American Athletic Conference unveils its primary logos

Dan Wolken | USA TODAY Sports

As the American Athletic Conference ramps up its re-branding effort before debuting this fall, commissioner Mike Aresco hopes its new logo – a blue "A" with a red star in the middle – will serve as a symbol bringing familiarity and identity to a league that has spent the past several months in transition.

"It's a bold look," Aresco said. "Obviously this is a media world we live in, and we wanted to make sure we had the kind of mark that would be distinctive and would make an impact when people saw it. We wanted it to be something people would like and remember, but the notion really was to make it as simple as possible but also strong."

The conference, which is officially releasing its set of logos today, was formerly known as the Big East until last December when the seven Catholic, non-football-playing schools decided to break off and form their own league. After an intense negotiation process, the remaining schools essentially agreed to sell the Big East moniker to the new basketball-centric league and start over with a new name and brand.

In April, school presidents officially chose American Athletic Conference but until today have not been able to use the symbol that will go on everything from uniforms to football fields to recruiting materials.

"It's another step in reinventing the conference, and it's a big one," Aresco said.

Because of the importance, the league employed two advertising firms to submit logo designs and went to every campus in the league to get feedback from coaches, administrators and even athletes.

League officials ultimately chose the logo designed and recommended by MadCreek Advertising out of Upper Montclair, N.J.

"We wanted it to be a little traditional, but very new-looking," said LeslieAnne Wade, managing partner of Wade Media Management and a marketing consultant for the league. "The main focus was really creating something that looks like a sports brand and a sports logo. When you get into the use of the word American, there are a lot of corporate logos, and we didn't want it to look like that. We were looking for really a clean, simple strong symbol."

Beyond the challenge of avoiding something that looked corporate, the league also couldn't build the logo around an acronym. From the very beginning, the conference office has been adamant that it wants to be known as The American instead of the AAC to avoid confusion with the Atlantic Coast Conference.

Thus, the primary symbol for the league will be the blue "A" with red star, though a set of horizontal marks will be available for schools to use with the entire word "American." As Aresco pointed out, Navy, which will join the league as a football-only member in 2015, might not want a singular "A" on its field since its primary rival is Army. MadCreek is currently putting together a style book for how the logos should be used, but Aresco said schools will have the latitude to tailor the colors if they choose.

Earlier this month, the league brought Powerpoint presentations to each campus that showed in both red and blue all of the logo's various applications, from how it would look on a basketball court to how it would look on television. Out of those meetings, a consensus was established that the logo's primary color should be blue.

"It's something we instantly liked, and in showing it to people (on campuses), we wanted to know whether they would like it," Aresco said. "It generated the kind of buy-in you want, and I'm hoping it gets that kind of response (nationally)."

The American also consulted with ESPN, which became the league's primary media rights holder.

"It's tremendously appealing to the networks and the digital people that there's a clear single image for them to work with," Wade said. "As we were creating it, the real goal for my team was to create something that was athletic, that was aspirational, that reflected the landscape."

The American will be a 10-team league in 2013 with Big East holdovers Louisville, Rutgers, UConn, South Florida, Cincinnati and Temple along with newcomers from Conference USA in Houston, SMU, Central Florida and Memphis. In 2014, East Carolina, Tulane and Tulsa will be added as Louisville heads to the ACC and Rutgers departs to the Big Ten.

Dan Wolken, a national college football reporter for USA TODAY Sports, is on Twitter @DanWolken.