PROVIDENCE – The American Athletic Conference, formerly the Big East Conference, unveiled its new logo on Thursday – a simple, athletic A in red, white and blue, which participating schools can customize with their own colors.
“As with the creation of our name, we worked directly with our institutions, sports marketing experts, media partners and design agencies to create and evaluate a variety of logo options,” Commissioner Mike Aresco said in prepared remarks.
“We took our preferred marks to each institution within our conference for an open forum with school presidents, athletic directors and student athletes to get their input. The elegant, athletic and classic letter A with the unique star inside and ‘American’ underneath was unanimously chosen by every institution,” said Aresco, adding that, “We believe this bold mark and our series of ancillary marks will support our conference name and the values that our name represents.”
Aresco said that the conference’s partners at ESPN and CBS agreed with the logo choice and said its “strength, simplicity and elegance” would resonate well on television.
The new logo is part of an ongoing branding process for the conference, which will officially assume its new identity on July 1 and launch the full version of its website at TheAmerican.org. Until the official launch, the website will feature basic information on the conference and its member schools.
Beginning with the 2014-2015 academic year, the conference will consist of the University of Central Florida, the University of Cincinnati, the University of Connecticut, East Carolina University, the University of Houston, the University of Memphis, Southern Methodist University, the University of South Florida, Temple University, Tulane University and the University of Tulsa. The U.S. Naval Academy will become a football-only member in 2015.
A spokesperson told Providence Business News that the conference intends to keep its headquarters in Rhode Island’s capital city.
