With Thanksgiving just one day away, AAC Commissioner Mike Aresco was not in a thankful mood when he joined Marc Daniels on 96.9FM/740AM The Game this Wednesday morning in Orlando. With the UCF-USF showdown on Friday, Aresco was set to join the show to preview the pivotal game that will decide the East Division of the AAC. However, things changed on Tuesday night when the latest college football playoff rankings were released that spawned questions such as, how in the world does a 3-loss Mississippi State vault ahead of unbeaten UCF, who can’t seem to rise above 15th in those rankings? Well, Aresco unloaded on just about everyone you could possibly think of when discussing the lack of respect given to his conference as not even his critical TV partner, ESPN, was safe from that criticism.

“I wasn’t happy,” Aresco said matter-of-factly. “I was upset UCF wasn’t ranked higher. I was very disappointed to see a three-loss Mississippi State team that struggled to beat UMass and struggled to beat a not very good Arkansas team, is ranked ahead of them. [There are] a bunch of two-loss teams also ranked ahead of them. I don’t know what the signal is, but I think UCF deserves to be ranked higher. They are an outstanding team and they can play with anyone in that top ten. Anyone.”

Aresco pointed to the league’s success in out-of-conference matchups in recent years to showcase the depth that his conference has.

“Our league has proven that over the last few years,” he continued. “Look at what Houston did last year and the year before. Look at what Memphis has done in big games the last few years and obviously what UCF did in the Fiesta Bowl not too long ago. USF is an excellent team. We’ve had all these other P6 wins over the last few years. We have 23 of them over the last two-plus years. We are 30-6 over the G5 and three of those losses in the regular season have been by a field goal and the six losses were mostly by lower tier teams in our league, so the top tier has won almost all of their games against the G5. I can go on and on, but it’s clear that this league is not getting the respect that it deserves and when I hear that they aren’t taking into account what’s happened in the past, I don’t know how you do that because that shows how strong we are to be honest. If you keep talking about the strength of schedule in our league, how can you ignore the evidence that we are as strong as those other conferences when it comes to our top teams. Even our bottom teams, some of those other conferences have 0 and 1-win teams, which any one of our teams could defeat, without question.”

Aresco confirmed he’s in contact with the College Football Playoff committee each year and that this year, he will certainly be having a conversation or two with the chair, Kirby Hocutt.

“The committee assigns two-reps each year, different people to talk to each conference and basically gather information,” Aresco confirmed. “We put our best foot forward and offer all sorts of information. We typically don’t get into a detailed discussion [about what more we can do] with the committee reps until the season is over and then we have a chance to talk to the chair at the meeting in the spring. When this season is over, I’ll definitely be talking to the committee and Kirby of course because I respect the committee, have never said anything bad about them, these are great people, but I think there is clearly a lack of understanding about how good our conference is. The evidence is there. I just ask people to pay attention.”

That’s when Aresco ripped into ESPN about their lack of discussion about UCF’s position in the new poll, given they are just one of four unbeaten teams in all of college football.

“I’m also disappointed in that ESPN show last night,” he said strongly. “ESPN is our partner, I love ESPN. The editorial side is different from the programming side, obviously. I think Rece [Davis] is just wonderful, these are great guys, but they could have devoted some time to wondering why UCF isn’t ranked higher when it’s very clear that that is a very good team. They have been destroying good opponents and beating them in tough environments. Navy goes up to Notre Dame and almost wins this past week and easily could have won. How many teams have gone to South Bend this year and have gotten utterly destroyed, right? Not Navy. When you play Navy at home, they had 17-straight wins. That’s a tough game and UCF persevered and won that game. They go out to a good SMU team that was down 6-points to TCU at TCU, who have had less tough games in the Big 12 at home than they had with SMU. We’ve got a lot of good teams in this conference.”

The leader of the AAC believes that they’ve already done enough with their out-of-conference scheduling and the performance in those games to deserve a higher level of respect on a national scale.

“We play a lot of good teams,” Aresco said. “We played Oklahoma, we’ve played a lot of the top teams, Ohio State. This year, Cincinnati went up to Michigan and gave a good account of themselves coincidentally, played really well. I don’t know. We try to put our best foot forward in terms of the scheduling.”

Does Aresco believe any team from his league in the current format could sneak into the clearly biased way of determining who should play for the national championship?

“I’m beginning to think it would take a minor miracle,” he responded. “Now, having said that, in all fairness, last year Houston because of their schedule and the way they dominated Oklahoma and destroyed Louisville, both top-three teams at the time, if they had taken care of business in the conference, that would have been an outstanding test case if they would have made the playoff. Think about the outcry had they not made it after winning those two games and playing in a very competitive conference, which we were last year. We had multiple Top-25 teams. That would have been really interesting. What’s happening this year is they are saying well, UCF doesn’t have a lot of marquee opponents, obviously the Georgia Tech game unfortunately had to be cancelled because of the hurricane, but they did go up to Maryland after Maryland had just defeated Texas and they absolutely dominated Maryland. Maryland has had closer games in the Big Ten, including Wisconsin, I think it was 24-10 and they just lost to Michigan State 17-7 at Michigan State. They were at home against UCF and they were obliterated. Again, UCF has played a lot of those kinds of games this year. That’s probably being held against them a bit, but the bottom line is what’s being held against us is our conference. I think that is highly unfair when you look at what our teams have done.”

