I’m with you here, but I don’t know why. VA and NC are the obvious major states where neither conference has a presence, but would want one given their growth and affluence.
If you think about it, athletics has always served as the front porch of a university. Something to welcome in the community and visitors with the hope that some of those people decide to attend the school. The states of VA and NC have lots of people schools in other states would love to attend their schools. You bring your football team in, locals learn about your school and maybe they apply. Or maybe if they can’t get into the local school, they’ll decide to go to the SEC or B1G equivalent.
So I think the conferences would like to acquire the flagship schools of every state if possible. The ones where kids who apply but don’t get in would be academic assets to any other conference school.
Plus, the SEC doesn’t want to go to 9 conference games because they think it’s too hard. They need a break so us being a bad football program isn’t the negative some think it is. We just need to get to respectable.
This is why I think either conference would prefer us over VT.
Also, I was the one who brought up Amy Griffin being a volleyball alum. Otherwise, I could see VB on the chopping block.
But even if we keep all the sports and join the B1G, we’d get the B1G TV and bowl money, but we’ll never sell 100k seats to football games, so we’ll always be behind the big boys in ticket revenue. Would need to trim just so we’re not spread too thin.
Oh and the next round of realignment will occur around 2030. The ACC putting dollar figures on costs to leave the conference at the same time the other conferences’ TV contracts are up almost assures that.