American Athletic Conference commissioner Mike Aresco will retire at the end of the 2023-2024 academic year, the conference announced Thursday morning.

Aresco, 74, was the last commissioner of the old Big East Conference before it became the AAC in 2013 and has served as AAC commissioner for the entire history of the conference. Memphis has been an AAC member since the conference's inception.

“It has been the supreme privilege of my long career in sports to have had the opportunity to lead this great conference from its reinvention in 2013, and to represent its outstanding student-athletes, coaches and administrators,” Aresco said in a press release. “I am grateful to the Board of Directors for giving me this opportunity to serve. It would take many pages to list this conference’s numerous athletic and academic accomplishments. There have also been some disappointments and difficulties along the way, most notably, the P5-G5 divide, realignment, College Football Playoff access for our deserving teams, and some competitive heartbreak in big games."

Under Aresco's leadership, the AAC has been the best Group of Five football conference. The AAC had sent a team to a New Year's Six bowl game for the last six years before this season, when Conference USA's Liberty earned the bid over SMU, the AAC champion.

Aresco also repeatedly railed against the idea that there was a Power Five/Group of Five divide in college football, branding the AAC as "Power 6" to try putting his conference on the same level as the power conferences.

There were multiple rounds of conference realignment during his tenure at the head of the AAC, most recently when SMU announced it would leave for the ACC after this season. Aresco responded by adding Army as a football-only member.

Before that, Aresco added Charlotte, Rice, UAB, UTSA, North Texas and Florida Atlantic after Cincinnati, UCF and Houston left for the Big 12 before this season.

"Mike Aresco has been a strong, steady, and innovative commissioner for the American Athletic Conference since its inception,” East Carolina University Chancellor Philip Rogers, Chair of the conference's board of directors, said in the release. “We are all grateful for his distinguished service to the conference. There is no question that he will leave the AAC well-positioned for future success due to his strategic approach to navigating the complex landscape of intercollegiate athletics."

Aresco's last day will be May 31, 2024.

Reach sports writer Jonah Dylan at jonah.dylan@commercialappeal.com or on Twitter @thejonahdylan.

This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: AAC commissioner Mike Aresco will retire in 2024, conference announces