How will Army joining the AAC impact the already set schedules?
Army running back Kanye Udoh (26) carries in the first half of an NCAA college football game against LSU in Baton Rouge, La., Oct. 21. (Gerald Herbert/AP file)
Army football is headed to the American Athletic Conference starting in 2024, the league announced Wednesday.
Football is the only Army sport joining the AAC and commissioner Mike Aresco said during his press conference that there wasn’t any discussion about bringing the rest of the sports.
“We had no conversations in that area because they’ve been very happy in the Patriot League,” Aresco said. “And they have no interest in having their other sports play in our conference. If they did at any point, I think we would certainly consider that. But I think they’re very happy with where their basketball and Olympic sports are now.”
The Black Knights will be replacing SMU, which will leave for the ACC after this season.
Six teams (UTSA, UAB, Rice, FAU, Charlotte and North Texas) are already in their first season with the AAC after Houston, UCF and Cincinnati left for the Big 12 last July.
The league couldn’t get through a full season with its new look without even more realignment news impacting the makeup of the conference. Aresco said the AAC isn’t interested in expanding beyond 14 teams.
“There have been schools that have expressed interest in us,” Aresco said. “But at this point, we’re very happy with the membership we have. And we’re a reinvented conference now. We have to make sure we build it and get everybody fully integrated in what we’re doing. So we have no plans to explore any more expansion at this point.”
With SMU gone and Army joining, the four-year scheduling plan the AAC released last year is already outdated. The plan went from 2023-2026 and had each school facing every opponent during that span at least once at home and once on the road. Every team also had one league opponent that it would face each season through 2026.
That scheduling model will have to be reworked. It’s not as simple as replacing SMU’s schedule with Army, especially since Army as has Rice on the schedule for next year. That matchup could be switched to a conference game, according to Aresco.
The annual Army vs. Navy competition will not be counted as a conference game. Aresco said it was important to let that game standalone like it always has been.
“There are a lot of various factors that go into play in putting a schedule together,” Aresco said. “You don’t just slot Army in and say Ok this is how it’s going to work.
“We have some work to do. It has to be changed. It’s a little more than a tweak. Within a month or so we’ll have a pretty good idea of which teams our conference teams are going to play within the conference this year.
Some conferences have approached the idea of going toward a nine-game conference schedule. The AAC is committed to an eight-game schedule to create room to schedule tough nonconference opponents.
“In our conference, we have to maintain a certain strength of schedule to be consistently considered for a New Year’s spot and in the future, it’s now going to be a playoff spot,” Aresco said. “It’s really important for us to play four non-conference games. We can generally play a couple of (Power 5). We can then play potentially a tough (Group of 5) game and then maybe a game that isn’t quite the same. It rounds out our schedule pretty well. I think for our conference, eight conference games makes a lot of sense.”
No matter how the new schedule shakes out, here are some games that are currently on the Memphis schedule for the next three seasons that are important to keep on the docket:
UTSA and Tulane
The Tigers are scheduled to play UTSA and Tulane on the road next season. They’re supposed to play UTSA at home in 2025 and Tulane at home in 2026.
With SMU leaving and Houston, UCF and Cincinnati already departed, there aren’t a lot of opportunities for Memphis to play opponents that significantly move the needle. UTSA and Tulane are the best bets for Memphis to earn quality conference wins each season. Although they are likely to be the two toughest opponents in the conference for Memphis, it’s important for the Tigers to play at least one of them every year.
UAB
UAB is the one opponent that Memphis is scheduled to face every year through 2026.
It’s highly unlikely the conference would mess with the resurrection of the Battle for the Bones rivalry. It’s safe to say that matchup won’t be impacted by the absence of SMU and the emergence of Army.
Memphis vs. Army
The Tigers are 4-1 in the all-time series vs. Army and haven’t played the Black Knights since winning 38-10 in 2002. Memphis is likely to play Army at some point in the near future. Army is currently 2-5 after losing 62-0 to LSU last week. The Black Knights have gone two straight games without scoring a point but are just two years removed from having two straight 9-win seasons in 2020 and 2021.
Memphis has two holes on its current list of opponents that include a road game against SMU in 2025 and a home game against the Mustangs in 2026. Aresco has already ruled out the notion of swapping Army in the SMU vacancies. West Point is much farther from Memphis than Dallas, anyway. Putting Army will likely make its way onto the Memphis schedule in the next few years one way or another.
Topics
Memphis Tigers Football Army football AAC conferene realignmentFrank Bonner II
Frank Bonner is the Memphis Tigers football beat writer. He is originally from Indiana but arrived in Memphis after spending two years in Tulsa, covering Oklahoma State football and basketball. He covered high school sports in Columbus, Indiana for two years before getting his Master’s degree in Sports Journalism at IUPUI. He earned his Bachelor’s degree in journalism from Indiana University.
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