Is the AAC laying the foundation for something that would eventually create a super league in college football?
When the NCAA revealed its revenue-sharing model, it caused widespread concern among NIL enthusiasts of the current era of CFB. Gone will be the days of throwing in millions to secure a single athlete. Now, programs have to focus on meeting their $20.5 million cap for the 2025-26 fiscal year. But, aren’t we forgetting something? If we look at AAC itself, you have your general, well-known teams, like East Carolina, Memphis, and South Florida – but scour a bit more, and you shall stumble upon some not-so-lucky programs as well.
Ross Dellenger took to X to share an interesting update: “American Athletic Conference presidents voted today to establish a minimum standard of benefits that schools are required to share with athletes in the new rev-share era.” At the core of it, the target would be fulfilling $10 million over three years. Now, out of all the conferences, AAC is the first one to take such a drastic step, and from what we have read and learned, this could potentially shift the Conference dominance as we know it.
However.
“Schools that fail to meet the $10 million minimum standard by the 2027-28 academic year will be subject to a “review” of their membership status within the league.” This is something not a lot of people are going to like, and for FAU, UAB, and UNT: Problems shall arise.
American Athletic Conference presidents voted today to establish a minimum standard of benefits that schools are required to share with athletes in the new rev-share era – $10 million over three years – becoming the first conference to make such a move.https://t.co/E1DnpoDDiS
— Ross Dellenger (@RossDellenger) March 7, 2025
As of 2025: All 3 programs have contributed 5,987,661 for Revenue Sharing.
Alabama at Birmingham (UAB)
Florida Atlantic (FAU)
North Texas (UNT)
1,970,373
2,083,064
1,934,224
If math is mathing, then meeting the $10 million target will be quite hard for these programs. More so because for the academic years of 2025 and 2026, average funding is set to decline. We have already seen a fall in the average AAC funding from 2,075,805 in 23-24 to 1,915,455 in 24-25.
Commissioner Tim Pernetti, however, has pointed out, “This action is another indication for how the American differentiates itself from its peers.” We shall let the fans decide the implication. For now, the only 2 programs that will be exempted from this are Army and Navy – because they are federally funded.
Still, for FAU, UAB, and UNT? Unless they have some secret plan to set up their NIL funds, the future looks bleak, and the “review” seems imminent. If you ask us, we could see potentially multiple schools get booted to the FBS Division 2 level. But what’s more concerning is if this step forces other conferences to follow in it or not.
Death of P5 schools?
It is not a new fact that the Big 12 alone makes more in revenue sharing than the entire P5 group: 14,566,351 in 2025 vs 12,928,320 (Mountain West, C-USA, MAC, Sun Bet, and AAC) in 2025. So, if other conferences from the P5 follow in AAC’s footsteps, then multiple programs will be doomed to fail.
Keeping in mind the sudden shift in NIL and the future decrease as well, we could see schools booted out of their conferences down to the lower tier. Could this mean that College Football is heading towards a SEC, B1G, ACC, Big 12 dominance?
Wild days if you ask us.
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