Aresco pens open letter on Power 5, Group of 5 branding

On Tuesday, May 9, 2023, the American Athletic Conference released an open letter by AAC commissioner Mike Aresco, addressing the Power 5 and Group of 5 branding. Below is the letter, in its entirety.

Back on March 9, I issued a statement calling for the elimination of the Power 5, or P5, label from the collegiate nomenclature and the public forum. The use of P5 has created a divide in Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) football that is not healthy and that is often not supported by competitive results on the field and court. The recent realignment in college athletics has further eroded the P5 concept.

Among the many issues and challenges currently facing college sports, the Power 5 (P5)-Group of Five (G5) divide and the immense harm it causes does not receive the attention afforded to health and safety, NIL, pay-to-play, the transfer portal, and other pressing issues. No one would argue that the latter list is not of the utmost importance and critical to the future of college athletics, but the P5 – G5 divide also deserves scrutiny. This letter will attempt to explain why this is so.

First and foremost, is it healthy to have created and furthered a P5 nomenclature in college sports that relegates half of the FBS conferences, regardless of their accomplishments, to a perceived second-class status that often causes these non-P5 conferences to be ignored in media articles and discussions? To have given it credibility quasi-officially? Is that inclusion? Is that a concern for student-athletes’ health and well-being? Is that pro-competitive? Is that furthering fair competition and equality of opportunity? The answer to all these questions is a resounding “no.”

Power 5 is a media-created term. The so-called P5 group also has an autonomy status in the NCAA that officially sets them apart in certain respects, but which does not confer competitive superiority per se. The autonomy status was conferred as part of the NCAA Governance Redesign of 2014, which afforded those five conferences the ability to enact legislation in certain areas, legislation that could be adopted by non-autonomy conferences if they so chose. With so much authority devolving to the conferences in the current NCAA governance landscape, it can be argued that the autonomy concept may eventually become unnecessary. Practically speaking, very little autonomy legislation has been passed in recent years.

The P5 have no pathway out of that status and there is no defined pathway into it either. It was essentially a self-selected group based mainly on financial clout, with no set of competitive metrics defining it, and passed by the NCAA membership. However, the autonomy debate is for another day. If the autonomy construct continues to exist, it should be treated as just that, an “inside baseball” NCAA-created legislative structure that does not confer “power” status in the competitive arena, and that is also exclusionary. The written in stone nature of that structure is another primary reason why it should not determine power status in the public conversation.

The compelling issue at hand is the manufactured P5 label and the attendant fallout that is damaging to college athletics. There is no question that if the autonomy protocol is finally abandoned, the P5 designation and the P5-G5 divide would have a harder time surviving, but there should be a conscious effort to discard the P5 and G5 labels regardless, an effort that should be supported by the NCAA and by the autonomy conferences themselves.

It is the corresponding media-driven P5 designation that has consigned over half of FBS football to a perceived second-class status. The P5 label is the culprit. This circumstance has affected the American Athletic Conference far more than the other so-called G5 conferences because, by virtually any measure-investment, enrollment, television exposure, size of markets, and especially athletic success in football - the American is most like the P5 conferences, and should not be victimized by a label.

This entire P5 branding business was essentially a self-fulfilling prophecy harmful to over half of FBS teams, and especially harmful to those FBS teams that are investing and achieving at the highest level, which the teams in our conference are doing. And make no mistake, it is harmful not only in a sports context, but in terms of academic prestige, public and private support, donor involvement, alumni engagement, and student recruitment, retention, and perception. It is now outdated, even if one believed in it back in the day, because, among other things, two so-called P5 conferences have lost the marquee teams that gave them that designation in the first place. P5 conference performance on the field and court has often been no more than equal or not even as good as that of our conference. And, just as important, our conference has the same or similar goals. The American in particular has the same issues and challenges, the same larger markets, and similar television and media exposure, not to mention a competitive record over a decade that matched, or exceeded at times, several P5 conferences.

