Q&A with AAC commissioner Mike Aresco on UAB and future of league

By Evan Dudley
UAB’s initial foray into the American Athletic Conference begins Monday as AAC football media days kick off at Globe Life Field in Arlington, Texas.
The opening day of the event is primarily for promotional purposes before head coaches take the podium Tuesday along with student-athlete interviews.
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AAC commissioner Mike Aresco is scheduled for opening remarks at 8:30 a.m. on Tuesday but AL.com caught up with the commish a couple of days before realignment took effect on July 1 and discussed a myriad of topics regarding UAB’s transition into the American.
(Note: The following Q&A has been lightly edited for content and clarity.)
AL.com: What are your plans as midnight rolls around and the American welcomes six new members to the conference? Will it be similar to ringing in the new year or will come and go considering the amount of promotion heading into July 1?
Mike Aresco: I think it’s the latter. We won’t be shooting any fireworks or anything at midnight, but on the other hand, tomorrow we’ll all realize that the six new schools are in the conference. We’ve obviously done a fair amount this week. We’ll celebrate the conference because it is our 10th anniversary, coinciding with bringing in the new schools, so we’re looking backward a little bit and then looking forward a lot.
The night will pass on eventually but we’re all excited about the new schools coming in and UAB is among -- I guess you could call it -- one of the flagship schools because UAB was one of the schools we sort of had our eye on for a long time. We lost UConn several years ago, as you recall, and we decided to stay at 11 (members). We always talked about, “Do we want to get back to 12?” My gut tells me, my sense is that, if we had gone to 12 at any point and -- had the realignment not happened the way it did with Oklahoma and Texas leaving and some of our schools going -- we might well have zeroed in on UAB.
We really admire what the school has done, what the school has and where the school is -- in a football hotbed with a beautiful new stadium. Just a lot of things going for UAB and when realignment hit, it was pretty much a no-brainer that they would be one of the schools. We didn’t intend originally to take six but the more we thought about it and the more we looked at some of the schools, we decided that there were probably six schools that really fit our culture.
AL: UAB athletic director Mark Ingram was hired in 2015 from AAC member Temple and focused on fundraising and facility upgrades resulting in making the department an attractive and desirable candidate for realignment. How has the relationship between yourself and Ingram evolved throughout this process?
MA: I didn’t know him very well when he was at Temple. It was really later that we had talked from time to time, Mark expressed some interest, obviously, in our conference, and we would talk periodically. I got to know him very well over the last couple of years. He’s a thoughtful advocate and in our meetings -- the new schools have been at our annual meetings the last couple of years -- Mark is an extremely thoughtful advocate on a lot of different positions.
I visited under the radar this fall, went to the Georgia Southern game that UAB won, and Mark gave me a tour of the beautiful new stadium and I met with President Watts. That was all under the radar because I didn’t want to draw attention to it because they were still in Conference USA, even though everybody knew they were coming into our conference.
Here’s the thing, we’ve got a big group of ADs coming in that are really committed, want to win and understand what our conference is. They’ve wanted to be in our conference, they wanted to get the increased TV exposure, the increased promotion that ESPN provides, and they feel they can compete at this level and they know they can.
I’ve known Mike Hill (Charlotte) for years when he was a Jeremy Foley protege back in Florida. Brian White (FAU), I’ve known the White family forever and it just shows how old I am. I go back with Kevin White, then there’s Danny. I’ve got to meet Lisa Campos at UTSA and Jared Mosley took over at North Texas and he’s a great guy, really terrific guy. I’m really pleased with the new group of Ads and they’re going to make a real contribution. Their schools are committed and that’s what we wanted.
AL: Andy Kennedy, with his coaching resume and bold personality, is a huge pickup for the league but UAB is not alone in upgrading the strength of basketball in the American. How excited are you for programs such as UAB (NIT runner-up), Charlotte (CBI champion), North Texas (NIT champion) and FAU (NCAA Final Four) joining the league?
MA: You’re absolutely right, basketball in this league is going to be very good and important. It’s important for basketball to be good and it helps your brand as a major conference. Football drives so much of this as you know, it drives realignment and we can’t pretend it doesn’t, but basketball is important.
I know Andy (Kennedy) and he’s a terrific coach. He’s a name brand as a coach. We’ve got some really good basketball coaches. The key for us over the last 10 years is we have lost coaches to the so-called P5 and you can understand why -- they typically get paid more. But we’ve replaced them with really good coaches and that’s been the genius of our league and our administrators.
When you lose a coach, there’s disruption, right? It disrupts your recruiting, it disrupts the chemistry on your team, you risk transfers, there’s a lot of things that happen. Now, you might not risk transfers as much in the old days because you had the year in residence, and that helped our conference really build a brand and our programs create the stability that we needed. It’s going to be a headwind that we’re going to have to face going forward because it’s too easy for some of our top players to get picked off -- the NIL era and a year in residence going away creating a perfect storm. But the idea that if we lose a coach, we can replace them with a really good coach, the schools coming in now allow us to see that.
