at it. Yormark got the jump on everyone who was scared and needed a landing spot, but I think the ACC could reconstitute itself and make itself quite better than the B12. I also think that this player settlement number has changed things quite a bit, although anyone with a brain should have foreseen this. The ACC can make itself a better league and play out the window until 2027. If ESPN keeps the deal, then they can stay in that format. If ESPN drops the deal then the schools can say they did their best. 1. I don't think most ACC schools want to get their throats cut in the SEC - including UNC. 2. I also don't think ND wants to become a "Midwest team," which is what they will do if they join the B10. 3. Basically every ACC school will become irrelevant in football if they join the SEC. That was at least one consideration for VT back in 2011. I think that eventually the ACC will (or needs to) dump the small schools - Wake, Syr, BC and also Pitt and Louivsille. If I could add school onto the Magnificent 7 (or 5 if Clemson and FSU bail), they would be Kansas Arizona OKST Utah and maybe AZST UCF BYU I doubt that Miami would want UCF and Utah might not want BYU. I love Okie State, they and Utah are by far the best current B12 football schools and are very similar to VT. Somewhere, basketball money is going to be way more important, so grabbing Kansas and Arizona are obvious choices. Duke and UNC really need to be in the same conference for basketball. Every year that is the primary horse race that people watch in the ACC. Ideally the THIRD conference would be UNC NCSU VT UVA Miami Arizona Okie State Kansas Duke Notre Dame That's 10. If they could keep FSU and Clemson, that would be awesome. ND and FSU (Clemson?) would dominate the football landscape. I really like the SMU addition to the ACC and keeping Cal and Stanford would be fine. SMU are going to be very good in football. Even I, as a VT fan, wince and playing a bunch of cold midwestern games. I think the B10 is very boring. I like the SEC much better, but I really don't think we could hang there. I think a lot of schools - when they get past the initial monetary shock are going to look at the SEC and say - "not so fast." If they look at the B10 they will say, "Yuck." I already feel that way now and the non-power 2 schools have a gun to their head. FSU made this calculation once before when they decided to join the ACC. I have think that ND is VERY reluctant as well. Doing a 12 team league in either format allows everyone to protect their main identity UNC, Duke, Kansas and AZ stay whales in hoops ND and Okie State stay relevant in football and maybe FSU and Clemson would stick around if you had performance-based football shares. What I'm laying out could be clumped together in a coherent geography. Maybe someone was thinking ahead when they added SMU, Cal and Stanford. So I think a cherry-picked third league will arise. From a scheduling and entertainment standpoint, I would strongly prefer the "third league" to the B10. Maybe someone could get off their ass, in this age of the internet when there are millions of shoestring podcasters and youtubers and figure out how to make a network or revenue model that could get within 80% of what the B10 brings in. This is the one thing that angers me more than anything else from this process. I think the ACC was colossally mismanaged. If I gave you a list of those 12 schools and said, "Hey try to replicate what the B10 did and try to make between 80% and 100% of what they make," someone worth a crap should be able to accomplish that. Problem solved. I'd love to get some large sunbelt schools like Arizona and Arizona State way more than Wisconsin or Iowa. ** Edited by TDVick at 5/28/2024, 7:06:57 AM