Three teams join
With the departure of UConn, now is the time that the AAC can make a move not only on one team but on three teams or more. It appears that the AAC is really trying to get to the P5 level and by essentially dropping the worst team and then gaining three really good teams, they could very well be considered in that conversation against the Big 12 and Pac 12 conferences
But they would have to specific teams, and one of them has to be Boise State. The other school would have to be another well recognized team that has spent significant time ranked in the past five years or so. Those teams would include Utah State, Appalachian State, Middle Tennessee, Army, or Air Force.
The conference could then be broken into two divisions geographically with:
- West: BYU, Boise State, the third team added, Tulsa, Houston, Southern Methodist and Memphis
- East: UCF, USF, East Carolina, Navy, Temple, Cincinnati and Tulane
BYU playing Boise State, Houston, Utah State/other quality program, Memphis and then two teams out of the east would give BYU at least five quality conference opponents plus three other games that would likely include Utah, another P5 and a G5 team.
This conference would be a security blanket for BYU once conference realignment happens in a few seasons and there would be no risk of BYU falling into a FCS or UMass/Liberty kind of situation.