The NCAA Board of Directors is set to take a highly significant vote Thursday that would make the five richest athletic conferences even more powerful, but one of the outsiders looking in is not worried.
According to Inside Higher Ed, American Athletic Conference (AAC) Commissioner Michael Aresco does not foresee trouble in his future. While the Power Five are likely to get more wiggle room in the NCAA's basic rules and guidelines, Aresco does not think the playing field will be altered any more than it is currently.
Speaking during the AAC's Media Days event, Aresco noted that the AAC is rising to prominence even while the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12 and SEC dominate college athletics in terms of revenues.
"We hear that the new NCAA governance system, which allows autonomy in limited areas, will cause us somehow to be left behind, that resources of those conferences are simply too great," he said in his address. "I don't buy that for a minute and what we did this year proves it."
In the final rankings from the Associated Press' top 25, Central Florida finished 10th and Louisville 15th. Therefore, the AAC had just as many teams in the top 15 as four of the five power conferences.
Aresco argued that the AAC was like any non-Power-Five conference, upset at being "left out of the room." But he suggested his conference "should be in that room."
The NCAA's proposition to give the Power Five more autonomy is likely to include allowing school leaders to grant their scholarship student-athletes more than just the cost of admission. According to a news release announcing the proposal, the Power Five would have a lower approval threshold for passing new bylaws.
The ultimate goal is to give the five richest conferences more say over their own governance and the new model is to go to a NCAA Board of Directors vote Thursday, Aug. 7.
