Everything commish Mike Aresco said regarding AAC tournament cancellation
American Athletic Conference Commissioner Mike Aresco held a press conference Friday morning shortly after the conference announced it would cancel the AAC Tournament this season because of the coronavirus. The public announcement literally came roughly an hour before the start of first-round play.
Since the morning press conference, the AAC Friday afternoon announced the suspension of spring sports competition, effective immediately.
And minutes after that announcement, the NCAA dropped a bombshell of it own, canceling all remaining winter and spring championships.
Here's everything Aresco had to say during the morning press conference.
ON DECISION TIMELINE TO CANCEL IN TERMS OF REACTION ...
We met this morning, and we knew we were up against a time constraint. We knew that our student-athletes would be taking court in a matter of a few hours. We were aware that other conferences were meeting and considering this, but we felt whatever decision we made would have to be the right decision from our standpoint.
We're not concerned with what conferences are going to do. When we made a decision, from what I understand, no other conferences had made a final decision, but somebody said, 'Did you want to go first?' I wasn't concerned with what other conferences were doing. We simply wanted to do the right thing and in a timely manner. We also wanted to talk to our leadership on our board and our ADs, and we were able to do that.
We were able to ultimately decide to protect our student-athletes; that was our highest priority. There was no way we could really defend playing the games. You hate to have them miss an opportunity like this to play in a tournament like this in a beautiful arena, but you realize your first priority is always the health, safety and wellbeing of your student-athletes. That was our primary concern. We felt we were up against a tough timeline and ultimately made the decision to cancel the tournament. I was asked earlier what the NCAA would do next week? I have no idea, and that's not for me to comment.
ON WHETHER OR NOT THERE WAS UNANIMOUS SUPPORT FOR THE DECISION ...
It's my decision, along with our board chair. Ultimately, the commissioner has to make that call, along with our board chair. We alerted everyone. We told Matt Homan what we were doing. Matt's the general manager of the arena, and he was in complete agreement. He was in line of what we did. But it's our decision, and sometimes you have to make a hard decision.
Last night, we decided to have the tournament without fans, and that was a hard decision. This morning, in view of what happened with the NBA and in view of the progressive nature of this virus and the pandemic nature and the fact that the curve is still unfortunately going up, and the fact that you could have a situation where evidence shows up afterward of a student-athlete having this and a lot of other student-athletes potentially could be exposed, we just felt it was not worth it.
ON CONNECTING WITH OTHER INSTITUTIONS REGARDING TALKS ABOUT OTHER SPORTS ...
We had an athletic directors meeting scheduled for this morning, and that's why it was fortuitous we have our AD leadership with me in the room. We've had some meetings still ongoing. That's the primary discussion right now, what we're going to do with our spring competition -- both conference and nonconference and our championships. We're definitely going to have a position on it, and our schools will make a decision.
It'll be a conference decision, it has to be. You can't have some schools playing conference games, and others not. We wanted to also make a decision that either would be conference or all-inclusive, all competitions, nonconference and championship. We'll have something for you.
ON CINCINNATI GETTING THE AAC's AUTOMATIC BID IF THERE IS AN NCAA TOURNAMENT ...
It was not really part of the discussion at this point. The focus really is what should we do? The student-athletes look forward to this conference tournament. It was going to be a really terrific, intense tournament. But in the end, after everything that's happened and the risks, it just was not worth doing it. The health and safety of our student-athletes is absolutely paramount. The other things just didn't matter. We don't know what the NCAA's situation is, but it will get sorted out.
ON THE POTENTIAL OF THE TOURNAMENT BEING POSTPONED OR MOVED TO A LATER DATE ...
It doesn't seem like it. If the NCAA [Tournament] were to postpone, then perhaps ... but I really don't think it would be feasible. The logistics would be awfully difficult to do something like that. That's why we felt the postponements, even of our spring sports, would not be likely. You'd be up against NCAA timelines. I really don't see that happening.
Is there some remote possibly that the NCAA decides to postpone the tournament? I have no idea what the NCAA's going to do, and I don't want to even suggest what they might do. Could we come back and do it? I really doubt that's feasible.
ON CONCERN AMONG TEAMS OR PEOPLE REGARDING NECESSARY CORONAVIRUS TESTING ...
We would leave that up to the individual institutions. The staff here has been terrific. The concern wasn't just our student-athletes, our players and coaches. It was the staff here, the credentialed members, others who would be here ... everyone involved with our tournament was the concern. In terms of that kind of thing, that would be up to the schools. We hope obviously everybody does.