take the AAC (with UConn leaving as already announced) and drop Tulane and ECU.

That would leave a 9 team conference with:

Houston
SMU
Tulsa
Memphis
UCF
USF
Cincinnati
Navy
Temple

(swap Navy for Wichita St. in basketball).

Add Boise St., BYU, and San Diego St. in all sports, Air Force and Army in football, and Gonzaga and St. Mary's in basketball.

That would leave a pretty strong conference for both basketball and football.

Here is the final rankings in the Massey rankings comparison for football this year (Top 65):

#13 Memphis
#20 Navy
#21 Cincinnati
#22 Air Force
#23 Boise St.
#25 UCF
#31 SMU
#39 San Diego St.
#57 Temple
#58 BYU

(10 of 14 being in the top half of FBS).

And in current Pomeroy basketball rankings (Top 100):

#5 Gonzaga
#12 San Diego St.
#27 BYU
#29 Houston
#36 Wichita St.
#39 St. Mary's
#40 Memphis
#48 Cincinnati
#82 SMU
#84 Temple

(10 of 14 teams being in top 100 with 8 teams being potential NCAA tourney teams).

That would at the very least give the AAC essentially a guarantee of the "G5" auto bid every year in football, and would force them to be considered a major power conference in basketball.