2021 AAC Conference Preview

The AAC has had a fascinating summer due to the twists and turns of college sports realignment. The Big 12 will soon lose Texas and Oklahoma. This leaves the Big 12 as the fifth and last of the so-called Power Five conferences. If the Big 12 is the weakest power conference, it invites the question of whether the AAC can become a power conference, possibly overtaking the Big 12 in the next few years. It is hard to tell right now if the AAC will indeed be able to pull off that power play, but this much is known: If the AAC or any other conference wants to strengthen its hand in college sports, doing well in college football this season would certainly bolster its case and improve its position. If an AAC team gets an unbeaten season and wins a big New Year’s Day bowl game, that would open eyes across the country and get the attention of various power brokers in college football, including and especially television executives. Getting a more lucrative television property would be a coup for the AAC, which has marketed itself as a “Power Six” conference, a league which has more in common with the Power Five conferences (including the Big 12) than with the other Group of Five conferences: the Mountain West, the MAC, Conference USA, and the Sun Belt.

The cards are on the table right now for the AAC: A big season in 2021 could change the way the league is perceived. With the Big 12 at risk of splintering apart, a big year for the AAC in college football could increase the possibility that the AAC could overtake the Big 12 as the fifth-best and most powerful conference in college football. There is a lot to be gained this year, so let’s see if the AAC can pounce on this opportunity and change the long-term future of the conference for the better. It would be quite a statement if this conference can change the terms of the game and gain leverage relative to the Big 12.

What Happened Last Year

The AAC soldiered through the pandemic, playing as many games as it reasonably could in the face of various limitations. The Connecticut Huskies left the AAC in order to become a member of the Big East Conference in men’s basketball. Since the Big East is no longer an FBS conference – that part of its history ended almost a decade ago – UConn became a football independent. The AAC moved to 11 teams down from its previous total of 12. This was therefore an AAC season which bore relatively little resemblance to what we had seen in the previous several years. at least for most of the teams in the conference.

The 2020 season contained one very obvious surprise. After the Memphis Tigers had reached the AAC title game in three consecutive years, the Tulsa Golden Hurricane came out of nowhere to earn their first berth in this game, which began in 2015. Houston, Navy, and then Memphis (three times) had represented the AAC West Division in the conference championship game. It is true that in 2020, there were no longer two divisions, due to UConn’s exit and the presence of only 11 teams, but it remains that Tulsa did come from the western part of the conference’s footprint and pushed past the competition to earn a conference championship game opportunity. Tulsa had gone through a few noticeably miserable seasons preceding 2020. Tulsa had lost several games in the last minute due to a missed placekick. Tulsa had become one of the worst special-teams programs in the whole United States. The Golden Hurricane sank to a lower spot in the AAC standings, but people who knew the program and followed it closely were aware that with just a few plays here and there, the Golden Hurricane would have finished much higher in the league.

Memphis had fielded an elite offense from 2017 through 2019, and even though former coach Mike Norvell went to Florida State, the Tigers had earned a reputation as a very tough out in the AAC. Three straight conference championship game appearances merited a certain amount of respect. SMU had become a stronger program heading into 2020 under coach Sonny Dykes. Navy had a number of very successful seasons under well-established head coach Ken Niumatalolo. Of all the teams in the AAC which were expected to put up a big fight and make a run at the league title in 2020, Tulsa was not on the short list. Yet, the Golden Hurricane went 6-0 and faced preseason league favorite Cincinnati for all the marbles.

The player at the heart of Tulsa’s success in 2020 was linebacker Zaven Collins. He collected several pieces of college football hardware, including the Bronko Nagurski Trophy, the Chuck Bednarik Award, the Lombardi Award, and the AAC Defensive Player of the Year Award. Collins scored several touchdowns on defense. He swung multiple games with his brilliant defensive playmaking. He was voted a unanimous All-American and First-Team All-AAC. He did everything for this team. He became the huge sensation in the conference and the main reason Tulsa went from rags to riches.

Collins played well throughout the most important game of Tulsa’s season, but Cincinnati beat Tulsa in a very close AAC Championship Game. Cincinnati’s defense was tops in the conference all season long, and it made enough plays against Tulsa and Collins, earning a 27-24 win. Cincinnati was AAC runner-up in 2019, but the Bearcats took the next step in 2020 and won the AAC title. Cincinnati also won the Group of Five championship and earned the right to go to a New Year’s Six bowl. The Bearcats were on the verge of an unbeaten season, but after bolting to an early lead against Georgia in the Peach Bowl, they faltered down the stretch and watched their great dream slip away.

Team Most Likely To Exceed Expectations

The Navy Midshipmen are in a very good position to exceed expectations, for the simple reason that their expectations are extremely low, at least if measured by Las Vegas sportsbooks. Navy’s expected win total this year is 3 or 3.5 wins, depending on which book you are looking at. That’s very low for a team which won 11 games in the 2019 season.

