A Jersey Guy: AAC Needs More Southern Exposure

The American Athletic Conference needs to regroup with its eye on television markets.

Mike Aresco was a TV guy before he was a college administrator.

He knows television markets and how they are woven into the fabric of conference realignment.

As commissioner of the embattled American Athletic Conference, which is on the cusp of losing  three of its best football teams UCF, Cincinnati and Houston, Aresco is in his war-time mode.

His media availability is limited as he plans a strategy which can rebuild the AAC as a viable, if still, Group of 5 conference

Aresco has done this before, putting together the remnants of the Big East football conference into the AAC in 2013.

Now it looks the AAC, which looks like it will (temporarily) shrink from 11 to 8 teams must find a way to mitigate the damage and do it quickly.

According to sources familiar with the general battle plan, the AAC is likely to make strategic moves in three four different parts of the country in expanding to 12 teams.

The first priority is to maintain a large presence in Florida, where the AAC had two anchors, UCF in Orlando and UCF in Tampa.

The logic choice: go to the Miami area and pick off either Florida Atlantic or Florida International.

The AAC needs one, not two because both of them are located in the Miami market. FAU is probably a slight favorite

The second move would be to establish a deeper footprint in the Mid-Atlantic region, where the AAC is represented by Navy and Temple.

Old Dominion, situated in the recruiting gold mine area of Norfolk, Va. would be a good fit.

The third move would be to find a rising star in a football-centric area in the South.

Say hello to another C-USA member, Alabama- Birmingham which has been part of an amazing revival the past few years. 

And finally there is the great state of Texas, in which the AAC has a toe-hold in Dallas with SMU,  but now will be minus Houston.

Another television-football market move for a potential star such as UT-San Antonio.

All four of those schools are from C-USA, which could be another conference casualty of expansion, but we are once again in a survival of the fittest mode.

It will be interesting to see how it all plays out, starting sooner, rather than later.