We’re really a P6 but don’t necessarily need to call it that anymore. We want to get rid of that branding, especially since there’s barely even a P5 anymore. The campaign has been excellent but it seems like an outdated concept. What they will find is that this will make our conference even more attractive to their schools, more attractive for coaches, because being in our conference you’re viewed as being in a P5 conference. If coaches want to make a transition to a P5 from our league, it’s very easy to do, but what we want to do is keep them if we can. Our coaches are well-paid and compared to so-called G5 schools, we pay our coaches far more whether it’s football or basketball.
We’re going to lose Houston at the top and we’ll miss Houston and Kelvin Sampson, all the great things he’s done because he’s just been spectacular. But on the other hand, we’re going to be deeper. We’re going to have a broader array of good teams. Wichita State made a great hire with Oral Roberts’ Paul Mills and you’re looking at great hires with Amir Abdur-Rahim at USF and Adam Fisher at Temple. Mike Schwartz has done a great job at East Carolina and so has Ron Hunter at Tulane, you got Penny (Hardaway) at Memphis, that goes without saying, and he’s built a program there and we knew he would. Those coaches are building their program and we’re going to be a really strong basketball conference with five of the six coming in having pretty good basketball.
Football goes without saying and we’re bringing in some outstanding programs. The two teams that played in the Conference USA championship game are coming into our league -- North Texas played very credibly in their bowl game against Boise State and UTSA had a tremendous year. Trent Dilfer is a fascinating hire and I think he’s going to do very well. I love his grit and like the way he’s taken on the powers that be. That’s what this conference is, you know, we are tough, we are resourceful, we are gritty and we are competitors.
I often say our DNA is competitiveness and when the DNA changes, it’s got to stay. That’s what these new schools are going to bring there. There’s a lot of energy coming in. There’s a lot of excitement. They’re happy to be in our conference. They’re joining with incumbents who are coming on and they all contributed. It’s easy to focus on Houston, UCF and Cincinnati -- they’ve done a lot for the conference and were key schools, that’s why they’re going to the Big 12.
But other schools have stepped up and done what they did over the years. Memphis had a great run and was the chief rival for many years to UCF in football. You look at Temple and what they did in the years under Matt Rhule, SMU the last five years under Sonny (Dykes) and now Rhett Lashlee. You look at Tulane and what they did last year -- one of the great stories in the history of college football and beating USC in the Cotton Bowl. Temple has a new coach and I think they’re going to regain what they had.
An ESPN commentator said our conference is rocket fuel for teams elevating their programs. That’s what this conference can do and that’s what this conference was designed to do in the ashes of the Big East as it imploded. This group really became a challenger group. We were going to challenge the blueblood schools that had more revenue and more resources. We’ve done it successfully and these schools can continue to do it and I don’t see any reason why they can’t.
AL: You mentioned the interesting hire of Trent Dilfer and his outspoken nature. Considering his connections through ESPN and the NFL, what are your thoughts are him, as you said, calling out the powers that be?
MA: I love it. I love it. We have to be fighters and we have to be fearless in our conference. Based on who we are and what we’re up against, we have headwinds and we know we’ve got challenges. So, I really appreciate his toughness and his willingness to speak out. I think it’s great and that’s what you need. You have to have that chip on your shoulder if you’re a player or a coach in our league. You have to want to compete. You have to not be afraid of not only competing but calling things out that you see are wrong.
I had to fight hard for years to get our teams recognized as playoff teams. I was, as Tim Brando used to always say, the fly in the ointment. I was the guy who was really fighting for our teams. I never criticized the committee personally, the selection committee would never do that, but I just said I disagreed with some of their approaches. I had a lot of facts at my disposal, whether it was Houston back in the day or UCF and the 25-game winning streak, and finally, Cincinnati made it. A tremendous achievement on their part because it was almost impossible for us to crack. We did it though. We’ve always had to be fighters and that’s Trent.
It’s a fascinating hire and Bill Clark, what a job he did. When they joined the league, he was still there and then obviously he retired. We felt that was a blow to the program, but on the other hand, they’ve built a solid foundation. There is the hotbed of college football, a fan base with a beautiful new stadium and Mark (Ingram) knows what they’re doing. He’s a very able AD and I figured they’ll get a good coach. Trent is an interesting hire because he has a wide range of context. But also having met him, he’s very personable. I really liked him, loved his toughness and that will get translated to his team. That’s really important.
We’re a strong 14-team football League. We’re going to be 15 overall -- Navy doesn’t play basketball and Wichita State doesn’t play football -- and there’s strength in numbers for a conference that’s going to be extremely competitive. The top two teams play in the championship game, the top two teams with the best conference records, and starting next year, we’ve got a clear shot to the playoffs which is going to really have an impact on our coaches and our players. Our coaches can say to recruits and transfers, “You’ve got a probably better chance to play in the playoff than three-quarters of the P5 or so-called P5 schools.”
