In an interview with 92.9 FM ESPN earlier this month, Memphis athletic director Tom Bowen said that any deal that is “north of $8-10 million per year” for each school would be acceptable.
“It would make a big difference for everybody,” Bowen said. “For me, for every other athletic director and everybody else in the American Athletic Conference.”
we have won more p5 games than Big 12. AAC 34, Big 12 (29) non conference.
UNC is thanking Florence for coming to town. It saves them from getting beat by UCF, an AAC team.
https://twitter.com/American_FB/status/1039555419159650305?s=09
If he says $8M is acceptable BEFORE the negotiation, I doubt we get $8M.
They better be pushing over 10 million…the conference is proving it on the field of play…
Agree, that is totally stupid. I don’t understand why people publicly announce things like that. It’s equivalence of literally saying I’m weak, you can do whatever you want and I’m not gonna fight back.
The AAC’s record against P5’s is impressive. We deserve to be paid.
https://twitter.com/ChrisVannini/status/1041365467804434433
https://twitter.com/UHcougar308/status/1041147324028858368
Well, we’ve lost a lot more P5 games than them too, and have more members. I think since we use P6 we should include AAC in with those records too.
We’re never going to win more percentage wise than them because the bottom of AAC will drag us down. But the top of the AAC has every reason to consider itself as good as those programs.
Competitively the AAC is a P5 caliber conference in every way except it does not have a couple of teams that can compete against Alabama, Clemson, Ohio State and some other bluebloods year in and year out. Well actually we don’t know that because the AAC has never been given the opportunity to participate in the CFP.
When a P5 school sees an AAC school on its schedule, the P5 school will take the game seriously as if it was preparing for a P5. Just ask TTU how serious they were preparing for Houston.
I believe the P5 is not going to let the AAC in as a P6 because of money. Each P5 conference is guaranteed $50M from the CFP if they have a team in it or not. They are not going to add a P6 and give up some of their share.
I do believe the networks will allow the conferences to add teams if the network can make more money from it. Example: A good Houston team playing Tulane or SMU is not going to move the needle but a good Houston team playing USC, Stanford or Oregon will garner a lot more viewers.
I don’t agree about the AAC being P5 caliber. Are some schools? Yes. We’ve proven it several times, and there are others as well. Of course for our good teams P5 teams prepare seriously; in their mind losing to a non-P5 program is a huge black mark, so they will go out of their way not to lose. But as long as we have Tulane, WSU, and Tulane we will never be considered a true P5 conference.
This might rub some the wrong way but the AAC is a great conference but it is perfect for the Houston, UCF, Memphis, USF, Cincinnati, ECUs of the world. We are non brand, non traditional powers that can win and win big but if we lose we don’t draw TV eyes and butts in the seats. When we win we are very compelling but when we lose we are forgotten because of the markets we are in.
The traditional P5 conference has traditional “haves” and traditional “have nots”. The p5 have nots are there to be the losses to the Big Brand Haves but still draw even when they lose. The have nots serve a purpose.
The good AAC schools could win and win big in a P5 conference but its at the expense of the Big Brands. If we lose we are an attendance drag on the P5 conference. We are a unique group of schools that need to be grouped together.
Outside of Clemson, The American is as good top to bottom as the ACC. Houston, Navy, Memphis, UCF, and (usually) Cincy are as good as Fl St, Miami, Georgia Tech, and Louisville and better than any team north of the Carolinas.
Oldtime, your comment of “outside of Clemson” could be applied to the Pac 12. Outside of Stanford and Washington, the AAC is better than the Pac12. The AAC is very good but we don’t have the traditional school that the casual fan knows. A casual fan will tune in to a USC v UCLA game before it would tune into a USF v UCF game even though the latter is a much better game.
We just have to keep growing the AAC perception in the public’s mind. We have the quality product but we don’t have instant brand recognition.
Coog51, do you think it’s possible for the AAC to keep building it’s brand enough to be invited into the P5? I don’t.
I think WE (meaning Houston singularly) have to keep building our brand and eventually get into a P5 conference. The AAC has too many schools that will never be P5 quality, and we’d have to have half the conference in the Top 25 to ever even be considered. It won’t happen.
We have to get butts in the seats and pull in 40k or more per game, and we have to have more years where we beat the OUs and FSUs of the world. That is how we get into a P5 – it ain’t gonna be this conference. I’ve never understood why we can’t fill up our stadium every week with the good product we generally put on the field. I don’t GAF how many things there are to do in the city, out of millions of people we should be able to get 40k in the stadium every week. I don’t understand why we don’t, and IMO our administration needs to put a huge amount of their focus on increasing that attendance. We could go 13-0 and people will still say “but you only put 15k in the stands”. That has got to change. Take a look at P5 schools and even the very lowest bottom feeders have decent attendance; in fact that more than anything is a general characteristic of those schools and it’s the one glaring deficiency we have.
Martin, every since the SWC folded, the interest in UH football has decreased. They are no longer playing UT and TAM and others that kept the competition at a high level. Many think UH is a JV team who can’t get enough top talent and will never get a chance to compete for a national championship.
Yes we know there is a game attendance problem but the AD and the athletic marketing department needs to figure out how to fix it. Getting more alumni envolved might be a good place to start then have athletes and students going out into the city doing volunteer work or something. I’m not sure what to do but I think people will support UH if they feel a connection even if they did not attend UH.
I think if we were a P5, the stadium would be packed because the competition level would be at its highest. This was obvious when we played OU, FSU and Louisville. It’s hard to get people to come out and see us play Tulane. We do not have that fenatical fan base like the schools in the sticks where going to the college game is the highlight of their week.
No I do not think the AAC will become a P6 unless it gets rid of the bottom dwellers like Tulane, Tulsa and Connecticut then add BYU, Boise State and maybe Army. Now that reconfigured AAC would be worthy of P6 consideration.
I think that student athletes have a hard enough time balancing their academic and their athletic commitments without also being required to do involuntary “volunteer” work.
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