The American Athletic Conference ranks 6th of the 7 great conferences - no shame at all considering 25 conferences do not feature six all-time great teams. Our ratings are based on how the top 6 teams in each great conference have played against some of the greatest college basketball teams in history in the Value Add College Basketball Game (see details at the bottom). .
The conference formed recently when the Big East broke into football and basketball-only schools, and they ended up putting together six teams in particular with incredible history. So far in our game the six teams have gone 13-9 against some of the greatest teams in college basketball history. Obviously they will be hurt by Houston and Cincinnati moving to the Big 12 along with Central Florida (who does not have an all-time great team).
The top two teams are virtually tied with ratings of 8.7 and 8.5 in Oscar "Big O" Robertson's 1960 Cincinnati squad being chased by Elvin Hayes 1968 Houston team that handed Kareem Abdul-Jabbar their only loss.
In this conference the 20th century teams are currently in the top 3 spots, but that could change as Hakeem Olajuwon's 1983 squad is barely leading Derrick Rose's 2008 Memphis team - both of which had heart breaking national championships slip away in their real season.
| Rnk | Great Team | Year | Key Player | W | L | Pts | Allow | Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Athletic top 6 | 13 | 9 | 69.8 | 68.5 | 3.5 | |||
| 1 | Cincinnati | 1960 | Oscar Robertson | 1 | 1 | 69.5 | 73.5 | 8.7 |
| 2 | Houston | 1968 | Elvin Hayes | 3 | 1 | 73.0 | 63.8 | 8.5 |
| 3 | Houston | 1983 | Hakeem Olajuwon | 2 | 1 | 70.7 | 65.0 | 4.1 |
| 4 | Memphis | 2008 | Derrick Rose | 4 | 2 | 68.7 | 65.8 | 3.9 |
| 5 | Cincinnati | 2002 | Jason Maxiell | 2 | 2 | 72.8 | 71.5 | 1.9 |
| 6 | Wichita St. | 2013 | Fred VanVleet | 1 | 2 | 64.3 | 71.3 | -6.4 |
We invented the Value Add Basketball Game, and since then have grown it to to 135 teams of all-time great teams and players. We have played 188 games to date, and 63,000 unique visitors have clicked on the game.
Seven current conferences have at least six all-time great teams in the game. We decided to rank those conferences based on the average rating of their top six teams so far in our games against other teams.Click on the game to play yourself - it contains everything you need to play the Value Add Basketball game, which lets you pit any of 136 great all-time college teams against each other. To pick your two teams it is best to click on this Google doc and print the pages of the teams you want (each team is one page). I track my games on this google sheet, but play your own for free!
| Rnk | Great Team | Year | Key Player | W | L | Pts | Allow | Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Athletic top 6 | 13 | 9 | 69.8 | 68.5 | 3.5 | |||
| 1 | Cincinnati | 1960 | Oscar Robertson | 1 | 1 | 69.5 | 73.5 | 8.7 |
| 2 | Houston | 1968 | Elvin Hayes | 3 | 1 | 73.0 | 63.8 | 8.5 |
| 3 | Houston | 1983 | Hakeem Olajuwon | 2 | 1 | 70.7 | 65.0 | 4.1 |
| 4 | Memphis | 2008 | Derrick Rose | 4 | 2 | 68.7 | 65.8 | 3.9 |
| 5 | Cincinnati | 2002 | Jason Maxiell | 2 | 2 | 72.8 | 71.5 | 1.9 |
| 6 | Wichita St. | 2013 | Fred VanVleet | 1 | 2 | 64.3 | 71.3 | -6.4 |