In the last 10 years, we would have been in the playoff seven or eight years if it had been expanded. We were in the top six and that’s a remarkable achievement when you really think about competing with 120 other schools, right? To do that, year after year, and then to actually make the playoff and have probably three or four teams that were playoff worthy, that’s the only reason I’m convinced we have an expanded playoff plan with six conference champions as opposed to only the so-called P5. The reason you have it is because our conference achieved so much.
We were on the cusp all the time, we were challenging and we showed that we belong. If we hadn’t done that, I’m sure they would have just ignored the so-called G5 and it would have been easier to craft a playoff without us. That’s my feeling and the achievements of this conference help set the stage for that.
Going forward, it’s going to be a challenge. You’ve got some good teams in the SunBelt and Mountain West and Conference USA reinvented itself. It’s never going to be easy but you’ve got a clear shot. Your conference champion could easily be the fifth or sixth-best team and therefore get a bid. In terms of UAB, I don’t know why they can’t be right at the front. They’ve got a great program, all the fundamentals in place and we’ll see how it goes.
AL: There are several rivalries from Conference USA days of old that are going to be renewed with the addition of the six new schools -- particularly the Battle for the Bones between UAB and Memphis -- but are there possibilities for new rivalries to emerge between first-time conference peers? Additionally, will you be on hand in Birmingham for the renewal of the Battle for the Bones, the trophy of which is easily recognized as of the top trophies in sports?
MA: Well, I think I should certainly try. That would be a great game to attend, absolutely, and I knew about their rivalry. UAB will also, in all likelihood, develop a rivalry with Tulane and others that are in the vicinity. You’re going to have FAU playing USF, which will develop into a rivalry, and hopefully more regional rivalries.
With Memphis and UCF, for the 10 years of our existence, we had a tremendous rivalry. It reminded me of the Dallas Cowboys and Washington Redskins rivalry because they were not natural rivals. They became rivals because of how they played and their coaches, Tom Landry against George Allen. That was one of the best rivalries in the NFL for a while.
That’s what we’ve done, we created those rivalries because we don’t have as many natural ones. The Battle for the Bones is a natural one and it’s been on hiatus; so getting that one together is great. UTSA and Rice are close, they’ve been playing each, UTSA and SMU could be one and certainly North Texas and SMU.
The DNA of this conference, again, is competitiveness and I don’t think that’s going to change. We’ve asked all the schools joining to make sure they invest to the level they need and be as competitive in this conference as they were in Conference USA. They’re all going to do that and they come ready-made.
The other thing I love about UAB, I love where it is, because my son and his wife actually live in Birmingham. She’s an Alabama graduate, they live in Birmingham and that’s a nice thing. We became grandparents, fraternal twin girls, and visit Birmingham frequently.
UAB has been one of our more visible schools and the city celebrated their arrival. I’ve gotten to know Ray Watts and Mark Ingram, both of them, and Mark is an excellent AD. Even Trent Dilfer, the fella’s won a Super Bowl, and he won state titles as a high school head coach in Tennessee. He knows what he’s doing. You know, people forget Vince Lombardi was a high school coach for how many years in New Jersey before he finally got a shot at Army and then as an NFL assistant.
I’m excited. It’s going to be fun and football season is not that far away. Here it is, the beginning of the summer in some ways, but yet in two months, we’ll be back. It’ll be fun to see how the teams do when they join our conference. They’ll get a lot of exposure on ESPN, potentially ABC, and ESPN2 to ESPNU and ESPN+. It’s a big difference for them and the exposure is going to really help their brands.
AL: That has to be one of the more alluring aspects of the new alignment, especially for fans who stream-surfed in search of their team’s game broadcasts. What can the new programs expect in jumping to the ESPN family of networks for all future broadcasts?
MA: There’s no question it’s going to be huge. You get the promotion of being on ESPN. Also, we play Thursdays and Fridays but don’t ask teams to do it multiple times. On the other hand, once or twice a year, a team will do either Thursday or Friday. That’s a showcase night, Friday night, especially, because there’s no NFL. It’s a national game. It gets the attention of everyone.
In addition, we’ve got ABC, ESPN, and ESPN2, I think Memphis may have had as many as four or five, or even six ABC appearances. It was remarkable. That’s the year that they went to the Cotton Bowl.
The games that aren’t on those networks would be on ESPN. Plus, everybody who wants ESPN+, can get it if you want to pay the $6 or wherever it is. You can get your game and stream it on your TV. In the past we had some of our miscellaneous games on CBS Sports Network, they did a great job for us, but they were only in half the country -- not even half the country. If a game doesn’t end up on one of the premier ESPN networks, it goes to ESPN+ and can be seen.
It also gives the school scheduling flexibility to put it on whenever they really want. So, one way or another, the schools are going to benefit enormously from the ESPN and ABC branding and exposure. In basketball, we have a separate deal with CBS -- this is the CBS main network -- to do basketball along with ESPN. If UAB’s a prime team, for example, as they have been, they can end up with an ESPN appearance and they can then use the CBS appearance against Memphis. There are a lot of advantages to the exposure that they’ll get and, as I said earlier, it’ll really help build their brands.