An Open Letter on Power 5 - Group of 5 Branding by Commissioner Mike Aresco |
Back on March 9, I issued a statement calling for the elimination of the Power 5, or P5, label from the collegiate nomenclature and the public forum. The use of P5 has created a divide in Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) football that is not healthy and that is often not supported by competitive results on the field and court. The recent realignment in college athletics has further eroded the P5 concept.
Among the many issues and challenges currently facing college sports, the Power 5 (P5)-Group of Five (G5) divide and the immense harm it causes does not receive the attention afforded to health and safety, NIL, pay-to-play, the transfer portal, and other pressing issues. No one would argue that the latter list is not of the utmost importance and critical to the future of college athletics, but the P5 – G5 divide also deserves scrutiny. This letter will attempt to explain why this is so.
First and foremost, is it healthy to have created and furthered a P5 nomenclature in college sports that relegates half of the FBS conferences, regardless of their accomplishments, to a perceived second-class status that often causes these non-P5 conferences to be ignored in media articles and discussions? To have given it credibility quasi-officially? Is that inclusion? Is that a concern for student-athletes’ health and well-being? Is that pro-competitive? Is that furthering fair competition and equality of opportunity? The answer to all these questions is a resounding “no.”
Power 5 is a media-created term. The so-called P5 group also has an autonomy status in the NCAA that officially sets them apart in certain respects, but which does not confer competitive superiority per se. The autonomy status was conferred as part of the NCAA Governance Redesign of 2014, which afforded those five conferences the ability to enact legislation in certain areas, legislation that could be adopted by non-autonomy conferences if they so chose. With so much authority devolving to the conferences in the current NCAA governance landscape, it can be argued that the autonomy concept may eventually become unnecessary. Practically speaking, very little autonomy legislation has been passed in recent years.
The P5 have no pathway out of that status and there is no defined pathway into it either. It was essentially a self-selected group based mainly on financial clout, with no set of competitive metrics defining it, and passed by the NCAA membership. However, the autonomy debate is for another day. If the autonomy construct continues to exist, it should be treated as just that, an “inside baseball” NCAA-created legislative structure that does not confer “power” status in the competitive arena, and that is also exclusionary. The written in stone nature of that structure is another primary reason why it should not determine power status in the public conversation.
The compelling issue at hand is the manufactured P5 label and the attendant fallout that is damaging to college athletics. There is no question that if the autonomy protocol is finally abandoned, the P5 designation and the P5-G5 divide would have a harder time surviving, but there should be a conscious effort to discard the P5 and G5 labels regardless, an effort that should be supported by the NCAA and by the autonomy conferences themselves.
It is the corresponding media-driven P5 designation that has consigned over half of FBS football to a perceived second-class status. The P5 label is the culprit. This circumstance has affected the American Athletic Conference far more than the other so-called G5 conferences because, by virtually any measure-investment, enrollment, television exposure, size of markets, and especially athletic success in football - the American is most like the P5 conferences, and should not be victimized by a label.
This entire P5 branding business was essentially a self-fulfilling prophecy harmful to over half of FBS teams, and especially harmful to those FBS teams that are investing and achieving at the highest level, which the teams in our conference are doing. And make no mistake, it is harmful not only in a sports context, but in terms of academic prestige, public and private support, donor involvement, alumni engagement, and student recruitment, retention, and perception. It is now outdated, even if one believed in it back in the day, because, among other things, two so-called P5 conferences have lost the marquee teams that gave them that designation in the first place. P5 conference performance on the field and court has often been no more than equal or not even as good as that of our conference. And, just as important, our conference has the same or similar goals. The American in particular has the same issues and challenges, the same larger markets, and similar television and media exposure, not to mention a competitive record over a decade that matched, or exceeded at times, several P5 conferences.
All conferences, including autonomy conferences, should actively discourage the use of P5 and G5 labels. The autonomy conferences do not refer to themselves as P5 conferences internally, although their memberships use P5 in the public forum. The media actually coined the term to replace the former Bowl Championship Series (BCS) description, and it often made little or no sense even during the last decade. The harmful divide that has developed can trace its roots to the advent of the BCS in 1998, which designated selected conferences as annual participants in BCS bowl games. The divide accelerated with the advent of the College Football Playoff, wherein the BCS label morphed into the media-invented P5. This divide did not exist in any meaningful way back in the College Football Association days of the 1980’s and 1990’s. No divisive nomenclature and arbitrary classification existed back then.
Whenever a so-called non-P5 school wins the national championship in men’s basketball, as the American did in 2014, three national championships in women’s basketball, as the American did in 2014, 2015 and 2016, or makes the College Football Playoff, as the American did in 2021, or in addition makes (seven times) and wins (four times) a New Year’s Day Bowl game against a top ten team or makes the men’s Final Four and the Elite Eight and the Sweet Sixteen, how are those teams “non-power”? It is absurd, and proof that the power moniker makes no sense competitively. The fact that so-called P5 teams that have not achieved at that level are still deemed “power” teams is an absurdity on its face. Another absurdity involves realignment, where Group of Five teams instantly become Power Five teams simply by signing a piece of paper.
