Tim Pernetti, the incoming American Athletic Conference commissioner, did a lot of talking Thursday during a Zoom news conference. He will start out by doing a lot of listening when he takes over for Mike Aresco on June 1.
The former Rutgers tight end, who was later athletic director at his alma mater, has the endorsement of Dr. Philip G. Rogers, East Carolina chancellor, who serves as AAC Board Executive Committee chairman.
“Tim Pernetti is the ideal leader to guide the AAC through this pivotal time in college athletics,” Dr. Rogers said. “His perspective as a successful student-athlete, a respected and progressive director of athletics and his demonstrated leadership, innovation, competitive spirit and business acumen across a number of professional organizations make him uniquely suited to build on the success of Mike Aresco and steer the conference to a bright future.”

Like Aresco, Pernetti has worked extensively in sports television. Aresco has been the AAC’s only commissioner since its inception in 2013.
Pernetti plans to have his ears up at the outset.
“To do that and some visits to the campuses, which I’m already starting to schedule,” Pernetti said. “Like anything else I’ve always done, you really have to just sort of sponge it up for 30 days, 60 days and then figure out from there what the priorities are. Beyond that, I’ve already started to get into some relationships I have outside the college industry about some opportunities to take some big swings and do some things differently.
“I also get the opportunity, thanks to Mike, to join him for the CFP (College Football Playoff) meetings in two weeks and see what goes on in that room. That’s something I’ve always been curious about. But beyond that, it’s important that the foundation is one thing, which is trying to get creative to generate and create new resources for the institutions. The investment and the challenges and the changes continue to accelerate, and I think we need to do some things differently in order to keep up with it.”
Big swings for conference commissioners these days include expanding membership and positioning for negotiating broadcast rights.
No ‘Power Six’
Aresco had referred to the AAC as a member of the Power Six, a term that Pernetti won’t use.
“Those things won’t come out of my mouth, and I think that is a reality,” Pernetti said. “I am not going to ignore the fact that they exist and they’re in the narrative around collegiate athletics and especially college football, on a daily basis. But I think the position of the American Athletic Conference is well known and supported by a lot of the relationships and the media agreement and the investment that’s been made and it’s positioned where it’s positioned. It won’t stay there forever if we don’t accelerate and do some things differently.
“It was Power Five (ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, SEC and Pac-12). Then it was Power Two (Big Ten, SEC). I just can’t keep up with any of it. And when I look at college football, to me, college football is college football. Are there different levels of competition and levels of play? Of course there are. Is there a financial disparity? We know that. We don’t control a lot of that stuff, but what I will try to focus on with the staff and with the schools will be: all right, what do we control?
“What is the plan for taking some big swings? That was a hugely important part of the interview process. I really pressed to know more about how interested the presidents and the membership was in doing things differently and I feel great about their interest in trying some of these things down the road.”
The portal
Pernetti was asked about the growing traffic in the transfer portal.
“That is a reality of where we are as a conference, and it’s challenging because you have a lot of great student-athletes coming to the conference in a variety of sports,” Pernetti said. “So, the cycle and how it works of investing and developing in these student athletes and then losing them to the transfer portal or to an opportunity that may be more significant in NIL.
“It is challenging. So again, you can’t stop it, but I think what you can do is think about things like I said in my opening remarks today about what are the conference-wide NIL opportunities like rather than this just being a free-for-all quite frankly of every man for himself, the top one percent benefiting. What can be done as a conference to develop partnerships to generate new resources, to provide a conference-wide NIL opportunity to literally every student athlete. The foundation of what we do will be control what we control.
“We’ll get aggressive and proactive and disruptive, but some of these things we need to focus on what’s happening and then how we can change it for our own enterprise.”
Change coming
Business as usual doesn’t describe Pernetti’s plans.
“Status quo, is not acceptable any longer,” Pernetti said. “The foundation of the business that I came up in when I was a young media executive, it was part of some of these historic media deals that still are around today. It was sort of clear-cut. There were media rights and investment in exchange for the product. But now what’s changing is that environment is totally different. It’s not just about broadcasts anymore. I mean, you see the elevation of the streaming business. There are more options for people with live sports content than there ever have been before, and that’s exciting. So that’s number one.
“We have a long-term and a great agreement with ESPN on a going forward basis. Otherwise, it’s really interesting to me to see what’s happening in private equity. Private equity has been heavily investing in sports for an extended period of time already, and it’s like circling the neighborhood in college sports, but it hasn’t parked its car in anyone’s driveway yet. I think that’s inevitable, and I do think that anyone who has rights and content and live sports will have the opportunity to tap into that space.”
