One Group of Five conference in particular is challenging Power Five hegemony. The AAC dominates the Group of Five power rankings entering Week 6.
No matter how hard that any Group of Five conference pushes their Power Five counterparts, they are never going to be guaranteed a seat at the big table under the current structure of the College Football Playoff system. But as the Bowl Coalition and Bowl Alliance and BCS all taught us, there is no such thing as a permanent system in college football.
Not that long ago, the Big East was right there with the other major conferences as one of the automatic-qualifying leagues in the BCS. After that conference’s evolution into the American Athletic Conference, its position among the major leagues — always tenuous even when it enjoyed AQ status — lasted only through the conclusion of the BCS era.
Left out of the loop when the College Football Playoff came online, the AAC has fought to challenge the Power Five and expand that number to a Power Six. But action speaks louder than words, and all the money spent on commercials to this effect has far less impact than making a statement on the football field.
This year, the AAC appears to be doing just that. In the Colley Matrix, one of the six former BCS computer rankings, the American is rated higher than the ACC at this point of the season. Massey, another computer ranking from the BCS era, has the AAC West ranked higher than the ACC Coastal, while the Sagarin rankings at USA Today have thee AAC West barely behind the Coastal.
The AAC’s overall strength is reflected in this week’s Group of Five Power Rankings, where five of the top 10 spots are occupied by teams from that league. Who made the cut? Keep reading to see the current pecking order among the Group of Five’s best programs.