The American Athletic Conference is the gold standard for what in basketball might be called the mid-major conferences. The league has generally been in a limbo of sorts, closer to the bottom of the Power 5 conferences than to the other Group of 5 leagues, and that will likely be the case again in 2022 before conference realignment ends an era.
In 2023, Cincinnati, UCF and Houston, three of the four teams that have represented the league in a New Year’s Six bowl or the College Football Playoff, will head to the Big 12 and will be replaced by six teams from Conference USA (Charlotte, Florida Atlantic, North Texas, UTSA, Rice and UAB). It was a quantity-over-known-quality move, and we’ll see if it pays off. No matter what, the complexion of the AAC will change.
But we can wait until 2023 to talk about that. For one more go-round, we get to watch Cincinnati, Houston and potentially UCF square off for the AAC crown. Can Luke Fickell and Cincinnati maintain their dominance? Is this Houston’s moment? Can a team like SMU or Memphis make a charge? Let’s find out as we look at the top five teams in the conference.
Every week through the offseason, Bill Connelly will preview another division from the Group of 5 and Power 5 exclusively for ESPN+, ultimately including all 131 FBS teams. The previews will include 2021 breakdowns, 2022 previews and burning questions for each team.
Earlier previews: American, Nos. 6-11 | MWC West | MWC Mountain
2021 recap
There were plenty of interesting, secondary stories in the AAC — Houston’s charge to second place, UCF’s rickety start (and exciting finish) under Gus Malzahn among them — but only four words mattered in 2021: Cincinnati to the playoff.
The Bearcats charged to their second straight unbeaten regular season, scoring a marquee win over Notre Dame and nearly losing focus down the stretch before holding it together. They beat Houston by 15 in the AAC championship game to reach 13-0, and thanks in part to three power conferences crowning two-loss champions — thereby leaving the CFP committee with no choice but to include them — the Bearcats secured the honor of playing Alabama in the Cotton Bowl. They were the first G5 representative in the final four, and hey, they fared better against the Tide than Big Ten champion Michigan fared against Georgia in the other semifinal.
2022 projections
Cincinnati loses a set of breakthrough stars whose absence almost assures regression in 2022. Fickell has proven to be outstanding in both the recruiting and development parts of the job, but it’s probably impossible to replace stars such as all-world cornerbacks Sauce Gardner and Coby Bryant, quarterback Desmond Ridder, running back Jerome Ford, receiver Alec Pierce and linebacker Darrian Beavers, among others, without at least temporary regression.
Can an experienced Houston squad make up the rest of last year’s gap? Was the late-season improvement we saw from UCF a sign of explosive things to come? Can new SMU coach Rhett Lashlee convert a talented team into an immediate contender? Is Memphis still an upper-tier AAC team, or was 2021 a sign of an impending slide? The AAC probably won’t produce a CFP team in 2022, but it should produce loads of intrigue.
Burning questions
Cincinnati will regress … but how much? Cincinnati will still look like Cincinnati in 2022. The Bearcats will still be playing their home games in one of the loveliest medium-sized venues in the country (Nippert Stadium), and Luke Fickell will still be leading them onto the field. The defense will still be angry and sound. The offense might change a bit because of turnover both on the roster and in the coordinator’s chair (Gino Guidugli replaces LSU-bound Mike Denbrock), but we know a Fickell team will maintain a certain amount of physicality and, at times, conservatism. It almost goes without saying that this will still be one of the AAC’s strongest and most talented teams.
So many faces will change, though, and there’s almost nowhere to go but down. Only six teams from non-power conferences have finished in the SP+ top 10 over the last 15 seasons, and two of them were the 2020 and 2021 Cincinnati teams. (The other four: 2009 TCU, 2010 and 2011 Boise State and 2020 BYU.) When TCU and Boise State broke through at the turn of the last decade, they remained strong when their batches of breakthrough stars left, but they didn’t quite hit the same high notes thereafter. Even if Cincinnati succeeds where they didn’t, a temporary regression is almost certainly coming.
