I went to see the alumni and enrollment stats from UH. For the Fall of 2018, Houston's undergraduate student body was comprised of 89.5% from Texas (41,449 students); there were exactly 1,200 out-of-state students (2.6% of student body). The top three states where Houston pulls undergraduate students from are California, Florida and Louisiana. Houston got 56 students from New York, 43 from Philadelphia and 40 from New Jersey. The University of Houston just does not pull students from the Northeastern section of the country, even when they joined a conference that had both UConn and Temple as part of it. Houston does have a NY-based alumni chapter, but it has a whopping 28 followers on social media.

Houston might have a lot in common as a major metropolitan city with New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, etc. However, as far as student overlap, the University of Houston and the Northeast are pretty far apart.

Conferences maximize exposure when they have membership from areas where they all pool students and alumni from. It's why the B1G does so well in Chicago and New York City, the SEC does very well in the South. Even in the Big East, many students from the member cities have overlap with other members. When a conference spreads its footprint out of necessity, rather than growth potential, it ends up affecting the athletic interest of their student-body, as well as exposure and interaction capabilities for alumni. In this regard, this is why UConn was doomed to fail in the AAC; the vast differences between them and the rest of the conference (between geography, alumni, where students come from, etc.) made it impossible to have a connection with the league.