Coach Andy Mac
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IRVING, Texas – The American Athletic Conference Board of Directors and Commissioner Mike Aresco announced today that six universities have had their applications for membership in The American approved by the conference’s nine continuing members.
The six new institutions, whose membership in The American will begin on a date to be determined, will be:
The University of Alabama at Birmingham – Birmingham, Alabama
Florida Atlantic University – Boca Raton, Florida
The University of North Carolina at Charlotte – Charlotte, North Carolina
The University of North Texas – Denton, Texas
Rice University – Houston, Texas
The University of Texas at San Antonio – San Antonio, Texas
The six universities will join the nine continuing members – East Carolina, Memphis, Navy (football only), South Florida, SMU, Temple, Tulane, Tulsa and Wichita State (basketball and Olympic sports only) - to bring The American’s membership to 15 schools. The American will compete as a 14-team league in football and in men’s and women’s basketball, among other sports.
“On behalf of the American Athletic Conference presidents, I look forward to years of healthy competition with our six new members,” said Michael Fitts, President of Tulane University and Chair of The American’s Board of Directors. “I am confident that we have not only added fine institutions that share our collective ambition for national success, but we have done so in a deliberate and sensible way that will contribute to the long-term future of the conference.”
“I am extremely pleased to welcome these six outstanding universities to the American Athletic Conference,” said Aresco. “This is a strategic expansion that accomplishes a number of goals as we take the conference into its second decade. We are adding excellent institutions that are established in major cities and have invested in competing at the highest level. We have enhanced geographical concentration which will especially help the conference’s men’s and women’s basketball and Olympic sports teams. And we will continue to provide valuable inventory to our major media rights partner, ESPN, which will feature our members on the most prominent platforms in sports media. Additionally, we increase the value in live content options for CBS Sports, which features selected men’s basketball games from the conference.”
The American will have a presence in four of the top 10, seven of the top 25 and 12 of the top 51 Nielsen media markets. The league will have four teams in the state of Texas, two each in Florida and North Carolina and one each in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Louisiana, Tennessee, Alabama, Oklahoma and Kansas.
The University of Alabama at Birmingham was founded in 1969 and enrolls more than 22,500 undergraduate and graduate students. The university holds R1 research status in the Carnegie Classification and is a national leader in health care and administration, including the No. 1-ranked master’s program in health care management by U.S. News & World Report. The university is centrally located among The American’s membership and is situated in the Birmingham DMA, which has been ranked No. 1 nationally in college football television ratings for 19 consecutive years.
UAB has recently enjoyed several years of record enrollment, and welcomed its largest-ever freshman class this fall. One in four residents of Birmingham are UAB students, employees or patients of the UAB Health System, while the university accounts for one in every 31 jobs in the state of Alabama.
UAB sponsors 18 sports, including 15 that will compete in the American Athletic Conference. The Blazers have won two Conference USA championships since the return of football in 2017 and partnered with the city of Birmingham and the Birmingham Jefferson Civic Center to introduce the 42,000-seat Protective Stadium in 2021. UAB has made 15 NCAA tournament appearance in men’s basketball, advancing to the Eight Eight in 1982, and has 10 postseason appearances in women’s basketball, including an NCAA Sweet 16.
In addition to Protective Stadium, UAB has developed a 46,000-square-foot football operations center and is constructing a state-of-the-art basketball practice facility that will be completed in the spring of 2022. The Blazers’ baseball team plays at the 8,500-seat Regions Field, while the track and field teams compete at the Birmingham CrossPlex, which has hosted four American Athletic Conference indoor championships, and an outdoor complex that opened in 2019. The men’s and women’s soccer teams play at the 5,000-seat BBVA Field, which is considered among the nation’s finest on-campus soccer-only facilities.
The University of North Carolina at Charlotte was founded in 1946 and has rapidly become North Carolina’s urban research university, providing critical discovery, business incubation and workforce development for the Charlotte region and beyond. It is the third-largest institution in the UNC System with nearly 30,500 undergraduate and graduate students and more than 150,000 living alumni. UNC Charlotte is recognized nationally as a leader in innovation, social mobility and student success.
