American Athletic Conference

The American Athletic Conference (also known as "The American" or "AAC") is a big college sports conference in the United States. Its members play in NCAA Division I. In football, they play in the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS; known before 2006 as Division I-A), the higher of two levels of Division I football.

The American has its roots in the original Big East Conference. That conference was started in 1979 as a basketball-first league by a group of schools in the Eastern U.S. The Big East added football in 1991. That led to years of conflict between schools that played I-A/FBS football and those that did not. In July 2013, the Big East split into two conferences. The seven schools that did not play FBS football left to form a new Big East Conference. The FBS schools that did not go to other conferences stayed in the old conference structure. Along with several new members, they began operating as the American Athletic Conference.

The American kept the original Big East charter. That makes it the legal successor of the old Big East. However, both The American and the new Big East claim 1979 as their founding dates. Both also claim the pre-split history of the old Big East, at least in corporate terms. However, both leagues agreed that the current Big East would maintain the sporting history of the original conference in most sports. The only exceptions are football and women's rowing, the only two sports sponsored by The American but not the current Big East. In those two sports, neither offshoot league recognizes the history of the original Big East.

Of the 14 current full members (those that house most of their sports in the league), only Wichita State does not have a football team.

During a major conference realignment triggered in 2021 when Big 12 Conference mainstays Oklahoma and Texas announced they would move to the Southeastern Conference no later than 2025, The American was heavily affected. The Big 12 then raided The American, inviting Cincinnati, Houston, and UCF to join that conference, with their arrival date eventually set for 2023. In turn, The American raided Conference USA, inviting six members of that conference to move to The American in 2023—Charlotte, Florida Atlantic, North Texas, Rice, UAB, and UTSA. Later in the realignment cycle, SMU announced it would leave The American for the Atlantic Coast Conference in 2024. The American would replace SMU for football with Army, which will join as a football-only member at the same time that SMU leaves.