San Diego State Basketball: 4 best options after leaving Mountain West Conference

4. American Athletic Conference

To be clear, there are two clear options for San Diego State that’ll make sense. But right now, they haven’t been invited to either and a worst-case scenario can occur where they’re effectively homeless when it comes to conference affiliation. Among two “emergency” options that would make sense would include the AAC, one of the newer leagues that emerged due to the Big East realignment fallout that occurred over a decade ago.

The conference had more movement last offseason, with Houston, Cincinnati, and Central Florida off to the Big 12. In their place comes Charlotte, Florida Atlantic, North Texas, Rice, UAB, and UTSA, all from Conference USA. From a basketball perspective, this isn’t a bad haul, as FAU is coming off a Final Four apperance and nearly beat San Diego State, while both North Texas (NIT) and Charlotte (CBI) won their respective postseason tournaments.

The AAC has cemented itself as a top-7 conference and on the same standing as the Mountain West, both in prestige and finances. But the obvious fatal flaw in this situation is the travel, as San Diego State would be 1000s of miles away from most of their peers. Going from California for a game against East Carolina would break records for most travel for a conference game.

Again, this would be the landing spot if everything goes wrong and the Mountain West wants nothing to do with San Diego State. But, it would be better than crawling to the Big West or WAC just for geographic reasons.