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College Football Returning Production woes in the American

July 1, 2025 By Matthew Bartlett

Returning Production, or the lack thereof, is a clear hallmark of what life will be like in the American and the Group of 5/6 for college football going forward.

ESPN’s Bill Connelly updated his key college football metrics following the spring portal cycle and, usurpingly, the biggest brands from the SEC and the Big Ten sat atop most of the rankings. What didn’t stand out as clearly at the time — at least to my naked eye — was the impact the modern landscape has had on team building at the lower levels of the sport.

Returning Production seeks to approximate the meaningful contributors from last year’s team who are still on the roster for the upcoming season. It’s not a perfect measure — returning every player from a bad team still likely leads to a bad team — but it does demonstrate which programs pose to gain the most from continuity and experience.

As I began my preparations for the upcoming season preview series, I noticed just how little returning production most AAC teams had. So many key pieces are gone, either to the Transfer Portal of the NFL Draft, leaving the AAC flush with teams installing so many new players this offseason.

Connelly puts just seven AAC programs in the top 100 nationally in returning production. Three crack the top 60. Here’s the full list:

Nat. RkConf. RkTeamRet ProdOff RkDef Def Rk
111USF 67%69%2266%19
272UTSA 64%82%246%89
353Navy 63%74%1452%73
664Temple 55%65%3945%96
765Tulane 52%49%8456%57
776Tulsa 52%46%9358%51
887N Texas49%44%9855%65
1018Army 43%36%12051%80
1039ECU 43%51%7735%117
10510UAB 43%43%10343%101
11011FAU 41%50%7932%127
11312Rice 41%36%12246%91
11513Memphis 40%39%11441%108
11814Charlotte 38%35%12340%109

It’s no coincidence that the top three programs (USF, UTSA and Navy) all return their starting quarterbacks and several key skill players. That USF also brings back so many key defenders gives the Bulls a better starting point, at least from a roster construction standpoint, than most if not all of their conference peers.

How this plays out on the field this fall remains to be seen, but the era of slow builds and roster continuity seems long past, at least at this level of the sport. When your program does get the luxury of “running it back”, you better not miss. The odds of you getting that much continuity again soon are slim to none.

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Filed Under: AAC, Archive Tagged With: AAC, college football

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