Big swings
Pernetti elaborated on his term, big swings.
“Time is the enemy on everything in the business,” he said. “You can’t move fast enough, … The pace is a little bit of a challenge sometimes. And what’s happened recently is change has outpaced governance, which is why we’re stuck in some situations that we really need to resolve. What does it look like? I think it will start with trying to prioritize what the most impactful swings can be and what we can accelerate and get done in a short period of time, which requires building consensus.
“The one thing about collegiate athletics is you have a room of 15 institutions, diverse backgrounds and points of view. It’s going to start with building consensus, but I do think private equity is an opportunity. I do think innovating partnerships in sponsorship and naming rights and sort of things that cascade across the conference is something that can be done.
“I actually think the evolution of the postseason in college football is encouraging because there’s more access and there’s more slots. But there’s 134 institutions playing in the (Football Bowl Subdivision). As the CFP continues to grow and evolve, I think there’s room for more. So, there are some of these things in particular that are front of mind to me right now.”
Member support
Pernetti indicated his confidence in the support of league members.
“I pushed really hard during the interview process,” he said. “I was very direct about a few things in particular, and commitment was a big one. Because, naturally, if you’re going to invest of yourself physically, emotionally, and otherwise into a role like this, which I’m going to, then you want to understand where everybody stands.
“The thing I loved about the response was it was not an elephant in the room. I walked out of that room feeling very confident about commitment, and I’m also not naive to that. The shifts and the expansion will continue in collegiate athletics, but I do think there’s a window ahead of us to do some things differently and quite frankly, resource this conference in a way where the members don’t need to leave.”
Revolving door
The 2013 AAC football standings show the traditionally transitory status of league membership.
Central Florida was the first league champion. The Knights were followed by Louisville, Cincinnati, Houston, Southern Methodist, Rutgers and Connecticut,
The bottom three — South Florida, Memphis and Temple — are the only original members who will remain in the league next year, as of now.’
ECU became an AAC member in 2014.
UCF, Cincinnati and Houston joined the Big 12 this school year. SMU goes to the ACC in 2024-25.
Aresco added Alabama-Birmingham, Charlotte, Florida Atlantic, North Texas, Rice and Texas-San Antonio to the AAC for 2023-24.
Army becomes a football only AAC member, like Navy, in the 2024 season.
AAC-cent on football
Football has a huge role in the AAC, as in any major conference, but Pernetti must have a vision beyond the gridiron.
“If you look back at the original mission of collegiate athletics, that’s not what the whole thing has been designed to do,” Pernetti said. “It’s been designed to provide education through sport and that sounds great, but it is true, and that was my own personal experience.
“Going forward football has to be a vital and important part of what we do because the reality is if we can maximize resources and investment around football. It supports everything else everybody is doing on campus. Okay. I would argue that basketball is equally important, the profile, the visibility, like what do we love about the NCAA tournament? We love the fact that a school like Fairleigh Dickinson up the street from where I grew up in New Jersey can make a run in the tournament two years ago. So that’s the part. Football has to be important because it will give us the ability to generate more resources for everything.”
AAC expansion
Pernetti would noy rule out adding institutions to the AAC.
“Nothing’s off the table as it relates to that,” he said. “I think that there’s always room, but there has to be a criteria and there has to be a specific way to evaluate and analyze what makes sense. For us, I can’t tell you what that criteria is going to be today, but we’re going to have it and I’m not going to do it on my own. This will be a combination of input from presidents, athletic directors, outside groups that I have had the ability to work with in my professional career to determine what makes sense. But there’s room and nothing’s off the table.”
American resilience
Pernetti said the AAC’s ability to remain intact during realignment losses is a league strength.
“The things that attracted me to the conference were there’s a couple words like grit, resilience,” he said. “Things have changed dramatically, but the conference has responded and reloaded, and it’s done everything it’s needed to do. Those things have particularly attracted me to it. What should it be in the future? We want this conference to be known as the most innovative conference in collegiate athletics, and innovates is an overused word sometimes.
“Elevating the enterprise to do things differently, to take big swings, and naturally that’s going to require the same factors, grit, resilience, taking some chances on some things. I’m convinced that the group that I met with that hired me into this job is ready to do that and I’m excited about it.”
Leave a Reply