Canzano: It's more than SMU and San Diego State in Pac-12 limbo

A look behind the expansion curtain.

SMU is currently a member of the American Athletic Conference.

Mike Aresco is the commissioner of the American Athletic Conference. He’s greeted every morning by the shifting landscape of college athletics. Aresco also doesn’t worry too much about what he can’t control.

“You have to know who you are,” he told me this week.

SMU is the latest AAC school to explore defection to another conference. The Mustangs began actively pursuing Pac-12 Conference membership early this year. Last summer, Aresco’s conference lost Cincinnati, Houston and UCF to the Big 12. Within days, the AAC raided Conference USA, absorbing six new schools.

“One thing I say is just don’t take this personally,” Aresco said. “It’s not personal.”

Aresco found himself at the Conference Commissioners Association annual meeting last week in Half Moon Bay, Calif., where he bumped into Pac-12 boss George Kliavkoff. The fellow commissioners greeted each other and spoke cordially in the lobby of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel.