but I think that the original conference alignments were more about geography/compatibility of the institutions. The BIG made AAU a requirement for membership. I don’t think that it will matter in the future. Now it’s about how much a new member can add to the pie and does it give each member a bigger overall split. TV revenue drives the decision as USC and UCLA being in the Los Angeles market being invited made perfect sense. In my way of thinking, football is the driver and if a school happens to possess a winning basketball program plus football, bring it into the conference. The same thinking went into Texas and Oklahoma joining the SEC. In that the major sports networks are looking at ratings and are in cahoots with the super conferences, the idea is expansion into the major media markets and nothing else. If I’m the president of a member university and asked if I would agree with adding a new member at this point, my question is: “will the payout increase or decrease by doing so.”Was adding Rutgers and Maryland based on geography and compatibility or was it based on the DC metro and NYC metro media markets? Will adding Virginia and Virginia Tech to a super conference add to the value of each slice of the pie or detract from it? It’s all about numbers. I hope I’m wrong, but the really attractive schools from a TV viewership point of view in the ACC would be Clemson, FSU, Miami, and GT. I’m leaving out BC because Bostonians only care about the Patriots, Celtics and Bruins. Notre Dame? Between the payout they receive from NBC in football and the ACC in basketball, they don’t need a conference. I’m hoping I’m wrong about my thinking. If this were treated as any other business, the Justice Department would step in and try to block all this with an anti-trust suit. The big are only getting bigger and putting their foot on the throats of the smaller.