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The American Athletic Conference will be willing to negotiate a higher exit fee to allow early departures from UCF, Cincinnati and Houston to the Big 12 Conference, AAC Commissioner Mike Aresco told ESPN on Friday. .
AAC regulations require schools to give 27 months’ notice before leaving and pay a redemption fee of $ 10 million. If these three schools followed the regulations, Aresco said, their release date would be July 1, 2024. Although conversations have yet to take place, Aresco said it expects them to initiate negotiations to adjust the exit fees.
“We usually do, because it’s not a good situation when you know someone is leaving,” he said. “A lot of times you can mitigate some of that by getting a higher exit fee again and having them leave sooner, so we’ll definitely be willing to negotiate that like we’ve done in the past and like others. conferences have done so in the past, but I still can’t tell you specifically at this point, no one has indicated what year. “
UCF athletic director Terry Mohajir said his school was “open to all options.”
“We’re going to see where we are with our contract with the American,” Mohajir said, “and all options are open for now.”
Meanwhile, Aresco said his conference plans to proceed “deliberately and quickly” to add two to four teams to strengthen the league to 10 or 12 teams after the three starts. Aresco declined to name specific schools the AAC is interested in, but said they would “only entertain institutions that have shown an interest in us.”
“We are not trying to poach, we are not trying to persuade,” he said. “There have been schools that have shown interest in us. I’m trying not to create instability in the system.… We’re just trying to regroup right now. We know we need to grow. It’s just a fact of life depending on what happened, but I’m trying not to mess things up. “
Aresco said the AAC would likely look for members in all sports, not just football, but it’s also a possibility.
“At the end of the day, we want to be stronger than we were,” he said. “We think there are schools interested in us that would help us do this.
“We would just like to find schools that think the same way, have this DNA of success, have a cultural, academic as well as social and cultural fit,” he added. “Geography matters to some extent, but it matters less and less because travel is so much better than before.”
Aresco has long advocated raising AAC to the same autonomy status that Power 5 conferences enjoy, and it has been pushing for its conference to make it “Power 6”. He reiterated on Friday that he would continue this effort with the new members while also working to change a system that makes it difficult for conferences to enter – and exit – this autonomous status.
“I think we’ll have a stronger case because the Big 12 has almost half of its members drawn from non-powerful ranks, if you include TCU and BYU,” he said. “The prevailing feeling is that we were a P6 and the system couldn’t adapt to that or wouldn’t adapt to that.”
“The decision has to come again from the legislative process within the NCAA,” said Houston President Renu Khator, who sits on the board of governors of the NCAA, the highest governing body of the NCAA. Aresco said he hopes UCF, Cincinnati and Houston succeed in the Big 12, and that several people from those schools have reached out – including an “absolutely lovely” message from Cincinnati coach Luke Fickell.
“You just can’t take this personally,” Aresco said. “It’s not fun to go through, and no one is going to pretend that you don’t make a happy face, but on the other hand, you have to. There is a human side to it. people who really did a good job at the conference and were loyal members and obviously they feel it is in their best interests to do what they are doing, and you have to respect that and move on. before.”
ESPN’s Andrea Adelson contributed to this report
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