1) No B12 team in their right mind would leave the B12 to go to the ACC, a conference that's treated like a running joke by the punditry, with leadership that is dysfunctional on a good day and incompetent on a bad day, where 70% of the conference is made up of afterthought or DOA football programs. No rats are going to try and get ON what is clearly a sinking ship. I assure you, the ACC is worried more about being raided by the B12 than the other way around. The only conferences the ACC will be raiding going forward are DOWN the totem pole. 2) When I say the ACC will "die," I don't mean that the ACC will immediately cease to exist. What I do mean is that once the current GOR is broken or expires, you will never again hear the word "power," used to describe the ACC, in any context. Frankly, you barely hear it used now, if you do at all. FSU, Clemson, Miami, UNC, VT, and likely others will never again sign their media rights over to the ACC, not only because of the colossal financial quagmire it has caused them this time around, but also because doing so would allow the ACC to continue to hold them hostage, which is literally the only thing that's holding the conference together now. And, without the ability to hold the big football brands hostage via a GOR, the ACC will have no central authority to negotiate a media rights contract. Let's set that aside and assume that, somehow, a media rights agreement was reached with Disney or another partner. The football brands would then either demand a vastly disproportionate share of the media rights money, which your Wake Forest and Boston College types have shown they will never agree to, or the football brands will walk. Without the football brands, the ACC instantly becomes a G5, and not a particularly good G5 at that. 3) My beef with SMU is that it made no sense to add them. If you are an ACC football program worried about revenue and competing with the SEC, SMU added no value, at all, whatsoever. Adding Stanford and Cal was stupid too, but adding Stanford and Cal didn't look like pathetic stooping. Oh, we want Texas eyeballs? Yeah, right. It doesn't matter how many games SMU wins, if all the FBS programs in Texas were playing at the same time, SMU is, at VERY BEST, the 7th draw in a state with 13 FBS programs. Nobody watches SMU. Every other "power" conference that considered taking SMU balked. Because nobody CARES about SMU. They had a former president call and beg the ACC to add them. And, the ACC administration clearly understood this, because, as a condition for membership, SMU agreed to take no media rights money for a decade. SMU was added to spit in the face of the schools complaining about the ACC and threatening to leave, and to protect Wake Forest's ability to keep cashing ESPN checks if either FSU or Clemson make headway in their lawsuits. THAT's my beef with SMU being in this conference. It was a flop sweat, panic move that did nothing to improve the conference. I have predicted several times on here that getting in bed with SMU will prove to be a deal with devil, and will be a major discussion point in the coming "Demise of the ACC" documentaries. 4) You're delusional if you don't think the financial disparity is going to affect competitive ability. We are getting ready to have the schools directly pay the players. It is well documented that most of the FBS institutions will not be able to distribute the 20-whatever million dollar salary cap for this upcoming football season, because they just don't have it. You can also read articles where Babcock said VT basically had to scrape it together for the upcoming year, but that it's going to be difficult to find it every year going forward. So, everything else aside, balance sheets blank, you don't think that extra 35-45 million Vanderbilt and Northwestern will be starting with every year is going to matter?