Do not sleep on Oliver Luck, the consultant that the Pac12 has hired, he has a proven history of pulling unicorns out of his ass.
A third possibility. While this may seem like a long shot there is a lot of reasons this works.
Pac12 - American merge create a super conference with an additional $3-4 million per school ($12-15M per school). We could end up on the west side playing Cal, Stanford, Wash State, Oregon State, Tulsa, UTSA and Rice yearly with 2-3 games a year for the balance of the conference SMU, ECU, Memphis, Tulane, UAB, USF, FAU, and Charlotte. there are a few other additions possible in San Diego State, Colorado State, Air Force among others and if that happens we are headed to the east pretty quickly.
I am not sure of the team alignments but do not be surprised to see something like this happen. It allows Stanford to be the "face" of the conference. It adds several "academic" institutions. The geography fills a lot of holes in the announced TV schedules which with those teams would result a $200M+ deal.
Atlantic has voted them down and the MWC contracts have a ton of issues that have prevented the conversation even starting. They are a 108 year old conference and so long as the American doesn't get caught up on keeping their name this is looking more and more like a posibility.
The caveat to this is if they decide to trim with the merger and cut a few teams from the merger...