Our site guides you to fully licensed team merchandise of all members of the American Athletics Conference.
History Of The American Athletic Conference
The American Athletic Conference (AAC) was established in 2013 as a result of a major realignment in college sports. Prior to its creation, the conference was known as the Big East Conference, which was founded in 1979 as a basketball-centric conference consisting of a group of Catholic universities.
In 1991, the Big East expanded to include football teams and became a top-tier football conference, with teams like Miami, Virginia Tech, and Boston College. The conference continued to evolve, adding new members and losing others over the years, until 2011 when it was announced that non-football schools would be leaving to form the new Big East Conference. In response, the football-playing schools decided to rebrand as the American Athletic Conference.
The AAC currently (2011) consists of 11 members, including UCF, Cincinnati, UConn, East Carolina, Houston, Memphis, Navy, SMU, Temple, Tulane, and Tulsa. Navy is a football-only member, while the other schools participate in a variety of sports.
Since its founding, the AAC has been a competitive conference in both football and basketball, with UCF winning the national championship in football in 2017, and several schools making deep runs in the NCAA basketball tournament in recent years.
As the landscape of college sports continues to change, the AAC will likely continue to evolve and adapt, but it remains an important and competitive conference in the world of college athletics.
As of 2024 the conference has changed. UCF, Cincinnati and Houston have withdrawn. New additions are Charlotte, Florida Atlantic, North Texas, Rice, UAB and UTSA. This now gives us a total of 14 teams.
