competitive league for most sports. The one question I do have is would UNC and to lesser extent UVA be okay being in a different conference with Duke? Also, would Notre Dame want to be affiliated with your proposed conference? If so, then how would that work out? If the 10 team conference did take Duke and Miami to increase to 12 teams, then I have a feeling the conference would want to go with the zipper model for the division alignment. Maybe something like this with the protected cross-division pairings:

Division A/Division B
WVU-Pitt
VT-UVA
NC State-UNC
L'ville-Duke?
Clemson-GT
FSU-Miami or Miami-FSU (I'm not sure it really matters which ends up in which division)

I don't see the conference going with a north-south alignment because the "North" (aka basically any member above the VA-NC border) only has 5 members. While the "South" has 7 members. Also, I have a feeling that UVA would want to play UNC and maybe even Duke every year in football which could be a problem as the conference decides how many protected cross-division games (1 vs. 2) each team will have during the season. If the conference is going to have 3 NC schools, then I would think for scheduling and divisional purposes the conference would want include Wake so it has an even number of NC schools. As a result, it would need to add another member to be paired with L'ville to bring the conference up to 14 members. I guess that could open the door for Syracuse to be the 14th member so the divisions (with protected cross-division pairings) could look like this:

Division A/Division B
Pitt-Syracuse
WVU-L'ville
VT-UVA
Wake-Duke
NC State-UNC
Clemson-GT
FSU-Miami or Miami-FSU (not sure it really matters which is chosen)

In this scenario the conference has really only replaced BC with WVU. Would the conference (let's assume it is stilled named the ACC) make that trade?