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Tulane is the Favorite in 2025 American Conference Preseason Media Poll

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Tulane is the favorite to win the American Conference in 2025, following a vote from the league’s media cohort.

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.”

Seeking Relevance: American Conference Aims to Overcome the Noise
Rice Football News and Notes from American Conference Media Days
QB Flux marks 2025 American Athletic Conference Landscape
College Football Returning Production woes in the American
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Rice Football News and Notes from American Conference Media Days

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Rice Football made its initial appearances at American Conference Media Days on Thursday, eagerly describing what’s to come on South Main.

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QB Flux marks 2025 American Athletic Conference Landscape

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New faces and unknown commodities mark the state of quarterback play in the American Athletic Conference in 2025.

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.

Starting Fresh

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.

Returning, but Unrefined

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.

Returning Studs

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.

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College Football Returning Production woes in the American

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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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AAC Baseball Roundup: UTSA falls in Super Regional Play

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AAC Baseball had two representatives in the 2025 NCAA Tournament. UTSA made it to the second weekend before falling to UCLA in Super Regional Play.

UTSA

UTSA made quick work of the Austin regional, defeating Kansas State in their opening game to set up a rematch with the regional host, Texas. The Roadrunners then defeated the Longhorns for the second time that season, following up on a regular-season win over the Horns several weeks beforehand. That forced Texas to the loser’s bracket.

Texas would make it back to the regional championship, only for UTSA to beat them for a third and final time to punch their ticket to the Super Regional round.

UCLA took care of business in their own Regional round, setting up the matchup with UTSA with a trip to the College World Series on the line. UTSA led early in the first game, taking a 2-0 lead before UCLA leveled the score after the third inning. The Bruins went in front on a sacrifice fly in the fourth, adding a few insurance runs late to win the game, 5-2.

It was all Bruins in Game 2. UCLA scratched across one run apiece in the fourth and fifth innings before breaking through with two runs in the eighth and three more in the ninth, shutting out UTSA 7-0 in the finale to take the series.

East Carolina

Despite entering the postseason with little fanfare, ECU made some noise with an explosive win over Florida in their opening game, sending the 2-seed Gators to the loser’s bracket. The Pirates would join them a day later, falling to regional host Coastal Carolina to setup a rematch with Florida. They beat the Gators again, earning them another shot at the hosts.

A pitcher’s duel ensued with Coastal Carolina edging ECU 1-0 in Game 6 to knock the Pirates out of the postseason.

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