We probably shouldn’t assume a ton of regression, though. Ridder’s likely replacement will be either Ben Bryant, who threw for 3,121 yards at Eastern Michigan last year (after backing Ridder up at UC in 2019), or Evan Prater, a former four-star recruit. Neither will be Ridder, but either could be quite good. At running back, the explosive Ford is gone, but leading returnee Ryan Montgomery averaged 6.8 yards per carry. Big-play receiver Alec Pierce is gone, but Hawaii transfer Nick Mardner had extremely similar stats last year and averaged 19.9 yards per catch.
On defense, understudies looked awfully good when given the chance. Defensive end Malik Vann had better sack and pressure rates than departing star Myjai Sanders. Linebackers Darrian Beavers and Joel Dublanko were awesome, but so are junior nickel/OLB hybrid Deshawn Pace and Miami (Ohio) transfer Ivan Pace Jr. Gardner and Bryant likely set too high a bar for anyone in college football to clear, but while we don’t know all we need to know about this team’s ceiling, it sure seems the Bearcats still have the highest floor in the league. SP+ certainly thinks so, dropping them only to 11th in the initial projections. They’ll have plenty of work to do — their 6.6 average projected conference wins are less than one win ahead of both Houston and UCF — but the king has solid odds of remaining the king.
Is it top-15 time in Houston? Houston’s recent football history has been defined by a single quote.
After losing head coach Tom Herman to Texas and notching 22 wins in two seasons, Houston president Renu Khator famously declared at a 2016 school holiday party that “the winning is defined at University of Houston as 10-2. We’ll fire coaches at 8-4.” Indeed, Herman’s successor, Major Applewhite, got fired after going 7-5 and 8-5 in 2017 and ’18.
Cranky, Red Bull-swilling Dana Holgorsen took over in 2019 and made waves by seemingly attempting the college version of tanking, handing out redshirts after a slow start, keeping players’ eligibility years in hand for later seasons and going just 4-8. An experienced Coogs squad then won just three games during a COVID-shortened 2020.
Granted, Khator didn’t say, “We’ll fire coaches at 3-5,” but it was easy to figure Holgorsen needed a big season in 2021. He got one. The offense improved a little, the defense improved by leaps and bounds, and Houston went 11-2, beating Auburn in the Birmingham Bowl and finishing 31st in SP+, its highest ranking since 2011.
The defense returns 10 seniors who saw 200-plus snaps, including pass-rushers Derek Parish and D’Anthony Jones, linebacker Donavan Mutin and corner Alex Hogan. (They also return coordinator Doug Belk, who should be very high on “young coaches to watch” lists soon if he isn’t already.) The offense, meanwhile, brings back 3,500-yard passer Clayton Tune and 1,300-yard receiver Nathaniel Dell, and the least experienced unit on last year’s team, the offensive line, returns sophomore all-conference contenders in tackle Patrick Paul and guard Cam’Ron Johnson.
Houston ended up awfully high on some Way-Too-Early Rankings lists. (Colleague Mark Schlabach has them 13th.) If the Cougars win early-season tossups at UTSA and Texas Tech, they could be in for a huge year, even if Cincinnati indeed only falls so far off last year’s pace.
Are UCF and SMU also-rans or contenders? Deep into last October, it appeared SMU was next in line for the conference throne, not Houston. The Mustangs began the season 7-0 before losing to Houston via a last-minute kick return in one of the best games of 2021. The vibe shifted dramatically from there. SMU lost four of five games down the stretch, then lost head coach Sonny Dykes to crosstown rival TCU. (All this after failing to receive a Big 12 invitation, no less.)
Rhett Lashlee, Dykes’ former offensive coordinator before spending the last two seasons at Miami, inherits a squad with plenty of exciting pieces. The offense boasts quarterback Tanner Mordecai, leading receiver Rashee Rice, running backs Tre Siggers and Ulysses Bentley IV, a pair of enormous tackles in Marcus Bryant and Jaylon Thomas and speedy receiver transfers Joshua Moore (Texas) and Beau Corrales (North Carolina). The defense brings back seven senior starters, and while they were starters on a unit that ranked just 71st in defensive SP+, there is decent depth here for coordinator Scott Symons, who arrives after two years at Liberty.
Down in Orlando, UCF pulled an anti-SMU. The Knights lost heartbreakers to Louisville (understandable) and Navy (less so) and got crushed by Cincinnati during a 3-3 start, but they won six of their final seven games, allowing 17 or fewer points in all six of those wins.