“Houston went out and beat Arizona,” Aresco continued. “Houston is a really good team and the only loss that USF has is a heartbreaker to Houston 28-24. USF should be ranked by the committee and they aren’t. They haven’t given up more than 28-points in a game and yet, they are behind Boise [State] for example. Boise lost 42-23, should have been 42-14, there was kind of a screw up at the end by Virginia when they could have run the clock out, but the point is that that game was at home. They don’t have a signature win against [a so-called] P-5 team. USF beat Illinois decisively. Illinois is not a top tier Big Ten team, we know that, but they are still a Big Ten team and they were absolutely physically dominated by USF. In addition, USF has not given up 52 points to any opponent, they have just played good defense all year. Offensively, they’ve sputtered a bit, but have scored thirty-something points in almost all of their games. They are ranked in all the other polls. Why aren’t they ranked? I don’t understand how they are not, I really don’t.”

Aresco’s comments come a week after UConn head coach Randy Edsall addressed the lack of respect the AAC has received throughout the year, a day after falling to UCF in Orlando.

“I don’t want to say bias, but there’s too much emphasis placed on all this ‘Power 5’ stuff and everything else,” Edsall said. “Just take a look, people don’t cover anything but the ‘Power 5’ for the most part. They [UCF] have beaten Big Ten teams [Maryland 38-10, when they were still healthy after a 51-41 win at Texas]. They’re undefeated. Their schedule is just as tough as other people’s. Something has to be done. The way we are right now, if you’re going to just say eliminate the other people from the mix, then just say it. I’ve been in the Big Ten, I’ve been in the ACC and this is a really competitive conference with a lot of very good players. The way it should be, you have a playoff system, not just four teams and not decided by people who just go in and look at certain material. They talk about the student athlete, it’s a joke that they talk about that. Here, student athletes go out, they win their conferences and they don’t even get a chance to compete for a championship nationally. It’s all about beauty points, style points, maybe your name and all those sort of things.”

“You can’t sit here and put stuff on strength of schedule each and every year because you don’t have control over that,” Edsall continued. “When you schedule your non-conference games four, five or six years out, you have no idea how good someone else is going to be. You’re thinking that this team might be pretty good, but then all of a sudden that year they might end up going 3-9 or 4-8, you don’t know that. To put that in it and disregard if you win your championship, I have a hard time with that. You win your conference, you should be involved in the playoff. It’s stupid. UCF is a very good team. They’re undefeated, one of how many in all of college football? They’re playing the schedule that they were supposed to play. If you want to deter from having it with anyone other than those five conferences, then set up a system there and do a playoff like they do in Division 1-AA [FCS], II and III, Make another division if they’re going to exclude and discriminate against people.”

On Friday, the AAC has a chance to put on a show for the nation on national television at 3:30 when USF plays UCF in Orlando in front of a sold-out Spectrum Stadium. It’s clearly an important moment for the league.

“I don’t think you can overstate it,” Aresco said. “I think it’s really important for our league to have a showcase game like this. It’s a rivalry game at that to boot, that’s really important because as you know, we don’t have as many rivalries in this league because we aren’t old and we were put together in a different way. The War on I-4 is a great moniker, a great name and it’s on ABC, a national game, so it’s a chance to give great exposure to two really good teams. It’s a game that I’ve been waiting for, for five years because I really think these two have the chance to be juggernauts and could be some of our better teams. They both haven’t been really good in the same year, they’ve both of course had their moments, but now they are both really good. This is a taste of the future to be honest with you, I think this is what you are going to see down the road.”

“You’re also going to see some of our other teams like Cincinnati and East Carolina re-emerge,” he said. “We already have Houston and Memphis, also seeing Tulane showing some real improvement. Tulsa took a step back, but they will be back, so we are a strong league from top to bottom. This game means an awful lot because we haven’t had a game matching two top-20 teams I don’t believe and the exposure is what’s really important. I don’t think there’s going to be much competition on Friday for the viewer. You have a good lead-in with Miami and Pittsburgh on ESPN, that will be a good lead-in for our game. Having been in TV for a long time, a lead-in like that is very important to get the rating up and get viewers and I think people will tune-in to see what they think of UCF. The viewer has heard a lot about why UCF isn’t ranked higher in the polls, this is a chance to see them.”

One week later, the conference has a chance to showcase another game, with the AAC Championship Game playing out next Saturday, also on ABC.

“Our championship game a week later, we aren’t sure who will be playing obviously, but we know Memphis is and they will be playing one of these two teams,” Aresco said. “That’s going to be on ABC as well, so we have the chance to bring our case to the nation on national TV. The one thing I hope, I hope the whole focus isn’t on where Scott Frost or Charlie Strong or Mike Norvell are going to coach next. I don’t want that to be the focus. I want the focus to be on these kids, these high achieving teams, the league. You can mention that because obviously it is a news related item, but don’t belabor it, that’s what I ask. Let’s just talk about the game and what great teams we have in the league. I hope it’s a great game, I hope it’s well-played and I hope that we put on a good show for the country. I think we will. It’ll be a sellout.”

MATT SCHONVISKY / SITE CREATOR