PlanoStang wrote:Maybe that should be "Big Hooters 12"?

I'd bet the ACC could raid Tech, TCU, and Baylor. Not sure about Utah, Arizona, Houston etc. since they probably out laid the big bucks to get to the Big Smelve.
I think the ACC leadership may finally have figured out how wisely to play the conference expansion game. It is based on football, but not on football wins. All league play has the exact same number of losses as they do wins. The big matter is TV fans. So that means that if you cannot add schools that already have large TV fan bases, you must add schools that can secure football talent and then grow its TV fans base. That is most easily down when the school is located in a area filled with football talent and with a history of deep interest in football.
SMU and DFW, for example. Boston is an almost opposite to that, and NY, the entire state, is not much better.
The other important factor in growing TV fans base is school size. That one hurts SMU but it makes schools like Utah, Arizona and Arizona St very valuable to the ACC because the ACC has so many smaller schools. AAU state schools with more than 40K students are what the ACC needs. Plus, Arizona and ASU both have huge numbers of students from CA and alums living in CA. Having them thus would help secure the ACC in CA. The numbers are not as high for Utah but Utah has many more CA students than it did before the 21st century.
AS for the TX schools in the Big 12: SMU plants the ACC in TX, specifically the extremely important DFW TV market. That can be grown to give the SACC major clout across that TV market by adding TCU, also located there, TTU (the largest number of TTU grads living in any TGV market is DFW), and Baylor 0- located just south of DFW.
But for the ACC to pull that off, there must be an investor wanting major college sports that is able to get Disney to cooperate by selling roughly half its ACC rights. Amazon and Apple both want more live sports, including college, and both have the resources. But is Disney to focused on destroying the ACC to deliver its most valuable schools to the SEC? On the other hand, Disney really needs a cash infusion.