Charlotte sponsors 18 varsity sports, all of which will compete in The American. The 49ers’ football program began in 2013, moved to the FBS level in 2015 and played in a bowl game for the first time in 2019. The men’s basketball program, which began NCAA Division I play in the 1970-71 season, became the youngest to reach the NCAA Final Four when the 49ers played in the 1977 national semifinals. Charlotte has made 11 NCAA tournament appearances in men’s basketball and has made 15 NCAA appearances in men’s soccer, including two College Cup appearances.
The 49ers unveiled Jerry Richardson Stadium in 2013, in conjunction with the launch of the football program. The facility was constructed to be expandable to 40,000 seats and is adjacent to the Judy Rose Football Center, which houses the football operations and administrative functions. The basketball and volleyball programs play in the 9,105-seat Halton Arena, while the baseball and softball teams play in newly renovated facilities within the 49ers' on campus athletics complex. Belk Track and Field Center/Transamerica Field is a 4,000-seat venue that has hosted numerous NCAA soccer tournament matches and is also home to the 49ers' accomplished track and field program.
Florida Atlantic University was established in 1961 and serves more than 30,000 undergraduate and graduate students representing all 50 states and 140 countries. FAU is the most diverse public university in the state of Florida and has been designated as a Hispanic-Serving Institution by the United States Department of Education.
FAU’s main campus, in Boca Raton, is located less than three miles from the Atlantic Ocean. The university is part of the Miami-Fort Lauderdale media market, which is ranked No. 18 by Nielsen and is a key recruiting area both locally and nationally.
FAU’s recent investment in athletics includes the 2020 opening of the $49 million Schmidt Family Complex for Academic and Athletic Excellence, a modern facility that houses the football suite, academic computer labs and an 11,600-square-foot weight and cardio room.
FAU sponsors 19 sports, including 18 that will compete in The American. The Owls’ football program began in the 2001 season and debuted the near-30,000-seat FAU Stadium in 2011 and has won three conference titles, including two Conference USA championships in the last four years. The Owls have made five bowl appearances, going 4-1 in bowls. The baseball program has made 12 NCAA regional appearances.
The University of North Texas was established in 1890 and currently enrolls more than 42,000 students and counts nearly 500,000 living alumni. North Texas is one of the nation’s largest and most diverse universities, with recognition as both a Minority-Serving Institution and a Hispanic-Serving Institution. The university holds R1 research status from the Carnegie Classification.
North Texas has embarked on a 20-year plan to modernize all of the institution’s athletics facilities and provide added support to student-athletes. The first phases of that project included a 98,000-square-foot indoor practice facility and a new soccer and track and field stadium – both of which opened in 2019.
North Texas has 16 varsity sports, all of which will compete in The American. The Mean Green football team played in the Conference USA championship game in 2017 and won four consecutive conference titles from 2001-04. North Texas won the 2021 conference title in men’s basketball and advanced to the second round of the NCAA Championship, while the Mean Green women’s soccer team has never had a losing season, has won 16 conference championships and has advanced to seven NCAA tournaments in 26 years. North Texas has won four NCAA championships in men’s golf.
Located on a 300-acre forested campus in Houston, Rice University is consistently ranked among the nation’s top 20 universities by U.S. News & World Report. Rice has highly respected schools of Architecture, Business, Continuing Studies, Engineering, Humanities, Music, Natural Sciences and Social Sciences and is home to the Baker Institute for Public Policy. With 4,052 undergraduates and 3,484 graduate students, Rice’s undergraduate student-to-faculty ratio is just under 6-to-1. Its residential college system builds close-knit communities and lifelong friendships, just one reason why Rice is ranked No. 1 for lots of race/class interaction and No. 1 for quality of life by the Princeton Review. Rice is also rated as a best value among private universities by Kiplinger’s Personal Finance.
