Tom Schad

tom.schad@commercialappeal.com

There’s been a lot of uncertainty over the past six months, American Athletic Conference commissioner Mike Aresco said.

As the Big 12 mulled expansion, several AAC stalwarts were considered prime candidates, Memphis among them. Other AAC schools campaigned quite publicly to join the Power Five league. At some point, Aresco said, it appeared the Big 12 was going to expand, and the composition of the AAC was going to change.

Then, earlier this month, the Big 12 decided to remain at 10 teams.

So where does the AAC go from here?

“We’ll regroup quickly. We know we have a chance to really do something special with our teams,” Aresco told reporters at Liberty Bowl Memorial Stadium on Saturday, before Tulsa’s 59-30 win over the Tigers. “A big TV deal in a few years is really going to be a big aspect of our future.”

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The AAC’s current television deal with ESPN reportedly expires after the 2019 season in football, and after the 2019-20 season in basketball. Aresco said Saturday that he is planning to meet with ESPN in December to “talk about the future,” which includes the possibility of renegotiating the existing deal with hopes of generating more revenue for conference schools. (Memphis received less than $3 million from shared conference revenue last year.)

“We’re far more valuable than what we’re being paid. We know that,” said Aresco, whose salary was $1.6 million in 2014. “And that’s not anyone’s fault. Four years ago, we were in disarray. You needed a color-coded chart to know who was in our league. Let’s face it, it was a tough deal.

“In terms of ESPN, I’d love to do something with them. But I don’t know that they’re going to necessarily be ready to do anything. We’re going to talk to them. I hope that they look at us as an investment that can really, really pay dividends. Because it will, and has already.”

Aresco hopes there will be “robust competition” for the AAC’s television rights, given the emergence of online companies and streaming services like Google, Netflix, Facebook and the like. In August, for example, Aresco told Sports Illustrated that the league was in talks with Amazon to broadcast some of its women’s basketball games, and other non-revenue sports.

In the meantime, Aresco said the league is hoping to generate revenue by increasing attendance (“Attendance is up,” he said) and building excitement among donors at individual schools. Expansion is not a “front-burner issue” for the league right now, he said.

“We’ve been through a tough period,” Aresco said. “We don’t necessarily want to roil the waters. We’re not actively looking to expand. Down the road, who knows? There has to be value, and you don’t want to disrupt things at the moment.”

Aresco also said there have also been discussions about moving the conference’s headquarters from Providence, Rhode Island, to Dallas. “I think Dallas would be a logical spot,” he said, while noting that there are still several years remaining on the AAC’s current lease in Providence and he is unsure what the timetable would be on such a move.

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A centrally-located headquarters would probably help the conference, Aresco said. But in order to determine a central location, you need to know which schools will make up your conference. As of this summer, the American did not. But now that the Big 12 expansion process has run its course, Aresco said the AAC can move forward.

“Ironically, there was a silver lining in it, because our league has probably never been better known,” Aresco said. “I don’t think we could’ve bought the kind of branding we got, and most of it was good, because we were the target of a P5 conference. A P5 conference looked mostly at our schools. Our schools got a lot of publicity. The process wasn’t always great, but the point is, we did get a lot of attention.”