We are less than two weeks away from the start of the college football season. It should be a time of excitement, anticipation, and optimism, but recent events have dampened the mood. The Pac-12, which has existed in one form or another since 1915, has collapsed. Eight of the 12 schools have found new conference homes after the league could not secure a media rights deal competitive with the other autonomous leagues; we've reached the point where $20 million per school just won't cut it. The era of superconferences, which many felt would be the eventual result of the last 20 years of conference realignment, is finally upon us. In 2024, the Big Ten will have 18 members. The SEC will have 16, as will the Big 12. Regional rivalries and traditions have given way to national behemoths. Oregon vs. Rutgers will soon be a Big Ten matchup.

Television executives have dreamed of bending college football to their will ever since the formation of the CFA in 1977. It took a while for it to happen, but there is no doubt who is calling the shots today. It's often called "realignment," but what we're really seeing is a consolidation as the most valuable college football brands band together to maximize TV value. It's a shame that those entrusted with the care of college sports don't understand what makes them special, but what's done is done. If you're a Navy fan, the question now becomes where the American Athletic Conference and the Naval Academy fit into this new world order.

Even before the dismantling of the Pac-12, 2023 was set to be the start of a new era for the American. It feels ridiculous to talk about "eras" in the context of a conference that is only ten years old, but things that were once constants are now gone. The annual clam bake at media days is no more, with conference headquarters having been moved to Texas. The two longest-tenured football coaches in the league, Navy's Ken Niumatalolo and Tulsa's Philip Montgomery, were both let go. Most significantly, Houston, Cincinnati, and UCF left to join the Big 12, and six new schools have taken their place.

The three departing schools were some of the American's biggest brands. Houston had become the conference's basketball flagship, reaching a #1 ranking in the polls and advancing to at least the Sweet Sixteen in each of the last four NCAA tournaments. In 2021, they reached the Final Four. UCF has had the most conference championships in all sports since the American was founded. They became the poster child for College Football Playoff access after back-to-back undefeated regular seasons in 2017 and 2018. Cincinnati became the team to finally break that barrier, forcing themselves into the Playoff in 2021. Each school takes with them a notable legacy of athletic achievement.

The irony of their departure is that it affirms the "Power 6" campaign the American launched six years ago. It's the Power 5 conferences that proved the American's point. AAC teams were always at the top of the list whenever one of those conferences looked to backfill their own losses. That is largely because "Power 6" was a statement of purpose. Whatever rules the autonomous conferences passed, the American was committed to meeting the same standard. AAC programs made investments with the intention of competing against Power 5 schools. Indeed, the departing schools demonstrate how arbitrary the "Power 5" designation was; Houston, Cincinnati, and UCF will be the same programs next year, but they'll be treated differently now that they have the magic label. And it will seem credible because that's the standard that the American sets for itself.

Fortunately, while the schools leaving were some of the league's biggest brands, they were not the only schools in the conference to have athletic success. None of them won conference championships last year in the American's highest-profile sports (football, baseball, men's & women's basketball). Since 2015, Navy, Tulsa, Memphis, Temple, and Tulane have all played in the conference's football championship game, with the latter three winning it. SMU has spent 19 weeks in the AP poll since 2019. The American was never a conference propped up by one or two schools, and it still has a competitive core. They had to find the right schools to augment that core.

That's easier said than done. The American lost three of its biggest brands, and it would be next to impossible to find that kind of brand recognition outside of the big-money conferences. After initial reports that the AAC had discussions with members of the Mountain West, the league ultimately decided to invite six schools from Conference-USA: UAB, Rice, North Texas, UTSA, FAU, and Charlotte. At the time, I was surprised at the American's approach; my initial instinct was that the conference was best served by being more selective. But without the same kind of brands out there to replace their losses, the American had to adopt a new strategy.

UAB was the obvious first choice for the American. The school's ambitions both on and off the field made it a seamless fit into the conference. UAB is a tier-one research university in a metropolitan area with a highly-regarded medical school and affiliated health system. On the field, the controversial decision by the University of Alabama Board of Trustees to drop football in 2014 galvanized the Blazer community, which rallied to reinstate the program. The school built a new indoor practice facility and a $22 million football operations center. A new 47,000-seat stadium was built in downtown Birmingham with the Blazers as its primary tenant. They have had six straight winning seasons, including two C-USA championships.

After UAB, it wouldn't be challenging to find something about any one of the other additions to the American that makes them a good fit. UTSA won the last two C-USA football championships and will immediately compete in the AAC. FAU basketball just went to the Final Four, while their football team won C-USA twice since 2017. Rice is an elite academic institution that every university president wants their school to be associated with. UNT is a tier-one research university and a natural cross-town rival for SMU. Charlotte fits the American's traditional model of universities serving major metropolitan areas and is a cross-state rival for ECU. Any of them would make a logical addition to the American. What was a little surprising was that the conference invited all of them, although in retrospect, it makes sense.

The American agreed to a media rights deal with ESPN in 2019 that tripled the annual per-school payout of the previous contract, giving each school about $7 million per year. Preserving that payout was a top priority for the league. American commissioner Mike Aresco faced backlash at the time over the length of the contract; critics felt that the 12-year deal was too long. A shorter deal, they said, would have allowed the league to cash in on what seemed to be an increasingly lucrative media rights environment.

