The American had 5 teams ranked at some point this year, the league is good. Most of the top teams schedule one or two P5 teams, these games are scheduled years prior so it's not their fault those teams are not good at the time the game is played. Alabama schedules 3 or 4 cupcakes a year and gets a pass for that. You can't force one team to play 4 tough OOC games then give another a pass when they play none. UCF or any other G5 team would love to get into a better conference that's just not possible so not sure why people keep bringing it up.
Alabama does schedule teams, they have USC, Texas, Wisconsin, and Miami all coming up on the schedule.
UCF quite honestly, does hold some appeal to a conference like the Big 12 who once were interested in having a presence in Florida. They're willing to deal with West Virginia being an outsider. The conference UCF is currently in once had Miami, Virginia Tech, Pitt, West Virginia, Syracuse, Louisville, and Rutgers. Your criticisms are valid that the system works against teams like UCF, but they also didn't play their cards right 10-15 years ago when realignment was going on.