John Casteen (president of UVa) was apparently always in our corner and voted consistently throughout the internal ACC expansion process. Wayne Clough was president of Georgia Tech and Dave Braine was the AD there. Both had deep roots in Blacksburg (Clough as a longtime faculty member and Braine as our prior AD). I don't have a lot of inside information to back this up, but I strongly suspect that the two of them also did a lot of heavy lifting for us behind the scenes. We also had academic partnerships with Maryland and Wake Forest that may not have had direct benefit on the athletic side, but they certainly didn't hurt. Duke and UNC apparently were never in support of us, but their absolute opposition to expansion of any kind made John Casteen's position valuable enough to keep our options open. My opinion is that Steger, Weaver, and everyone involved from our side played the cards that they were dealt in the best possible way and ultimately it became a situation where ACC expansion simply couldn't happen without us. Completely different world today, of course.