The American would be decimated by loss of UCF, Cincinnati, Houston

The AAC — aka, The American — has been trying to position themselves as a powerful football and basketball conference, but the news of possible defections could halt that march indefinitely.

It’s being reported by ESPN that four schools — UCF, Houston, Cincinnati, and football independent BYU — have all applied for admission to the Big XII, a conference trying to rebuild after learning their top two teams — Texas and Oklahoma — will be leaving for the SEC.

The loss of those three top teams would leave The American decimated from a football standpoint.

If you want to know just how important UCF, Houston, and Cincinnati are to The American look no further than its football champions

Since the formation of The American in 2013, UCF has won three outright championships and one shared, Houston has won a single championship, and Cincinnati has one outright and a shared championship.

The only championship outliers from those three teams were Temple in 2016, and Memphis in 2019 (who also won a share of the 2014 championship with Cincy and UCF).

The American can’t afford to lose their premier programs

To further the importance of the three top programs in The American, Cincinnati finished No. 8 in the final College Football Playoff rankings in 2020 before losing to Georgia in the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl and finished the 2019 season ranked No. 21 by the playoff committee.

UCF finished the 2018 regular season ranked No. 8, and finished No. 12 following the 2017 season. Houston finished the 2015 season ranked No. 18 by the playoff committee.

Those three teams are in some way continually keeping The American in the national discussion year after year.

That could all end if their applications to join the Big XII are approved.

Not only would the loss of three teams put a. huge dent in the number of teams residing in The American (something many of these schools have gone through before prior to the formation of the conference) but arguably the top three teams in the conference would opt to leave the beleaguered Group of Five for a Power-5 shot at the playoff.

But really, who can blame them?

Most recently, Cincinnati finished the 2020 regular season undefeated without even getting to sniff a shot at making the College Football Playoff. In 2017, undefeated UCF went on to drub SEC powerhouse Auburn in the Peach Bowl, and Cincinnati took another SEC flex, Georgia, to the wire last year.

The familiar echoing chant from those who think The American is a soft conference in a softer group of conferences has been “join the Power-5 and see if you can run the table”.

Well, it seems that’s exactly what these three big fish in a little pond intend to do.

The unfortunate fact is that in their hurry to speed out of the pond, they’ll be leaving the rest of The American in their wake, becoming splintered and weakened, and possibly to look at joining forces with another conference just to keep up with the times.

The Alliance is trying to keep up with the SEC, the Big XII is trying to keep up with The Alliance, and Big XII commissioner Bob Bowlsby is just trying to preserve his conference and his job, while ranked Group of Five teams just want a fair shake at a national title.

Everyone is chasing something, and the smaller FBS programs are the ones who will suffer.

This is what college football has become, and it’s only going to get worse.