Defensive coordinator Travis Williams, another potential name for the “exciting young assistants” list, has to replace a couple of major playmakers in end Big Kat Bryant and linebacker Tatum Bethune. But five of last year’s top seven linemen return, as does virtually the entire two-deep from a secondary that thrived late in 2021.
There are question marks on offense, though, where there are loads of options at every position and almost no guaranteed stars. Last year’s leading passer (Mikey Keene), rushers (Isaiah Bowser and Johnny Richardson) and receiver (Ryan O’Keefe) all return, and they could get pushed by youngsters such as running back Mark-Antony Richards and transfers such as quarterback John Rhys Plumlee (Ole Miss), receiver Kobe Hudson (Auburn) and tight end Kemore Gamble (Florida). The line returns three starters and adds Virginia’s towering Ryan Swoboda (6-foot-10, 325 pounds). Potential is rampant. Now to turn that into actual production.
SMU has a top-30-caliber offense, UCF a top-30 defense. These should both be bowl teams, but the other respective units should determine if either team can be more than that.
Has Memphis shaken a case of the blahs? The 2010s were boom times for the Memphis Tigers. Beginning with a leap from 3-9 to 10-3 in 2014 under Justin Fuente, they had ripped off seven straight bowl bids, winning 10 games again under Mike Norvell in 2017, then going 12-2 with an AAC title and Cotton Bowl bid in 2019. When Norvell took the Florida State job in 2020, Ryan Silverfield took over and went a rock-solid 8-3. They averaged an SP+ ranking of 42.1 in this span, 35.6 on offense.
In 2021, they were projected 47th in SP+ but ended up 6-6 and 74th. They almost never made things easy, playing in eight one-score games, and after a 3-0 start that included a thrilling and unlikely win over Mississippi State, they lost six of eight before salvaging bowl eligibility with a narrow win over 2-10 Tulane. They made a lot of big pass plays — with a lot coming from receiver Calvin Austin III — and generally avoided negative plays, but the run game was inconsistent, and freshman quarterback Seth Henigan was asked to bail them out a lot on passing downs. Meanwhile, they fell to 78th in defensive SP+, preventing big pass plays pretty well but struggling mightily from an efficiency standpoint. Even the special teams unit, one of the most consistently awesome in special teams, fell from 14th to 93rd in special teams SP+. And in the offseason, both defensive coordinator Mike MacIntyre (new FIU head coach) and offensive coordinator Kevin Johns (Duke OC) left for theoretically better jobs.
Memphis should still have plenty of upside this fall. Henigan returns, the offensive line is far more experienced, Northern Illinois transfer Jay Ducker could add some pop in the run game and a secondary led by Quindell Johnson and Rodney Owens and aggressive sophomore cornerback Gregory Rubin could be dynamite. But without Austin or tight end Sean Dykes, the receiving corps lacks proven players, as does the defensive front seven. Former Marshall OC Tim Cramsey takes the reins on offense, while former Ohio State assistant Matt Barnes will call the defense. Both hires were sensible moves on paper, and the roster remains speedy and interesting. But this is an anxious time for Silverfield. Last year might have been a total blip, but it also played out like the start of many program downturns have. The Tigers have to prove that’s not what’s going on here.
My 10 favorite players
QB Tanner Mordecai, SMU. The conference is blessed with many exciting gunslingers, and after throwing for 3,628 yards and 39 TDs last season (and with a 68% completion rate!), Mordecai should thrive in Lashlee’s tempo-friendly attack.
QB Seth Henigan, Memphis. Despite the inconsistency one would expect from a true freshman, Henigan made some magic, throwing for 3,322 yards and 25 TDs. A potential bounce-back season for the Tigers might see him throwing for 4,000-plus.
RB Johnny Richardson, UCF. I’m a sucker for a good waterbug. The 5-7, 170-pound sophomore combined 104 rushes with 25 receptions, touched the ball on more than half his snaps and averaged 7.4 yards per touch.
WR Nathaniel Dell, Houston. In his last seven games of 2021, Dell hit 100-plus yards receiving three times and posted 19 catches for 302 yards against Cincinnati and Houston. It was a breakout season that hinted at an even bigger potential breakout on the horizon.
