomy P6 Conference because we believe we are already a P6 conference, and correspondingly, we want and need a TV/media deal that recognizes what we have achieved and affords us the resources to continue to build the conference and continue to compete successfully with the other P6 conferences in the evercompetitive college football environment,” Aresco said Tuesday.
“And make no mistake, we do not want simply to compete, we want to win.”
Aresco pointed out the league’s recent period of football success, with quality wins over Power 5 schools.
It’s a point Aresco hopes to use when he sits down with ESPN executives in the year ahead to discuss a new television deal for the American. The current deal is in the neighborhood of $21 million and features close to a $2 million annual payout per school.
“Owing to television deals that were cut before we achieved prominence, we currently lack the financial resources of many of the other P6 universities, but we have the will and we have the ability,” Aresco said.
USF was the media’s preseason favorite to capture the conference championship, with Charlie Strong’s team earning 26 of the possible 30 votes, followed by Houston (2), Memphis (1) and Navy (1).
The Bulls were a unanimous choice to win the East Division, followed by UCF, Temple, Cincinnati, East Carolina and UConn.
The West was a close race, with Memphis earning 22 first-place votes, followed by Houston (6), Navy (1), Tulsa (1), SMU and Tulane.
Being picked as the favorite hasn’t always worked out. No team picked to win the conference title during the past four seasons wound up earning the championship.
After more than a decade in charge at Navy, Ken Niumatalolo has become the elder statesman of the coaches at this year’s football media event. UConn’s
is returning for his second stint with the Huskies, but Niumatalolo hasn’t broken up his run at Navy and owns the longest continuous streak as head coach of any team in the American.
“Getting to meet these new guys is pretty phenomenal,” he said of the three first-time head coaches: Houston’s Temple’s and Cincinnati’s
Niumatalolo, 52, remembers when he first came into the AAC. He was in awe of the veteran coaches, including
and
“You come into the room and you go, ‘Wow,’” Niumatalolo said.
“And since that short three and a half years ago, there’s nobody who [was] in the room who’s [still] here now. It kind of lets you know what kind of profession we’re in that the room has completely changed. I am feeling older because I became a grandfather this year.
“There are a lot of really good football coaches coming into our league.”