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South Carolina? Good regional fit and certainly provides more than Boston College or Syracuse for the ACC. What would happen should the ACC go after South Carolina and Kentucky?

USC was once a member of the ACC but left after tiring of the NC bias that ruled the conference. They floundered in the Metro Conference for a while before jumping on the SEC's invite (Arkansas was the other part of that equation when the SEC expanded to 12). The simple answer to your question is that the ACC can't match the revenue sharing $$$ that the SEC generates for it's members. USC, because Clemson is also in S.Carolina, doesn't deliver any addt'l TV market, which is going to be a big factor in all of this. What they could do is help fill the football stadium in Charlotte for the championship game, provided the gamecocks ever made it to that game. Assuming they would compete in the south against Miami, FSU & Clemson, their playing in that game anytime soon would be a longshot!

There's a story in today's Washington Post that says the only thing holding up the proposed ACC expansion is Virginia's desire to make Virginia Tech one of the teams that joins the ACC. The story makes it sound like adding VaTech to the list of teams coming in would set the wheels in motion.

Governor Warner is not going to spend a lot of political capital on this. U Va. alums are a powerful lot in Virginia. Virginia Tech alums are not. When push comes to shove, Warner is not going to be the one who is responsible for no expansion. I suspect that U Va. and UNC or Duke will swap votes so that Virginia ceremoniously votes against the teams selected. UNC can say that they voted against the expansion, but once it was voted in, they wanted to get the best match for the conference, and did not want to make the Big East totally devoid of good teams.