IRVING, Texas – Commissioner Mike Aresco has announced the American Athletic Conference’s 111-game football schedule, including the 56-game conference schedule, as the conference begins a historic season in 2024.
The 2024 season will be the second in which The American has 14 teams under its banner, and the first with Army West Point as a football-playing member.
The nonconference portion of the schedule features 10 games against teams ranked in the top 25 of the final Associated Press poll of 2023, including seven games against top-15 teams. American Athletic Conference teams will face No. 3 Texas, No. 5 Alabama, No. 6 Florida State, No. 14 Notre Dame (two games), No. 15 Oklahoma (two games), No. 16 Oklahoma State, No. 18 Kansas State and No. 25 Liberty in nonconference play.
Teams from The American will play 11 nonconference games against opponents from the Sun Belt, six against Conference USA, five against the SEC, four each against the Big 12 and Mountain West, three against the ACC and two against the Big Ten. American teams will additionally play six games against FBS independents, including two against Notre Dame.
Conference play begins in Week 2 of the season as Army plays its first American Athletic Conference game at Florida Atlantic, while Navy hosts Temple Sept. 7. While Army and Navy will play in the same league for the first time, the Dec. 14 Army-Navy Game at MetLife Stadium will not count as a conference game.
Each of the 14 teams in The American will play eight conference games in 2024. The top two teams in the final single-division regular-season standings will meet Friday, Dec. 6 in the 10th American Athletic Conference Football Championship.
Some highlights of the 2024 schedule include:
A compelling slate of Thursday and Friday prime time conference games on ESPN platforms, beginning with Army at Temple on Thursday, Sept. 26. The American will have a conference game in prime time in at least six weeks of the 2024 season.
A series of games available exclusively on ESPN+, the leading direct-to-consumer sports streaming service which has grown to more than 25.2 million subscribers in less than six years.
A key conference game on Thanksgiving between Memphis and Tulane, teams that combined for 21 wins in 2023.
One game will be selected for Black Friday (Nov. 29) among a group of three games in the final week of the regular season. The Black Friday selection will come from UAB-Charlotte, Navy-East Carolina or South Florida-Rice. That selection will be made by Oct. 14.
The American Athletic Conference Football Championship, which has been broadcast on ABC in each of the last nine years, is scheduled for Friday, Dec. 6, and will be televised in prime time.
American Athletic Conference teams figure to be well-positioned for a second appearance in the College Football Playoff in 2024. The new Playoff format allows for the five highest-ranked conference champions to reach the 12-team field – a distinction The American would have earned six times in the first nine years of the CFP era.
Kickoff times and television designations for the first three weeks of the season, as well as the season-long weeknight games, will be finalized by June 1. The rest of the schedule will fall under the customary 12-day and six-day selection processes.
