American Athletic Conference unveils new logo

The newly created American Athletic Conference has officially released its new logo to USA Today‘s Dan Wolken.  The conference, which is sometimes simply referenced as “The American” is a newly created 10-team league that features former teams of the Big East Conference (Rutgers, UConn, South Florida, Louisville, Cincinnati and Temple) with the addition of some schools that had formerly found their home in Conference USA (Houston, SMU, Central Florida and Memphis).

The American logo, which features a blue “A” with a red star in the middle of the letter, was designed by .

Commissioner Mike Aresco said that the conference decided on the logo because of the bold, yet simplistic look it provided,

“It’s a bold look,” Aresco said. “Obviously this is a media world we live in, and we wanted to make sure we had the kind of mark that would be distinctive and would make an impact when people saw it. We wanted it to be something people would like and remember, but the notion really was to make it as simple as possible but also strong.”

The conference also wanted to ensure that the logo was acronym free, so as to avoid confusion with the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC).

Prior to the logo’s unveiling, the conference showed the logo to each school member and ESPN — the conference’s media rights holder — before settling on the blue “A”.

“It’s something we instantly liked, and in showing it to people (on campuses), we wanted to know whether they would like it,” Aresco said. “It generated the kind of buy-in you want, and I’m hoping it gets that kind of response (nationally).”

“We wanted it to be a little traditional, but very new-looking,” said LeslieAnne Wade, managing partner of Wade Media Management and a marketing consultant for the league. “The main focus was really creating something that looks like a sports brand and a sports logo. When you get into the use of the word American, there are a lot of corporate logos, and we didn’t want it to look like that. We were looking for really a clean, simple strong symbol.” (via USA Today)

In the midst of a new logo and re-branding efforts, the newly formed conference still has much change on the horizon.  Louisville and Rutgers are leaving the conference for the ACC and Big Ten, respectively, and East Carolina, Tulane and Tulsa will be added as new members.