I'll help out here.
Here is the Youtube link to the entire 18 minute 50 second Aresco press availability.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OYDSM1n4n0
The sentence that the student journalist completely misdirected to "lesser teams" comes in an answer to Wichita radio at about the 10:10 mark.
Q: Yeah, Commissioner early on in the process it seemed like the narrative for the American in conference realignment was going to be being very offensive in the situation. Now it seems like it's more of a defensive approach with three schools planning to leave for the Big12. How do you guys kind of move forward from here and how did it change from being to where you guys might be the poacher to and now you're the poached looking to make up for the loss of three schools?
Aresco: Well, Mason, first of all I hate to use that word "poached." Period. It's not really what's going on. Schools express interest in joining particular conferences. You know, Conferences are voluntary organizations, we have to remember that. We have to remember that if you pay your exit fee and you stay a particular amount of time, and that's pretty much true of every conference, you can leave. You can determine your fate and how you want to go about things. And so you have to remember that. You also have to remember we can't take this personally. It's the nature of our business. Schools want to improve themselves. Conferences have changed dramatically. Realignment has been going on for a long time. I don't particularly like it. I don't think a lot of people like it. It's tough on everyone.
I wouldn't say that our position is defensive at all. I think we obviously have got some schools that are leaving; they have their reasons for leaving. We have had an outstanding relationship with those schools. We wish them well. They've done a great job for us. And we have done a great job for them.
I think what's sometimes overlooked is what this conference has done for schools. What the American Athletic Conference has done in elevating programs that may not have been at the level they're at now. By really I think intelligent scheduling and with the great support of ESPN and I can't stress that enough how much ESPN has supported us and what their exposure and their promotion has meant for this conference. So these schools have benefitted enormously and now a few of them are looking for another opportunity and that's fine. We would have liked to have had them stay.
In terms of the conference, our goals and vision have not changed and I think once we reconstitute I think we're going to continue, in fact I have no doubt we're going to continue our approach and try to become a P6 conference an Autonomy 6 conference. I think in view of what's happened around college athletics in view of what's happened in the Big12, I think we have a claim to make as we continue to compete at the highest levels.
This response goes on another 30-60 seconds (another don't take it personally, unfortunate the Big 12 events in 2016 were so public, but we stayed cohesive then and we'll stay cohesive now, and more) but that's the part relevant to the student journalists' pull.
I just don't see how you take that response at length, and turn it into "AAC gonna lower its sights and take 'lesser schools' and trust they'll elevate them."