Big 12 could add UCF, Cincinnati and Houston before 2024
In the latest conference expansion news, AAC schools UCF, Cincinnati and Houston could join the Big 12 before the expected 2024 season, according to ESPN’s Heather Dinich. The American Athletic Conference is willing to let the schools leave early for a larger fee, conference commissioner Mike Aresco said.
After much anticipation, the Big 12 officially extended invitations to those three schools and BYU on Friday.
AAC bylaws dictate that schools leaving the conference provide a 27-month notice and a $10 million buyout fee. If the three schools abided by that, they would be eligible to enter the Big 12 on July 1, 2024.
No conversations regarding an early exit have happened yet between Aresco and the schools, but the commissioner is expecting them to.
“We typically do, because it’s not a great situation when you when you know somebody’s leaving,” he said. “Often you can mitigate some of that by just again getting a larger exit fee and having them leave earlier so we’ll certainly be willing to negotiate that as we’ve done in the past and as other conferences have done in the past, but I can’t tell you precisely yet at this point, nobody’s indicated what year.”
UCF athletic director Terry Mohajir said his school is “open to any options.”
“We’re going to look at where we are with our contract with the American,” Mohajir said, “and all options are open right now.”
The Big 12 expansion is a huge blow to the AAC, but Aresco is not ready to give up on the conference. He said he will continue to advocate for the AAC to join the other Power 5 conferences and form a “Power 6.”
“I think we’ll have a stronger case because the Big 12 has almost half of its membership came from non-power ranks, if you include TCU and BYU,” he said. “The prevailing feeling is that we were a P6 and the system couldn’t accommodate that or wouldn’t accommodate that.”
Although he is certainly disappointed about the three schools’ decision to leave, he understand why they did so.
“You just cannot take this personally,” Aresco said. “It’s not fun to go through, and no one’s going to argue that you don’t put on a happy face, but on the other hand, you have to. There’s a human aspect to it. And these are all people who really did a nice job in the conference and were loyal members and obviously they feel it’s in their interest to do what they’re doing, and you have to respect that and move on.”