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Published July 29, 2014·
Associated Press

NEWPORT, R.I. – American Athletic Conference Commissioner Mike Aresco says his league does not feel threatened by the power grab being made by the wealthiest conferences in college sports.

Aresco said Tuesday at the American media day that his league supports a plan to allow the Big Ten, Big 12, ACC, Pac-12 and SEC a certain level of autonomy when making NCAA rules.

The American is one of the five other FBS conferences.

Aresco says his conference shares the same goals as the Big Five and wants to be in that "autonomy group."

He says his members have the resources to provide athletes with full-cost-of-attendance scholarships and long-term health care, so "we should not feel threatened by a certain level of autonomy for those conferences with significant resources who want to do more for their student-athletes."

I like Mike Aresco. I think he's got the kind of vision and leadership qualities the conference needs to stay relevant. That said, every G5 school should feel threatened by growing autonomy among the P5 programs. It will only further the divide and expedite the inevitable outcome of either a) break away from the NCAA or b) shrinking of D1A programs to 65-75 schools.

I agree with him that the best way for the AAC to stay in the mix is to play high profile OOC games and win them. We need to be competitive and we need the conference as a whole to be highly visible. The ESPN deal is huge from a visibility standpoint. Lets hope we can make this thing work.

I feel threatened. Maybe we can support the first wave of new athletic benefits but with other schools having a 5x to 10x the athletic budget of SMU, we can't keep up forever.

Yes it is an entirely unsustainable model for a school like SMU. Imagine what programs like UTSA, UAB, Arkansas State, etc. must be thinking.

How ironic, we are about to be thrust into the unfortunate situation of being an athletic $30k millionaire not unlike so many in the student body.

It's not the autonomy that worries me - It's the idea that the Big 5 are going to go nuts and start acting like they are the NFC and AFC.

I genuinely don't think the presidents want open, unbridled, pay for players. I think they simply want the 'full amount' or whatever that's one thing; I am willing to bet SMU can keep up in the long run with major college athletics, and do damn well. But if the Big 5 go to become nothing more than a private business then our football and basketball teams probably aren't going to on the big stage much longer.