1. FSU and Clemson will both announce they are leaving, if not sooner, prior to commencement of the 2029-2030 season. They're not waiting until 2031. If you think they're going to wait until the 2030s to announce this, you're not thinking about it very hard. 2. I don't think it will come as a shocker to anyone that's been paying attention when FSU and Clemson announce they're leaving first. That will start a domino effect of other football brands scrambling to get out. 3. The ACC will begin to lose members as soon as FSU and Clemson announce they're leaving. Again, domino effect. This has happened every single time a conference loses its flagship brands. The knives come out and everyone moves for the exit doors as quickly as they can. 4. Yes, the ACC will have to back fill, but it won't be with Big 12 programs. Once all the major football brands start exfiltrating from the conference, there will be no reason for any Big 12 program to leave a relatively stable football conference to hop onto a sinking ship conference in full on crisis mode. 5. See 4. Also, if 4 or more of the major football brands leave, which is more or less a certainty, again, why are football brands going to leave the Big 12 to join a sinking ACC? This is about football, and only football. 6. Any other ACC football brands that can get out are going to start scrambling to get out as soon as FSU and Clemson leave. They have seen what happened to the old Big East and the PAC-12. Whether it happens slowly like the Big East, or quickly like the PAC-12, staying in a clearly imploding ACC will be akin to suicide for football brand. 7. There's not going to be a "battle royale." The ACC will be operating in crisis mode and losing all its most valuable football properties. It will be like a horse trying to run on 3 broken legs. The Big 12 is going to look like a stable rock to the ACC's hill of wet sand. Schools will be trying to get out of the dumpster fire, not jump in it. 8. I'm still not sure how you think the ACC is going to get a better media rights contract than the Big 12 when all of its football brands will be either gone or clearly running for the exits. Certainly, nobody with any football value is going to sign another GOR. 9. See 8. You've never explained why you think anyone with the means to orchestrate conference realignment moves would extract football value from the Big 12 to place it in the ACC to play home games vs. Wake Forest and Duke. That has never made any sense, and still doesn't now. I guess you think someone is going to swoop in and pay the remaining ACC schools 60 or 70 mil just because? 10. This loser will be the ACC. Also, as an aside, I'm not sure what you're smoking if you think Villanova and Georgetown, who both have FCS football programs and are basketball first schools that play in a power basketball conference that is usually more competitive and gets more teams in the NCAAT than the ACC, would leave the Big East to play in the ACC, or how it would help the ACC in any way to add two FCS football programs. Villanova is usually competitive at the FCS level, but that's FCS, and Georgetown barely even plays football in front of empty bleachers on a LAX field in DC. Frankly, if things get zero hour bad for the ACC, it wouldn't shock me to see some ACC schools, especially the former Big East members like Syracuse, Boston College, or Pitt, go independent in football and join the Big East. They could do a scheduling agreement together for football, sell their own football rights, and juice everything else by playing in the Big East. The alternative would be playing G5 schools and whatever worthless football brands get stuck in the new look G5 ACC.