LT Lorenz Metz, Cincinnati. The 6-9, 335-pound left tackle was a pass-blocking padlock last year, earning all-conference honors and allowing his first sack in the last quarter of the season. (Yes, it was against Alabama’s Will Anderson.)
DE Elijah Chatman, SMU. A 6-1, 289-pound road-grader, Chatman is maybe the best run-stopper in the conference; he made 19 run stops at or behind the line, and he was involved in a tackle every 5.3 snaps, an activity rarely seen in players that large.
DE D’Anthony Jones, Houston. Jones played just 268 snaps last season but still managed 11 tackles for loss, 7 sacks and 4 forced fumbles, all while weighing in at 285 pounds. What the heck might he do with more playing time?
LB Deshawn Pace, Cincinnati. Pace picked off four passes, allowed a 3.4 QBR in coverage and generated pressure on 24% of his blitzes. He might be the perfect college nickel back, and he’s the size of a linebacker (6-2, 218).
CB Davonte Brown, UCF. The lanky, 6-2 junior allowed just a 19.9 QBR and defensed 13 passes (one interception, 12 breakups) when targeted. He keys a dynamic and potentially thrilling UCF secondary.
FS Quindell Johnson, Memphis. The surest tackler on the team, Johnson was key to Memphis’ big-play prevention efforts, but he’s also a playmaker: He had five tackles for loss and four run stops to go with his 10 passes defensed.
Anniversaries
In 1967, 55 years ago, Houston lost to Tulsa. The Cougars turned the ball over eight times and gave up the game’s last 19 points in an upset loss in front of 26,200.
Why is this noteworthy (besides the eight turnovers)? Because of what happened the next time the teams met. Bill Yeoman’s Veer offense kicked into gear in 1968, and a week after beating Idaho 77-3, it hung 100 points on a depleted Tulsa team. Paul Gipson was responsible for 282 of Houston’s 555 rushing yards, and backup quarterback Rusty Clark kept throwing touchdown passes in garbage time. This nasty and explosive offense eventually earned the Cougars a Southwest Conference invitation, but it was never nastier than it was in avenging a loss to the Golden Hurricane.
In 1987, 35 years ago, SMU’s season was canceled. As well-documented in the film “Pony Excess,” SMU boosters really, really liked cheating in the 1980s, refusing to stop even after a number of NCAA sanctions. The Mustangs were not allowed to offer any scholarships in 1985 — severe! — but when more violations were uncovered in 1986, the NCAA went even further, banning the team from playing in 1987 and banning home games in 1988 (which resulted in the program deciding to sit things out that year too).
As it turns out, the death penalty works. SMU returned to the field in 1989 but averaged just three wins per season over the next 20 years. It wasn’t until June Jones took over in 2008 that things began to turn around — the Mustangs have won seven or more games in eight of the last 13 seasons, peaking at 10-3 under Dykes in 2019.
In 2012, 10 years ago, Justin Fuente took over at Memphis. The Tigers have fallen into a terrible rut, going 2-10 in Tommy West’s last season in 2009, then going a combined 3-21 in two years under Larry Porter. The roster was devoid of either talent or pure numbers, but after winning seven games in his first two seasons, Fuente’s Tigers won 19 in the next two seasons. They haven’t finished with a losing record since.
Last year’s disappointing 6-6 campaign? It would have seemed like a miracle when Fuente took over.
In 2017, five years ago, UCF went unbeaten. In one of the most fascinating half-decades a program has ever seen, UCF went 12-1 with a Fiesta Bowl title in 2013, cratered to 0-12 in 2015 two years later, then surged to 13-0 just two years after that. Scott Frost’s 2017 Knights led the nation in scoring 48.2 points per game, beat eight of their first 10 opponents by at least 25 points and finished the season with a 34-27 Peach Bowl win over an Auburn team that had beaten both of the teams in the national title game (Alabama and Georgia). They defiantly claimed a share of the national title the CFP committee had not invited them to play for, and even with Frost leaving for Nebraska, they rolled through an unbeaten 2018 regular season as well before narrowly losing to Joe Burrow and LSU in the Fiesta Bowl. What a run.
Also in 2017, Luke Fickell embarked on his first season at Cincinnati. That has turned out pretty well.