As mentioned before, has teams in Tennessee, Florida, Texas, Carolina, etc. In other words, they have teams in football country. If they are included in the playoff a few years in a row and that conference has success in said playoff, then money will flow and recruits will see AAC teams as legitimate opportunities to be seen, and to win a championship. That would make it feasible for them to eventually be a P5-ish conference. I wonder if BYU sees it this way. It's not hard to see the AAC growing into a conference that is totally on par with (or better than) more than one P5 conferences. Might be better to stay indy. But it might be worse to stay indy and watch the AAC grow into something a lot better than it is now.