UCF athletic director Danny White is on his own.
At least that’s the read coming out of The American’s annual spring meetings this week in the Dallas area. While the conference is deciding things on a number of issues, perhaps the most buzzed about talking point has been football scheduling. Namely, the Knights are upset at the rest of their league brethren -- particularly in-state rival USF -- scheduling 2-for-1 series with two road trips for every home game against Power Five opponents.
But that’s an opinion that White and his program are all out on an island alone on according to AAC commissioner Mike Aresco.
“I think people respect Danny’s opinion on this and I think they feel that scheduling is an individual concern,” Aresco told the Orlando Sentinel. “I know Danny expressed some concerns that if we did too many of these two-for-ones, it could hurt the overall conference’s scheduling ability. I understand where he’s coming from because what he’s really talking about is doing two-for-ones all over the place with schools you really shouldn’t being doing them with. But most of our membership feels in order to get some of the really marquee teams like Oklahoma, Texas, Florida, Miami and Alabama, you’ll have to do two-for-ones.”
Aresco is spot on about scheduling being an individual concern for each school and that the 2-for-1’s are almost assuredly the only way AAC teams will be able to get bluebloods like the Crimson Tide to visit places like Tampa, Houston or Cincinnati. White is certainly entitled to how own opinion on the matter and has all the right in the world to voice it at league meetings but the Knights, fresh off their second New Year’s Six bowl, are also in a far different place when it comes to this subject than somebody like UConn or Tulane.
In the meantime, it certainly sounds like the rest of the AAC will be doing what they can to get Power Five opponents on the docket in future years -- even if that means 2-for-1 series or big ‘buy games’ on the road. And it certainly sounds like UCF will continue to be perturbed over that.