Harvey: Without Power Five status, UH held to different standard

Harvey: Without Power Five status, UH held to different standard
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With the College Football Playoff in only its third season, replacing a flawed Bowl Championship Series, which replaced an even more flawed highly political process, it’s already clear the Power Five conferences have too much power.

Why is it, for instance, that a Group of Five university must win its conference in order to advance to a New Year’s Six bowl while there is no such stipulation for a Power Five university?

The following tie-ins exist for bowls in the years they are not hosting the national semifinals:

Rose Bowl — Big Ten #1 vs. Pac-12 #1
Sugar Bowl — SEC #1 vs. Big 12 #1
Orange Bowl — ACC #1 vs. SEC #2, Big Ten #2, or Notre Dame
Cotton Bowl — at-large or “Group of Five” (committee selection)
Fiesta Bowl — at-large or “Group of Five” (committee selection)
Peach Bowl — at-large or “Group of Five” (committee selection)

Besides “blue blood” and “big names”, one of the key difference between P5 and G5 is the BIG bowls contract. Now, if AAC can make a deal with ACC and Peach Bowl and/or Pac12 and Fiesta and/or B12 and Cotton to send AAC#1 and AAC#2 to pair with Pac12#2, B12#2 and ACC#2 to the appropriate bowls, that contracts will level up AAC.

However, the issue #1 is the name. There is no big name left in the G5 besides Boise, BYU and SDSU. If we can convince 2 of those 3 to come and have a 14-team coast-to-coast AAC, we may make a deal with those bowls.

Issue #2 is TV contract, well, no big name, it is hard to get TV deals.

those are just my opinions.

Aresco is scrambling to find ways to bring in more money. Right now he doesn’t have much to work with. About the only option I see is to expand the conference by adding a West Coast or Western division. That would mean raiding the MW which I find most distasteful. On the other hand this is about survival. So adding at least 6 or 7 West teams and reinventing the AAC may be our only option. How about:

San Diego State
Fresno State
Boise
Colorado State
Air Force
Nevada or UNLV
BYU under the right conditions.

This expanded conference would hopefully give Aresco a few more cards to play with. Even going with 7 teams would not cause a problem, although 8 might be too many unless we went for broke with 3 8-team divisions. We might even balance that out by talking Army into joining Navy and Air Force. That would have the bonus of giving the AAC the Army-Navy game AND the Commanders Trophy. Plus the winner of this conference would surely qualify for the NY6 bowls.

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A media contract with even $5M a year would help schools protect from getting coaches poached. That alone would help recruiting and build programs.

If we followed the above path and added MW programs, the MW would cease to exist for all practical purposes. They have a really nice network that I’m assuming could be expanded as our ESPN contract expired.

Who knows. With the national breadth of coverage ESPN might come to the table and redo their agreement to add and expand the network. All things are possibke these days.