Lets look at some comparables in attendance for a moment. So if Houston were to leave and say Cincy as well, we would need to replace those two with comparable schools as close to them as possible. My two in FB would be UTEP and Army because that seems to me to fit us from the schools we could get. So lets look closely at FB attendance by taking a three year average of the schools in question.

Lets start by comparaing Army to Cincy in the east, then finish with UTEP and Houston in the west.

3 Year average attendance comparison of:

Army to Cincinnati (eastern AAC)

Army (average 2014,2015,2016)
33,014

Cincinnati
32,483

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Houston to UTEP (western AAC)


Houston
28,849

UTEP
26,655

So as you can see, all the schools have comparable attendances even wo considering their won loss records. Certainly Houston got a bump this last year as did Cincinnati. UTEP and Army didn't, but the attendances are still comparable and remember, this is a three year average - 2014-2016.

Source Phil Steele CFB Magazine.