Rice has invested in a number of capital projects to support athletics at the highest level. Recent enhancements to the athletics profile include construction of a football operations center, a new indoor training facility, the endowment of the head coaching position and an AstroTurf game field at Rice Stadium. Additional upgrades include enhanced locker rooms, lounges and meeting spaces for basketball and volleyball at Tudor Fieldhouse; premium seating, an indoor batting facility and a next-generation pitching and batting lab at Reckling Park; the opening of the state-of-the-art George R. Brown Tennis Center; and the opening of a new team building for soccer, cross country and track and field teams.
Rice’s addition to The American maintains the conference’s presence in the city of Houston, the nation’s fifth-largest metropolitan area and home to the headquarters of 22 Fortune 500 companies.
Rice sponsors 16 varsity sports that will compete in the American Athletic Conference. Rice was a charter member of the Southwest Conference and has a football pedigree that includes three Cotton Bowl wins as well as an Orange Bowl victory. The Owls won the 2003 NCAA Championship in baseball and have made seven College World Series appearances.
The University of Texas at San Antonio is a Hispanic Serving Institution that is on a rapid trajectory to become a model for student success, a great public research university, and an exemplar for strategic growth and innovative excellence. To achieve this bold vision, UTSA is advancing a $500 million capital campaign and a $500 million academic capital projects effort.
Since its founding in 1969, UTSA has become a prosperity engine for San Antonio and a driver of social mobility for its graduates. The university serves 34,700 students pursuing bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees in science, engineering, business, architecture, education, liberal and fine arts and health. Fifty-seven percent of UTSA’s students are Hispanic, and 45% will be the first in their families to earn a college degree. Its alumni network of more than 142,000 spans all 50 states.
As an urban serving university, UTSA is tackling society’s grand challenges, drawing on its academic and research specialties include health, cybersecurity, fundamental futures and social-economic transformation. The university is consistently recognized in Times Higher Education’s World University Rankings. It is also on the fast track to earn Texas’ National Research University Fund eligibility and the prestigious R1 designation from the Carnegie Classification.
UTSA develops champions on the field, in the classroom and in life. It is the only public NCAA Division I institution in the city of San Antonio, the nation’s seventh largest city, and one of the largest in the nation without an NFL franchise. It is the second-largest city in Texas, has one of the largest Hispanic populations in the United States and is home to more than 400 corporate headquarters. San Antonio has hosted 19 NCAA Championships since 1997, including four Men’s Final Fours and three Women’s Final Fours. UTSA will host the 2025 Men’s Final Four.
UTSA sponsors 17 varsity sports, all of which will compete in The American. The Roadrunners play their home football games at the 64,000-seat Alamodome. Their first home football game in 2011 garnered 56,743 spectators. UTSA tied an NCAA record by reaching a bowl game in their sixth season with their appearance in the 2016 New Mexico Bowl while the university made its second bowl appearance in 2020 with its trip to the First Responder Bowl.
UTSA unveiled its 95,000-square-foot Roadrunner Athletics Center of Excellence in August and is embarking on an expansive athletics capital projects effort to develop a new 10,000-seat arena for basketball and volleyball, new baseball and softball stadiums, a dedicated basketball/volleyball training facility and a standalone facility for soccer and track-and-field.
The six new members join a conference that has achieved unprecedented success in the league’s first eight seasons. In football alone, Memphis has registered three 10-win seasons in the last six years (2015, 2017, 2019), including a school-record 12 wins and a Cotton Bowl appearance in 2019. Navy won a program-record 11 games in 2015 and matched that mark in 2019. Temple enjoyed its first 10-win season in school history in 2015. South Florida finished in the top 25 for the first two times in program history (2016, 2017). SMU returned to national prominence in 2019 with a 10-win season, during which the Mustangs were ranked as high as No. 14 nationally. Tulsa returned to the top 25 for the first time in 11 years in 2020. East Carolina earned a top-20 ranking in 2014, while Tulane has played in three consecutive bowl games for the first time in school history. Wichita State has made two NCAA tournament appearances in men’s basketball, won The American’s 2021 regular-season title and has been ranked as high as No. 3 in the Associated Press poll since the Shockers joined the conference in 2017.
