Army Football recently announced that it is joining the American Athletic Conference (AAC) in 2024 as a football-only member. This move will not impact Army’s annual games against Air Force and Navy as those traditions are set to continue. Furthermore, this move will also not impact Army’s TV rights partnership with CBS Sports Network as the exclusive home for Army home games that is set to last through 2028. This move continues the trend of college football realignment whereby college football programs from all over the country have continued switching conferences.

Oklahoma University (OU) and the University of Texas Austin (UT) joined the Southeastern Conference (SEC) which started the college football realignment trend that led to some of the biggest college football programs in the country to make historic conference moves. Some of these prominent college football programs that chose to move onto “greener pastures” include the University of Southern California (USC), University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), University of Oregon (UO), and the University of Washington (UW) which all decided to join the Big Ten Conference positioning it as the chief competitor to the SEC as the top college football “super league” in the world. To ensure its survival as a “Power 5” conference, the Big 12 Conference added multiple universities to its conference including the University of Central Florida (UCF), Brigham Young University (BYU), University of Cincinnati (UC), University of Houston (UH), University of Arizona (UA), Arizona State University (ASU), University of Colorado Boulder (UCB), and the University of Utah (UU). The Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) also added the University of California Berkeley (UCB), Stanford University, and Southern Methodist University (SMU).

These conference realignments will present new and exciting opportunities. As Army will now have the opportunity to play Navy twice per season by way of their traditional annual game in addition to the possibility of the two military service institutions facing off again in the AAC Championship Game. Personally, I am extremely excited for the 2024 college football season that will provide new “super league” conferences in addition to a new twelve-team college football playoff format that will, in my opinion, change the game forever in a spectacularly positive way.

By: Chris T. Flowski