However, Aresco understood that the most precious commodity in college athletics is stability, and being able to set budgets for 12 years carried a value all its own. Recent events have proved Aresco, a former television executive, correct. The Pac-12 has fallen apart because they could not secure a competitive media rights deal of their own. Without a long-term contract, the AAC could have found itself in the same boat in the wake of Cincinnati, Houston, and UCF's departures. Instead, they had an established baseline and could work with ESPN to make the moves the network needed to maintain the original contract's value.

That move was to bring in the six schools from C-USA with each initially receiving a half-share of the full media distribution. The math worked out for all parties. The established AAC schools got to keep the money they were counting on when the media contract was signed. The newcomers still will make far more money than they did in C-USA, which was reportedly as low as $400,000 per school in some years. Their shares will reportedly grow over time. For ESPN, they got media rights to six schools that weren't already under their umbrella, giving them additional inventory for both linear TV and their growing streaming service. Everybody wins, contrary to anonymous industry sources (read: rival conference executives) who claimed the American's deal with ESPN would be dismantled in the wake of the league's departures.

Still, the American's additions are about more than the immediate need to preserve the ESPN contract. They are part of a long-term, strategic plan based on demographics. From 2000-2022, Texas gained more than 9 million residents, the most of any state and a 43% increase for what was already the nation's second-most populous. Number two in that same time frame was Florida. Last year, Charlotte had the fifth-highest numerical growth of any U.S. city. The best players come from where the people are, and the people are increasingly moving into what is now the American's footprint. The schools entering the league are making new investments in athletics at a time when they will be well-positioned to capitalize on them. If the American can't get their next set of big brands through expansion, they will have to grow them. When the next television contract is up for bid in 2031-32, the league will hopefully have developed a new set of marquee programs that networks will want.

All in all, it's not a bad strategy. One wonders, though, if this is just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. The trend in college football has been toward consolidating the game's top brands. What was once the Power 5 is now the Power 2. The fear is that those top brands will eventually split off into a new top tier of college football to form their own NFL-style league. Everyone else is trying to figure out how to avoid being left out. When the Power 5 was seen as the dividing line, the American's strategy was to position themselves as college football's middle class; maybe not as powerful as the wealthiest conferences, but good enough that any breakaway wouldn't feel legitimate without them. Today, the Big 12 and ACC are playing that middle-class role as they try not to be left behind by the Big Ten and SEC. Both the ACC and Big 12 also lean heavily on basketball, but that won't help if college football becomes its own entity independent of the traditional conference framework. The American has little choice but to become as good as it can get in the hopes that it will be enough.

While the conference may be forced to make the most of a bad situation, does that mean the same has to apply to the Naval Academy? Where does Navy fit into all of this? When the Big 12 three left the AAC and were replaced with the six newcomers, there was online speculation that the changes might cause Navy to reconsider conference membership. Some fans even campaigned for it. Should those making decisions in Annapolis listen? Should Navy return to independence?

I don't see why they would. The reasons why Navy joined the American in the first place haven't changed. Independence isn't viable anymore for any college football program not named Notre Dame that wants to be part of the big picture. That is even more true now in the era of 16-team conferences than when the Mids first joined. The more conference obligations a team has, the more difficult it is to schedule them.

A better question to ask is: what would be gained by independence? As a member of the American, Navy has been in the running for a major bowl game late into the season more than once. That would mean competing for a Playoff berth in an expanded tournament, which sounds far-fetched but really isn't in a reshaped AAC. Teams that Navy played as an independent-- Temple, Tulane, Rice, SMU, North Texas, Tulsa, ECU, and FAU-- are all members of the American now. It is actually easier to recreate the 4-4-4 scheduling philosophy-- four games apiece where Navy is the favorite, the underdog, and where it's relatively even-- as a member of the AAC than it would be to assemble that schedule as an independent. Scheduling, money, and opportunities would all be diminished if Navy left the conference. There are no good ol' days to return to. Life would be demonstrably worse outside of the AAC.

With that said, there is a real possibility that Navy will have some tough questions to answer in the future. While the Pac-12 has been picked apart, four schools-- Stanford, Cal, Oregon State, and Washington State-- still need a conference home. There is no shortage of speculation as to what those schools will do. They could attempt to keep the Pac-12 name alive and invite schools from other leagues to join them, including (and especially) the AAC. They could merge with the Mountain West. The ACC has discussed adding Cal and Stanford (and SMU). They could also potentially be absorbed into the American. There are pros, cons, and considerable obstacles to each scenario. However, if the American does add those schools, or if some other scenario compels the conference to add others, Navy could find itself in a difficult position.

One of the saddest results of conference realignment has been the loss of traditional rivalry games. Games like Nebraska-Oklahoma, Pitt-Penn State, and Missouri-Kansas are no longer annual affairs, if they are even played at all. Navy, fortunately, has been mostly unscathed by this phenomenon. The Mids' traditional rivalries with Army, Notre Dame, and Air Force remain intact. This is due to the American's commitment to playing only eight conference games, which leaves enough room on the Mids' schedule. However, it's hard to imagine playing only eight league games in an 18-team conference. The time may come, and soon, when choices must be made. Army-Navy is non-negotiable. Fans should be prepared to accept compromises on the others.

For now, though, Navy is where they need to be. The American has done what they can to continue their growth. All we can do now is hope they have the time.