Here is what one must keep in mind about Navy, when wondering why the Midshipmen are expected to be so bad this year: Last summer, in the midst of the pandemic, no one truly knew just how safe it was to play football. Everyone was in a state of uncertainty due to the pandemic. This included Navy head coach Ken Niumatalolo, who did not have his Navy teams play in full pads at practice. Niumatalolo worried that full-contact, fully-padded practices might have left his players exposed to COVID-19. This was not a dumb thing to do. It was entirely reasonable amid all the uncertainties swirling around America and the globe as part of the world’s lack of knowledge on how the coronavirus spread among human beings. It turned out that playing football outside was safe. Navy did not have to prevent its players from engaging in fully-padded practices. However, once the season started, the fact that Navy wasn’t going full-tilt in padded practices left the Midshipmen at a huge disadvantage compared to all the other schools which went ahead with full-contact offseason practices. Navy was hammered by BYU in its first game, and the Midshipmen clearly were not as physical or as authoritative as most of their opponents throughout the 2020 season. The Midshipmen sank to a 3-7 record, one year after going 11-2. Will Navy be a nine- or 10-win team this fall? No. The Midshipmen do not have the talent of a top-tier club. However, the idea that Navy will win just three games in 2021 seems like an overreaction to last year, which was clearly not a normal season in any way. With normal offseason preparation this year, and with young players gaining a lot of needed experience in last year’s difficult journey, Navy should have a tougher and more resilient team, also a team which is more prepared to play at a high level.

Team Most Likely To Fall Short Of Expectations

Houston. Coach Dana Holgorsen went 3-5 in the 2020 season. That is far below what the Cougars expected of themselves. Houston gave up 38 points or more in multiple games last season, and its offense was held under 30 points in a majority of the eight games UH played last year. This was a team which was very inconsistent and had a very hard time getting both its offense and defense on the same page. Some of this was due to the pandemic, but some of it simply looked like a situation in which a team wasn’t well-prepared each time it took the field.  The Cougars never did manage to win back-to-back games last year. If they took a step forward one week, they took a step backward the next week.

Houston is one of the schools which has expressed an interest in wanting to join either the Big 12 or the Pac-12 in conference realignment. Houston would love to graduate to the Power Five level and receive the level of recognition it thinks it deserves in a large national media market. Houston is accordingly of the belief that it should contend for an AAC championship this season. If measured by that standard, Houston might be expecting too much. Cincinnati, UCF, Memphis, SMU, and Tulane might all be better than Houston in the AAC this year.

Best Bet To Win The Heisman

The AAC is unlikely to produce a Heisman Trophy winner, but if there is a candidate, it’s Desmond Ridder. The quarterback on the best team in a conference is often the most prominent Heisman candidate in that specific conference. Ridder fills that role, so he is the leader by default.

Ridder will need top national Heisman contenders – Spencer Rattler of Oklahoma, Sam Howell of North Carolina, Bryce Young of Alabama, Kedon Slovis of USC, Chris Olave of Ohio State – to have bad seasons. Cincinnati will need to have a great season so that Ridder’s late-season games are supremely important in the national picture. We will see what develops.

Coach On The Hot Seat

Philip Montgomery of Tulsa. He’s not certain to be fired, but he is vulnerable in ways lots of other AAC coaches are not. Montgomery had a great 2020 season, but Tulsa was not that good in 2019, so if the Golden Hurricane revert to mediocrity in 2021, the 2020 season could be viewed as the outlier and not the indicator. Tulsa administrators could grow weary of the ups and downs and seek a fresh face. Other AAC coaches are just getting settled into their jobs, such as Mike Houston at East Carolina and Ryan Silverfield at Memphis. Even if those and other coaches in similar positions have mediocre 2021 seasons, they will definitely be given another year in 2022. Montgomery might not have as much wiggle room, even after his 2020 results.

Best Bet To Win It All

Cincinnati is the best bet this year. Remember that the Bearcats came within an eyelash – one late Georgia drive and subsequent field goal at the end of the Peach Bowl – from putting together an unbeaten season in 2020. Coach Luke Fickell had Cincinnati playing some of the best defense in the United States all year long. The Bearcats bring back most of their starters from 2020 and therefore have a situation in which they are set up to thrive. Fickell has been able to get Cincinnati to a point where it reloads instead of needing to rebuild. He is dominating recruiting in the AAC, picking up the in-state Ohio talent the Ohio State Buckeyes don’t choose. Getting “Ohio leftovers” is proving to be sufficient to make Cincinnati the powerhouse team of the AAC, while Memphis and UCF go through struggles after previous successes.