This article talks about PAC12 expansion. Towards the end it talks about Houston which meets most of the criteria for joining a P5 conference beyond on field performance.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2021/08/26/i...no-1-pick/

Quote:The Pac-12 presidents care deeply about protecting the brand, which draws heavily on geographic alignment and the institutional ethos of the West Coast.

Were UCF located a thousand miles to the west, it would work as an expansion option in our alternate universe.

Were UCF located a thousand miles to the west, it would be Houston.

The Cougars haven’t been as successful competitively as UCF, at least in football, but they would meet the Pac-12 standard in every other respect — and to a much greater degree than any existing Big 12 schools.

Houston is not a member of the AAU, but it’s an R1 research school. It’s public. It just built a medical school. It’s reasonably accessible from the West Coast (i.e., non-stop flights). And it’s the No. 8 media market in the country.

Also, according to Navigate’s research …

— Houston’s athletic department spent $22.92 million on equipment/facilities and $16.55 million on coaching salaries in 2019.

The median figures for each bucket in the Pac-12: $22.98 million on equipment/facilities and $20.26 million on coaching salaries — and that’s with substantially lower annual conference distributions.