All conferences, including autonomy conferences, should actively discourage the use of P5 and G5 labels. The autonomy conferences do not refer to themselves as P5 conferences internally, although their memberships use P5 in the public forum. The media actually coined the term to replace the former Bowl Championship Series (BCS) description, and it often made little or no sense even during the last decade. The harmful divide that has developed can trace its roots to the advent of the BCS in 1998, which designated selected conferences as annual participants in BCS bowl games. The divide accelerated with the advent of the College Football Playoff, wherein the BCS label morphed into the media-invented P5. This divide did not exist in any meaningful way back in the College Football Association days of the 1980’s and 1990’s. No divisive nomenclature and arbitrary classification existed back then.

Whenever a so-called non-P5 school wins the national championship in men’s basketball, as the American did in 2014, three national championships in women’s basketball, as the American did in 2014, 2015 and 2016, or makes the College Football Playoff, as the American did in 2021, or in addition makes (seven times) and wins (four times) a New Year’s Day Bowl game against a top ten team or makes the men’s Final Four and the Elite Eight and the Sweet Sixteen, how are those teams “non-power”? It is absurd, and proof that the power moniker makes no sense competitively. The fact that so-called P5 teams that have not achieved at that level are still deemed “power” teams is an absurdity on its face. Another absurdity involves realignment, where Group of Five teams instantly become Power Five teams simply by signing a piece of paper.

It is time to retire the P5 moniker and shift the focus and nomenclature to the ten FBS conferences. We at the American strongly support that concept and urge the media to focus on the ten FBS conferences. Each FBS conference should be judged and characterized on whether it has achieved elite status, on whether it is powerful in its own right, and not as the beneficiary of an arbitrary label. We have no illusions about the difficulty of achieving change in this area, but this is a battle worth fighting.

Back in 2021, after a decade-long P6 campaign supported by the highest level of achievement on the field and court, especially in the all-important sport of football, we wrote a letter signed by all of the American’s board members to the then-chairs of the P5 conferences advocating for inclusion in the autonomy group, which would have constituted one path to P6 status. The letter made an extremely persuasive case, and remains relevant today despite the recent realignment which will take effect in 2023. However, we will now adopt a generic power brand in lieu of Power 6, or P6, branding, as we no longer want to give credence to that grouping’s exclusionary nature. This conference has been and remains powerful. Since that letter, which detailed years of the highest-level accomplishments, was written, the American has placed a team in the College Football Playoff, has won another New Year’s Day Bowl game (Tulane’s thrilling victory over USC on January 2, 2023), placed a team in the Final Four and Elite Eight, had a #1 seed in the 2023 NCAA Men’s Tournament and achieved considerable success in Olympic sports.

The American has mocked the P5 label by proving its ability on the football field. We have played 186 games against P5 schools and Notre Dame since 2013, and as this demonstrates, our football scheduling has had us already firmly ensconced in the P5 world and competing at an elite level. We have more than 150 upcoming football P5/Notre Dame opponents over the next decade as well. We have participated in eight New Year’s bowl games against P5 opponents since 2013, including a playoff game. We have bowl tie-ins involving several P5 conferences, including two with the Atlantic Coast Conference (“ACC”). The quality of our coaches is first-rate.

The American has a highly lucrative television-media agreement with ESPN/ABC, and our financial position permits us to do what conferences referred to as P5 do under autonomous legislation, and to compete easily at their level. Our television/media agreement provides national exposure equivalent to what they receive. Our football championship game has been televised nationally on ABC in each of its eight years of existence. We have played in 192 telecasts with one million or more viewers, including 106 telecasts with two million or more viewers, 52 telecasts with three million or more viewers and 26 telecasts with four million or more viewers. Our Black Friday game between UCF and USF in 2017 had 5,364,858 viewers. The 2021 Peach Bowl game between the Cincinnati Bearcats and the Georgia Bulldogs had 8.8 million+ viewers, the most-viewed New Year’s Six game that year outside of the two CFP semifinal games. We have had 2,811 hours of football televised on ESPN/ABC and CBS Sports Network platforms since 2013, and 6,082 hours of men’s and women’s basketball televised on ESPN and CBS platforms since 2013.

