Mike Aresco is obviously desperate.
As he should be.
His weakened conference’s future as a relevant member of the new order of college football is in serious jeopardy.
This is why Aresco, the commissioner of the American Athletic Conference, penned “An Open Letter to College Football” earlier this week in which he urged the sport’s other powerbrokers to move forward and move quickly with their much-discussed plan of expanding to a 12-team playoff.
“We are on the clock, and our window is narrowing for an agreement on a plan that could be implemented in 2024 and 2025,” Aresco wrote in his sound-the-alarm dispatch to his colleagues.
Translation: Let’s do this now while the American still has a seat at the big-boy table.
It’s no secret the American’s stature has been greatly diminished since the announcement was made last summer that the league’s three premier teams — UCF, Cincinnati and Houston — were bolting to join the realigned Big 12. This left the American scrambling to fill its ranks, resulting in a 14-member mish-mash of teams with no significant marquee value.
Consequently, UCF isn’t nearly as vocal about playoff expansion as it was four or five years ago when former athletic director Danny White was screaming from the mountaintop so that college football could have an equitable postseason for everyone. Back then, of course, the Knights were stuck in the American with seemingly no way out.
But when the big dogs of the Big 12 — Texas and Oklahoma — announced they were leaving for the SEC, the Big 12 moved quickly, cannibalized the American, added BYU and likely salvaged its status as a “Power 5″ league. Now that UCF will soon be in the Power 5, the Knights no longer harbor the immense institutional fear of being left behind.
But it’s a different story for the American and the other Group of 5 leagues, who are as uneasy as they’ve ever been about the Power 5 cutting them out of the equation altogether if the current 12-year College Football Playoff (CFP) contract expires and a new contract is negotiated after the 2025 season.
In today’s ever-changing world of college athletics — with NCAA oversight decreasing, the arms race increasing, coaching salaries surging, palatial facilities being constructed, players attempting to unionize and schools trying to figure out ways to get recruits lucrative name, image and likeness (NIL) deals — who knows what might happen in the future.
Comedian Dennis Miller used to do a stand-up routine about air travel in which he compared the frustration of flying coach to flying first class. “You know what I hate is when you’re sitting in coach class and they shut the curtain that goes into first class,” Miller cracked. “Oh, I see, they paid an extra $40, and, suddenly, I’m a freaking leper. I always get the feeling that if the plane’s about to wreck, the front compartment breaks off into a little ‘Goldfinger’ mini-plane. They’re on their way to Rio, and I’m a charcoal briquette on the ground.”
I’m not saying the Power 5 is going to break off and fly away to Rio, but would anybody be surprised? With the cost of doing business in college football skyrocketing, what’s to stop the Power 5 leagues from signing a new playoff contract and keeping all the money for themselves?
Which is why Aresco wants to sign a playoff extension with ESPN immediately while the current voting structure of the CFP Management Committee (10 FBS conference commissioners and Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick) is still in place. Right now, Aresco’s vote counts the same as SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey’s, but will that be the case in the future?
Will Aresco and the American even have a vote in the future?
Pac-12 Commissioner George Kliavkoff already has come right out and said he doesn’t think the next CFP contract should need the unanimous approval from Group of 5 leagues. “I don’t think we need 11 people to say yes to get to a solution that would be good for college football,” Kliavkoff said.
Likewise, ACC commissioner Jim Phillips said during a news conference a few weeks ago that he is not in favor of expansion right now. Phillips is not in favor of rushing into signing an extension with ESPN until we are more knowledgeable about where college football is headed in this new wild-wild-west era of NIL and the transfer portal?
Personally, there’s a part of me who is with Aresco and would love to see a 12-team playoff sooner rather than later, but that’s just the fan in me talking.
However, from a business standpoint, why expand and sign an extension with ESPN before the current contract runs its course? Why not get the other networks involved, start a full-fledged bidding war and make as much money as possible?
In the end, isn’t that always what it comes down — money?
The Power 5 wants to make and keep as much of it as possible.
Meanwhile, Mike Aresco is writing letters so his conference can continue cashing checks.
