Phil Steele Blog • April 10, 2017

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AAC 2017 Schedules.

The AAC announced the release for their 2017 schedules. Here are some notes from the release for the 2017 season.

The 2017 season marks the third year of the conference’s four-year scheduling cycle in which each of the 12 teams in The American plays eight conference games - five against the other teams in its division and three against teams from the other division. The two division winners will meet Dec. 2 in the third American Athletic Conference Football Championship.

The American Athletic Conference further established itself as one college football’s top conferences in 2016 as the league produced three teams (USF, Temple, Tulsa) with at least 10 wins, putting The American alongside the ACC, Big Ten and Big 12 as the only FBS conferences with three 10-win teams in each of the last two seasons.

A total of 17 of The American’s 48 nonconference games will be against Power 6 opponents or Notre Dame. American Athletic Conference teams have a combined five games against the Big 12, four against the ACC, three against the Big Ten, two each against the Pac-12 and Notre Dame, and one against the SEC. The American has won 19 games against Power 6 opponents in the past two years and has two New Year’s Bowl wins against those opponents since 2014.

A total of 16 games against Conference USA, the MAC, the Mountain West and the Sun Belt. The American went 10-1 against teams from those conferences in the 2016 regular season and is 20-2 against those leagues in the last two regular seasons.

Five nonconference games against teams that were ranked among the top 18 in last year’s final polls. Tulane faces No. 5 Oklahoma Sept. 16, Cincinnati is at No. 10 Michigan Sept. 9, Tulsa opens at No. 11 Oklahoma State Sept. 2; and East Carolina has consecutive games against No. 18 West Virginia (Sept. 9) and No. 16 Virginia Tech (Sept. 16).

The American Athletic Conference Football Championship, which has been broadcast on ABC in each of the last two years, is scheduled for Dec. 2 and will be televised either on either ABC or ESPN.

CINCINNATI CONNECTICUT EAST CAROLINA
8/31 Austin Peay (Thur) 8/31 Holy Cross (Thur) 9/2 James Madison
9/9 at Michigan 9/9 USF 9/9 at West Virginia
9/16 at Miami, Oh 9/16 at Virginia 9/16 Virginia Tech
9/23 at Navy 9/23 Open 9/23 Open
9/30 Marshall 9/30 at SMU 9/30 USF
10/7 UCF 10/6 Memphis (Fri) 10/7 Temple
10/14 Open 10/14 at Temple 10/14 at UCF
10/21 SMU 10/21 Tulsa 10/21 BYU (HC)
10/28 at USF 10/28 Missouri 10/28 at Houston
11/4 at Tulane 11/4 East Carolina 11/4 at Connecticut
11/10 Temple (Fri) 11/11 at UCF 11/11 Tulane
11/18 at East Carolina 11/18 Boston College (Boston) 11/18 Cincinnati
11/25 Connecticut 11/25 at Cincinnati 11/25 at Memphis
12/2     12/2