The American Athletic Conference will add UAB, Texas-San Antonio, Rice, North Texas, Charlotte and Florida Atlantic to the league.
The AAC is replacing three schools that are scheduled to depart for the Big 12 Conference and is growing to 14 teams for football. The conference hopes the move will stabilize the league in the short term and prepare it to withstand future poaching of its members.
The additions all come from Conference USA, leaving that league both searching for new members and trying to fend off other poachers.
The Sun Belt has said it is interested in expanding beyond its current 10 football members and some of C-USA’s remaining eight schools would be geographic fits.
Wichita State is a basketball-only member of the AAC.