Dude is everywhere fighting the good fight.
http://www.tulsaworld.com/blogs/sports/j...d059c.html
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Meanwhile, at $72.3 million in revenue this year, the American Athletic Conference — home of the University of Tulsa — is well ahead of leagues like the Big East ($50.2 million with no football), the Mountain West ($31.5 million), Conference USA ($24.5 million) and Atlantic 10 ($16.5 million with no football), but still way, way behind the elite money makers.
And those figures still don’t include third-tier money from conference networks like the Big Ten, Pac-12 and SEC.
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He discussed the AAC’s decision to compete with the Power 5 — he hates that term, by the way, since it connotes greater power on the playing field, which is patently false. In addition to national championships in both men’s and women’s basketball, the AAC also boasts a champion, Central Florida, that pounded Big 12 flag bearer Baylor 52-42 in the Fiesta Bowl.
And Baylor, you’ll recall, obliterated Texas 30-10, the third time in four years the Bears defeated the Longhorns — the same Longhorns that continue to lead the nation (by a lot) in both expenditures and revenue, but whose football program is just 30-20 the last four seasons and got so bad it had to all but fire a legendary coach.
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“I don’t see this as a doom and gloom scenario at all. It’s gonna be challenging. No one’s arguing it isn’t. We understand there are some real challenges here. But we need to be competitive, and that, I think, will change public perceptions.”
Aresco adheres to the idea of giving student-athletes the full cost of attendance — “That’s something as a conference we are going to do. All our schools are behind it. All our schools feel it’s the right thing to do. And we know we need to do it,” he said — and said that because the 85-scholarship limit in football remains static and transfer restrictions were not amended, the AAC “is going to be stronger than the old Big East Conference was as a BCS conference.
“We essentially can compete. We have resources. Whether we have the resources they have is not really the issue.”
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Moving forward, Aresco’s goal is to eradicate the term Power 5 and whatever perceptions come with it.
“We’re a power conference,” he said. “That’s the one term I don’t like. I don’t know where it came from. It was never used before. Sure, to say someone was from a BCS conference was a clear differentiator in the old system, the last 16 years or whatever it’s been, no question.
“The other thing I would point out is we feel we’re aligned with them. We believe in what they believe in. We think we should be in that room. We’re not in there yet. We’re gonna try to knock that door down eventually.”