Whether the American or any other FBS conference officially becomes an autonomy conference in the future, or whether the autonomy structure is eventually dissolved, the use of Power Five, or P5, is a separate matter and that use can be discontinued at any time.

It is profoundly wrong to continue to pigeonhole our high-achieving conference into an arbitrary space that does not match our scale, impact and tangible achievements at the highest level. It would be wrong to do the same to any other conference that achieves at a high level. Upward mobility, opportunity and inclusion are hallmarks of the American experience and apply no less to college sports than to other areas, as college sports are a key component of the American experience.

How often do we hear NCAA members extolling the value of inclusion and the importance of student-athlete well-being? Yet the current system, and the media narrative, exclude, devalue and diminish the very real achievements of over half of FBS football. The current system and nomenclature, in ways obvious and also subtle, reduces half of FBS college football to a perceived irrelevancy, to a second-class citizenship that is not healthy and that it does not deserve. This has to stop. The NCAA and the select five conferences cannot tout inclusion as a major goal and value and yet continue tacitly or overtly to accept the P5 label, which excludes half of FBS football from meaningful participation and discussion on that basis. Diversity and exclusion are not an acceptable pairing.

It is important to note that the College Football Playoff, with its 6-6 structure in which the top six conference champions and six at-large teams are selected for post-season participation, has now created a playing field that does not afford any official advantage to any conference. It treats all FBS conferences equally. That is an important step in the right direction. Under the new CFP approach, all conferences are afforded an equal opportunity to compete and to gain playoff access.

The meaning of “Power 5” has been degraded in the current playoff and realignment environment. Because there is no identified path in or out of the self-selected and media-designated P5 group, there is no reason to retain a designation that has created special privileges and that has unfairly blocked and even mocked upward mobility. The world changes. The New Year’s Six “contract bowls,” which were one marker of P5 status, will soon disappear as the College Football Playoff expands. The P5 designation is not written in stone.

The recent wave of realignment has further changed the lay of the land, and it has also clarified the P5 situation. As conferences go, it is clear that in terms of conference competitiveness and strength and other measurables, the gap between the #2 and the #3 conferences is now far greater than between #3 and the American. We have argued for a decade that the gap between the P5 and our conference in terms of competitiveness was very small and often nonexistent. Our on-field success proved it time and again. Even after the impending realignment which was set in motion over the past two years, we, the American are, ironically, going to be closer to two of the P5 conferences than we were before, as they will be losing their marquee teams, and one of them will be adding three of our current teams and BYU, a full third of their membership. And we have always been extremely competitive with the other three conferences as well.

One could argue that if the “power” conference moniker were still deemed to exist, it is now P2 and everyone else. But it would be far more beneficial for college sports and for its student-athletes to see the P5 and P2 monikers retired once and for all, to have all ten FBS conferences considered for inclusion in any media football discussions and media articles, to have an inclusive model, not an arbitrarily exclusive one.

We reject the concept of a P5-G5 divide that creates a caste system, that suggests second-class citizenship for five FBS conferences and also often excludes FCS and Division I conferences entirely from the discussion. Within the arbitrary and self-selected categorization of P5, we are and have been clearly a P6 conference, but we will transition to a more generic “Power” branding that can be supported by real accomplishments or debunked by lack of them.

It is my responsibility to promote and defend our conference, to make sure that we are nationally relevant, that we continue striving at the highest level and that we are recognized when we succeed (against all odds, I might add). But as someone who shares with my conference colleagues a deep concern for the greater good of college football and college athletics, I support doing away with the P5 and G5 labels and focusing on the ten FBS conferences. The G5 label is almost certain to go away officially in the new CFP agreement and structure, and I implore the media also to discard it and to refer to the FBS conferences simply by their names and their FBS status. The media should also abandon the practice of separating its coverage into P5 and G5 categories, and of often ignoring the G5 altogether. It would not be difficult to consider all ten FBS conferences in media coverage, and to include whichever of the ten deserve coverage based on competitive merit. The P5 and G5 labels, and the damage they inflict, should once and for all be consigned to a bygone chapter of college sports history.

Sincerely,

Michael L. Aresco
Commissioner
American Athletic Conference