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AMERICAN CONFERENCE MEDIA DAYS | It was a short walk from the designated media hotel to the Charlotte Convention Center, just a few blocks in what turned out to be a sunny, beautiful summer day in the Queen City. Along the path was the Hilton Charlotte Uptown Hotel, the host of the ACC — not to be confused with the conference formerly known as the AAC — Media Days.
Outside of the Hilton were three giant letters, A.C.C., a clear identifier of who was on campus and what was happening inside those revolving doors. A little further down the street was the convention center, which had a graphic for the American Conference Media Days rotating on the large digital sign on the outside of the building.
One step inside those doors, however, and all the eye could see was pink. Mary Kay Pink, to be specific.
Hosted in the same building and dominating the air, the Mary Kay Seminar included hundreds of attendees, all pink-clad with signs and logos everywhere. There were no visible signs for the American, the American Conference, the AAC or any other iteration of the namesake of the league ostensibly holding court in the very same building.
Two separate venue attendants, when I stopped to ask for directions to the American event, did not know what I was referring to or where the event was being held.
During a week meant to set the conference apart as distinctive, modern, and unique, simply my arrival at the conference’s flagship event was marked by external noise.
That’s the real challenge this conference faces right now. It’s not just a name — the conference issued new brand guidelines this past week — it’s relevance in an ever-changing landscape marked more by turnover and inconsistency than anything else. For better or worse, the conferences the American would call its peers have identities formed over years of like membership, longstanding rivalries and tradition. How do you manufacture that in 2025? It’s hard.
When commissioner Tim Pernetti took the podium, he was bold, direct and assertive. “A brand is more than a logo,” he said, describing his league as leaders, not followers, multiple times throughout his address.
Pernetti pointed towards the conference’s brand ambassador, Soar the Eagle, the first such character at the college football level. He mentioned the league’s willingness to explore new ventures, to challenge perceived norms and call out parts of the college sports world right now that simply aren’t working.
“We’re not waiting for this industry, in case you haven’t noticed,” Pernetti quipped. “We’re building it. We’re leading it, strategically, and with purpose and thought along the way.”
At the same time, Pernetti’s conference eliminated its standard preseason media poll, following in the steps of the Big 12, which did the same thing, despite previously acknowledging plans to conduct the poll. The league will also introduce player availability reporting, adopting a policy similar to that of the autonomy league’s which began doing those a year ago.
Whether through originality or adaptation, the American believes it is doing all it can to differentiate itself from the hundreds of college programs and dozens of conferences across the country, a seemingly increasingly more challenging prospect with each passing year.
On the field, they’ve fared well, producing three 10+ win teams a year ago and having multiple teams in the College Football Playoff conversation late in the season. Army was ranked inside the Top 25 for a large portion of the regular season. Memphis finished as a Top 25 team. When it comes to making a name for itself on the gridiron, this is a conference that has done its part.
“Line up. Play the games. Let’s see where the chips fall at the end of the year,” Pernetti advocated, pushing for access to the College Football Playoff and multiple at-large spots.
To be fair to the league, so many of the factors that drive culture and brand identity exist beyond its control. But fairness has never been something with which college sports have ever really concerned themselves. No, the American must do the best it can with the cards it has been dealt and find a way to stand out, from all-pink convention centers to the college football world, at large.
In what has turned out to be a rather eventful week for the American Conference, The Roost reported Monday that the league intended to do away with its preseason media poll. The American did not return a request for comment as to why this long-standing tradition was being dropped.
In response, The Roost gathered a representative sample of media members to conduct our own poll, including representation from all 14 programs. Here are the results, with first-place votes in parentheses:
Following a runner-up finish in 2024, Tulane has been named the favorite in 2025. They edge out Navy and Memphis, the only other teams to receive first-place votes. East Carolina is the only program with a new head coach to crack the top half of the poll, coming in at seventh. Florida Atlantic, Rice, Charlotte, Temple and Tulsa bring up the next group of new coaches in their first year in the league.
When asked for comment as to why the league abruptly stopped the poll, commissioner Tim Pernetti called it an “industry-wide trend” although at this point, the American marks just the second of 12 conferences to step away from an annual preseason poll of this sort.
Pernetti went on to elaborate, saying, “The reason we’re moving away from this now, I think it’s more difficult to actually put your finger on how this should look, given that rosters look dramatically different every year. The transfer portal has created a lot of uncertainty and chaos.”
The days of running it back with the same starting quarterback at the Group of 5 level might not be over just yet, but they’re certainly becoming less and less frequent as player movement accelerates and the college football world becomes more connected and informed. That new-world reality is particularly stark when assessing the American Athletic Conference quarterback landscape for the upcoming 2025 season.
Among the 14 AAC teams, three distinct categories can be defined.
The AAC will be replacing some marquee names at the position in 2025. Seth Hennigan has finally run out of eligibility following a record-setting career at Memphis. Tulane’s Darrien Mensah was one of the more high-profile transfer stories of the offseason, signing with Duke. Potential Heisman darkhorse Bryson Daley has graduated from Army and the gunslinging Chandler Morris is no longer at North Texas.
Conservatively, that list includes four of the top six players at the position from a season ago. Tack on roster reshuffling at Charlotte, Rice and Florida Atlantic and you’ve got seven of the 14 programs in the league who will be starting new quarterbacks in 2025. When it comes time to sort out a potential pecking order the sheer number of new faces at the most important position will make that a challenge.
Consistency, especially at the quarterback position, is usually viewed as a positive and while that’s probably the case for the next batch of program’s it’s not as if the guys they’re bringing back are slam dunk, top-of-the-line Group of 5 quarterbacks.
Temple (Evan Simon), UAB (Jalen Kitna), Tulsa (Kirk Francis) and East Carolina (Kaitin Houser) make up the returning quarterbacks who produced mixed results at their programs a season ago. Francis and Simon completed less than 60 percent of their passes, Kitna and Houser threw double-digit interceptions. Add on coaching changes at Temple and ECU (albeit, hiring their interim head coach) and you’ve got more uncertainty to deal with.
Any or all of those four players may improve their game in 2025. That’s what their respective staffs will be expecting. But it’s not a sure thing and there’s no guarantee this group isn’t better than some of the reshuffling the programs in the first group did during the offseason.
Which brings us to the shortest list: returning studs. At the forefront of this group is Navy quarterback Blake Horvath and UTSA signal caller Owen McCown. Horvath spurred one of the more improbable turn-around seasons in the AAC last year, leading Navy to 10 wins. McCown led all returning AAC passers with 3,422 yards passing last season and 25 touchdowns.
South Florida’s Byrum Brown gets a nod in this group, but with an asterisk of sorts. He was tremendous in 2023 before missing most of 2024 with an injury. When he did get on the field, he wasn’t nearly as impressive. He deserves at least some benefit of the doubt that a fully healthy version of himself belongs in this group, but even with him included, the list of bonafide stars at this position is extremely thin.