The American Athletic Conference was reconstituted in 2013 and serves its members from its headquarters in Irving, Texas. The American sponsors 22 championships, 10 for men and 12 for women, has television partnerships with ESPN, CBS Sports (for select men’s basketball games) and CBS Sports Network (for most Navy home football games), and has a marketing partnership with Learfield.-
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“Every week, there’s some interest from some particular party,” Thompson said. “Everyone is trying to get to that spot where they feel the most comfortable, and certainly our institutions had explorations in places other than the Mountain West conference. That’s just the nature of college athletics in 2021.
“There were discussions. You look at the full parameter, all the different metrics from attendance, budget, facilities, recruiting, geography. There are so many metrics you can look at. We probably displayed something like 50 or 60 various charts throughout the last couple weeks and months.”
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The American Athletic Conference is on the cusp of expanding.
The league will be examining expansion and is expecting applications from six schools this week: Florida Atlantic, Charlotte, North Texas, UTSA, Rice and UAB, sources told Yahoo Sports.
The schools applying to the conference is a critical step in the formal process for new members, and the acceptance of the six schools is typically considered a formality in these situations. The process is expected to play out through the course of this week with applications sent as soon as Tuesday, sources told Yahoo Sports.
These additions would boost the AAC to a 14-team conference in football and basketball. (Navy is a football-only member and Wichita State is a full member that plays basketball but lacks a football program.) It would radically reshape Conference USA, which is poised to lose six members in key markets.
The additions come in the wake of the AAC losing three key schools to the Big 12 this fall – Cincinnati, UCF and Houston. UConn also departed following the 2019 season.
One of the guiding philosophies of the AAC’s expansion was to grow through fertile recruiting areas. The AAC expansion committee included a prominent crew of athletic directors from the conference – USF’s Mike Kelly, Memphis’ Laird Veatch, SMU’s Rick Hart and Navy’s Chet Gladchuk.
While the size of television markets is no longer as critical of a guiding principle in conference decisions, this move for the AAC allows the league’s ESPN television contract to grow promising programs through exposure. And it doesn’t hurt that they are all situated in major metropolitan areas that can rally around success. (UTSA, which is 7-0, just got ranked for the first time this week, for example.)
It’s the similar formula that helped Cincinnati emerge into a College Football Playoff contender this season, and both Houston and UCF to reach New Year’s Six bowl games in the past decade.
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“We will be much better without those six schools,” a C-USA source said. “The AAC will see their College Football Playoff rankings drop in the Group of Five. We have a chance to leapfrog them. This is a good day for C-USA.”
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DENTON, Texas -- — Grant Wells passed for 323 yards and two touchdowns, ran for three more and Marshall routed North Texas 49-21 on Friday night.
Marshall (4-3, 2-1 Conference USA) scored touchdowns on six consecutive possessions in the first half with Wells, who completed 24 of 32 passes, connecting with eight receivers. The defense forced five punts and five turnovers on downs on 14 North Texas drives.
Rasheen Ali, who gained 109 yards on 20 carries, burst up the middle, spun out of a tackle and finished an 8-yard scoring run for the Herd's first touchdown.
Grant Wells scored all three rushing touchdowns on 3-yard keepers.
An interception plus an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty gave Marshall possession at the 33 and Wells found Xavier Gaines over the middle at about the 24 for a touchdown.
read more: https://www.espn.com/college-football/recap/_/gameId/401282231
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Marshall vs North Texas How To Watch
Date: Friday, October 15
Game Time: 7:00 ET
Venue: Apogee Stadium, Denton, TX
How To Watch: CBS Sports Network
Record: Marshall (3-3), North Texas (1-4)
What’s Going To Happen
This is a strange North Texas team that could use a bit of a lucky break.
It at least made the score look okay against Missouri, and it hung around against Louisiana Tech, but it couldn’t get a key third down stop.
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One of the first calls Phil Bennett made after agreeing to take over as North Texas defensive coordinator a few months ago was to an old friend.
