So just thinking out loud, what if the AAC decided to go 24 teams and had 4, 6 team divisions:
AAC West:
Washington State
Oregon State
Boise State
Cal
Stanford
SDSU
AAC EAST
Temple
Navy
ECU
Charlotte
USF
FAU
AAC-SOUTHEAST
UAB
Tulane
Memphis
USM--Add them because you would not have a Miss team at this point
UL--Add them because that would only give you 2 La Teams
USA or Troy--Thought would be USA because they are a bigger market over Troy with athletics being fairly even.
AAC-SOUTHWEST
Tulsa
UNT
SMU
RICE
UTSA
Texas State/UTEP or NMSU--I think Texas State because of the market and all three are questionable at best athletically, but Texas State gives you the area and a built in rival for UTSA.
24 Team G5 conference that would be perfectly built by regions. The only thing you would have to decide is how would the conference football championship be divided. For instance lets say, Oregon State wins the west, ECU wins the East, UL wins the Southeast (I had to do that because its, UL) and SMU wins the Southwest. How would you decide who plays in the Conference Championship game. I guess you could say that the East and SouthEast would be technically on one side and the West and SW would be on the other. You would have some sort of tiebreaker between the East and SE and West and SW.
I actually like this conference makeup, personally.