NCAA Conferences | American Athletic, Atlantic 10, Atlantic Sun
Continuing onwards with our D1 Conferences - we’ll be splitting them into groups of three by alphabetical order for ease of access (minus the Power 5 conferences which we’ll do in a separate blog). The format includes a little history and info about each one, the schools with tennis programs, and then 5 facts you should know about them right now. In this one, we feature the American Athletic Conference, the Atlantic-10 Conference, and the Atlantic Sun Conference.
American Athletic Conference
(Click here to find more information about the conference)
The AAC was originally the Big East conference and was created as a result of 7 Catholic schools leaving to create their own conference (the 7 schools in the Big East currently, which will be covered in a later edition). These schools all are predominantly big football schools, save for Wichita State, which is where their media deals are more concentrated. However, they all have successful sports programs in their own niches and compete with some of the more famous top schools in specific sports on a regular basis. The schools in the conference are situated throughout the U.S., but primarily in the south, southwest, and midwest. These are the schools:
Conference Summary
The University of Memphis and the University of South Florida are both tied for the most number of sports programs at each school: 18 in total.
The student populations of these schools are all very high, as the conference is mostly made up of state schools; UCF is the biggest with nearly 70,000 students in total while SMU has roughly 11,600 students.
These schools are more known for their sports programs, with only two of them falling in the top 100 in the U.S. News & World University Rankings
While all schools have relatively strong Tennis programs, only 2 of them cracked the top 50 NCAA rankings last season; UCF was at 22 while Tulane was at 47.
Over the last couple of years, UCF has recruited high profile players and as a result, this has made them much more successful in conference play, leading them to win the conference in the 2019 spring season. Tulane, Memphis, and USF are all close contenders though.
Atlantic-10 Conference
(Click here to find more information about the conference)
The A-10 conference was founded in 1975 as the Eastern Collegiate Basketball League (ECBL), given this was mostly a Basketball conference. Yet in 1982, the departure of Villanova and Pittsburgh, and the addition of St. Bonaventure, Rhode Island, St. Joseph’s, and Temple forced the conference to change its name. Later departures include Temple (obviously), and additions included George Mason, VCU, and Davidson. All these schools are located along the Eastern Atlantic Coast states, with the only outlier being St. Louis University. The split is roughly 50/50 for schools being public/private and as a result, the tuitions, student populations, and campus lifestyles vary from school to school.
Conference Summary
La Salle has the largest Athletics program in the conference with 9 Men’s teams and 12 Women’s teams (21 total).
As mentioned before the split in populations varies greatly; The largest school is George Mason University with over 37,000 students while Davidson is easily the smallest, with just under 2,000 students total.
The majority of these schools have higher acceptance rates ranging over 50%, while Davidson and Dayton are much more selective at 18% and 28% respectively.
The only school that’s been consistently ranked in the top 50 of the NCAA rankings is VCU, who was at 48 last season.
Over the last 3 years, VCU has been the most successful team, capturing the conference title each year, while George Washington was equally successful by having their own 3-peat right before.
Atlantic Sun Conference
(Click here to find more information about the conference)
The ASUN conference was originally founded as the Trans America Athletic Conference (TAAC) until it changed its name to the current one in 2001. It holds schools primarily located in the Southeastern U.S., with the majority (3/8 schools) being in Florida. This is one of the few conferences that doesn’t sponsor football programs, and as a result, they rely on athletic funding from other sports as well as donations from alumni & friends of individual programs. Here are the schools in the conference with tennis programs:
Conference Summary
The University of North Florida has the largest athletics program with 8 Men’s teams and 10 Women’s teams (18 total).
The largest school is the University of North Florida with a population of 17,000 while the smallest is Jacksonville with just over 4,000 students (they have no tennis program though)
All these universities are not relatively selective, and the average graduation rate sits between 50-60%.
None of these schools have any nationally ranked tennis programs.
The conference is relatively evenly matched among its top performers, with FGCU and North Florida capturing the conference title over the last two seasons.
An important thing to note when looking at all these conferences is: many schools can be part of different conferences for different sports. The reason is mostly due to the competitive level of the sports teams being very similar as well as alignment in the vision of the Athletics programs.