If Bennett was going to get back into coaching, he wanted Jim Gush by his side. Bennett considers Gush one of the best football coaches he knows and a friend.
Gush agreed and is now in his 19th season coaching with Bennett. UNT's linebackers coach helped Bennett through one of the toughest times in his life. Bennett lost his wife, Nancy, in 1999 when she was struck by lightning while jogging.
Bennett and Gush were assistant coaches at Kansas State at the time. Their bond is as strong as ever as the Mean Green prepare for a rare Friday night game against Marshall this week.
The story detailing their friendship is available exclusively to our newsletter subscribers.
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Updated as of this morning:
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4. Can Mizzou’s offensive line recapture September success?
Mizzou’s offensive line could use a mulligan. Tennessee’s defensive front terrorized the Tigers last week with continuous pressure on quarterback Connor Bazelak while yielding no running room for Badie. The line’s poor performance — 13 pressures allowed — surprised Drinkwitz and contributed to both of Bazelak’s interceptions. Pass protection had been a strength through the season’s first month, but whether the Tigers were out-schemed or just whipped at the point of attack, they couldn’t keep the orange out of the backfield. Bazelak doesn’t have the natural mobility to live life on the run, and without running alleys for Badie the Tigers don’t have a chance to sustain drives. Missouri tackles Javon Foster (left) and Hyrin White (right) face another challenge Saturday against North Texas identical twins Grayson and Gabriel Murphy, the Mean Green’s top edge rushers who, naturally, have posted the same number of pressures, a dozen each through four games.
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Rumors are swirling. This will be the last dominoes before the AAC likely expands next week. Three teams are AAC bound: AFA, CSU and UAB. The fourth team will end up being...Charlotte. Yes, Charlotte. According to one of our more reliable sources (Matt Brown), they are getting more play than UTSA, Rice, UNT, or FAU.
West: Air Force, CSU, Tulsa, Navy, SMU, Memphis
East: UAB, Charlotte, ECU, USF, Temple, Tulane
The Mountain West is up next. They decide it's time to get into Texas, and it makes more sense to grab four for travel: Rice, UTEP, UTSA, and North Texas. West: SDSU, Boise State, SJSU, Fresno State, UNLV, Nevada, Hawaii Mountain: USU, Wyoming, UNM, Rice, UTEP, UTSA, North Texas
The MAC looks around and stays put.
The Sun Belt then adds 2: Southern Miss and Marshall
West: Louisiana, USM, Texas State, UL Monroe, Ark St, USA
East: Marshall, CCU, App St, Georgia St, Troy, Georgia So
This leaves C-USA with 6 schools. Their options include adding NMSU, Liberty, UMass, and digging into FCS. They choose to add Liberty, NMSU, and JMU, and UMass as a football-only.
North: UMass, JMU, ODU, Liberty, WKU South: LaTech, NMSU, MTSU, FAU, FIU
LINK: https://csnbbs.com/showthread.php?mode=linear&tid=930871&pid=17685452
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Texas A&M University-Commerce will make a special announcement today that some sources are reporting will be that the Lions are leaving the Lone Star Conference in athletics to join the Southland Conference.
A&M-Commerce, which is a charter member of the LSC, announced two public events on Tuesday related to a special announcement which will have significant impact on the institution and its intercollegiate athletics program.
A&M-Commerce, then called East Texas State, was one of five universities to found the LSC on April 25, 1931 at a meeting in Denton. The other four universities, North Texas State, Sam Houston State, Southwest Texas State and Stephen F. Austin have since left the conference.
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It’s over guys.
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North Texas’ offense has shown a bit more change since last season than expected. North Carolina transfer Jace Ruder stepped in and won the starting quarterback job over incumbent Austin Aune, while injuries at the running back position caused DeAndre Torrey to step into the feature back role after lining up at slot receiver to start fall camp.
Unfortunately for the Mean Green, Torrey is questionable for this Saturday. Jace Ruder may need to win this game with his arm given the injury streak at the running back position. Look for Roderic Burns and Deonte Simpson to be targeted often throughout the evening.
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in Mean Green Football
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