Ever since Cincinnati, Houston, and UCF announced they would be leaving the AAC for the Big 12, the question of when exactly that will happen has hung over everyone’s heads. The conference’s rules state that to leave you must pay $10 million and give 27 months’ notice. However, it seemed clear that the three schools leaving wanted to get out sooner, which was confirmed the last week of April 2022, when the three announced that they intended to join the Big 12 for the 2023-24 academic year.
There was some precedent for this. UConn made the decision in 2019 to go Independent in football and join the Big East in other sports.