This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

The American Athletic Conference, after heaving a big sigh of relief that the Big 12 didn't expand, is looking to its television future — and looking outside the box.

No longer fearing losing members to the Big 12, the AAC is pondering future TV deals. Its football contract with ESPN ends in 2019, which could be the same year that BYU's ESPN deal expires. (ESPN has the option to extend it from '18 through '19.)

As it stands, BYU is better off than the AAC. Each member of that conference makes less than $3 million per year from ESPN — a deal that includes basketball. BYU makes somewhere between $3.2 million and $6 million per year for football only. (Estimates place the Cougars' payout between $800,000 and $1.2 million per home game; BYU is guaranteed four home games per year on ESPN channels, but it has had five some seasons.)

It's a commissioner's job to talk up his league, and AAC commissioner Mike Aresco did just that recently.

"We know we have a chance to really do something special with our teams," he said, according to the Memphis Commercial-Appeal. "A big TV deal in a few years is really going to be a big aspect of our future."

It's all relative. For an AAC school, $5 million would be big and $10 million would be huge. For a Big Ten school, that would be nothing — but Big Ten schools are projected to pull in $48 million or more EACH in TV revenue by 2018.

But Aresco is bullish. He believes he can attract the interest of not just traditional TV outlets like ESPN, Fox, CBS and NBC, but online outlets like Amazon, Netflix, Google and Facebook.

Amazon will stream some AAC women's basketball games this season, so might that be the future? Might that be the future for BYU, too?

There's a major difference, however. AAC teams have to schedule only four football games a year; they play eight league games.

This season, the 12 AAC schools scheduled a total of 21 games against teams from Power Five conferences; BYU alone played six P5 teams.

Independent BYU needs the scheduling help ESPN can provide and Amazon, Netflix, Google and Facebook cannot.

And the AAC has seven bowl tie-ins. They're not great, but they're the kind of bowls BYU has played in since going independent. The Cougars have even played in two current AAC bowls (Armed Forces and Miami Beach).

Including this year's trip to the Poinsettia Bowl (if they win one more game), all six of the Cougars' post-independence bowl games will have been on ESPN; two (Armed Forces and Las Vegas) are owned by ESPN — as is the 2019 tie-in (Hawaii Bowl).

ESPN can get the Cougars into a bowl; Amazon, Netflix, Google and Facebook cannot.

There's more to it than just who would pay BYU the most for its TV rights.

As for the relief that Aresco felt when the Big 12 decided not to expand, leaving his league intact and BYU standing at the altar— the only indication we have so far is that the Big 12 sold out cheap.

Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby issued a denial, but the Sports Business Journal reported that ESPN bought out the clause mandating it (and Fox) pay an extra $25 million to $30 million per year for each school the league added — for $1 million per year. Total. That's $125,000 per school per year.

Again, Bowlsby insists the league is still negotiating with ESPN and Fox. But it still sounds like another slap in the face on top of the dog-and-pony show that ended with no expansion.

Scott D. Pierce covers television for The Salt Lake Tribune . Email him at spierce@sltrib.com; follow him on Twitter @ScottDPierce.