You are right it might have all been for naught, but had it happened, I think the shift from basketball power in the ACC to Football power would have been too much for Tobacco Road to control. Things would have been different, probably very different.

At the time it wasn't that the Big East would not let the BEFC schools leave - they could not stop if they wanted to go, there was no GOR of any sort. The amount of media money was peanuts even for those times. It was that ESPN had convinced the BEFC members that their hold on the BCS standing would likely die if they moved. Of course we now know that was not true, but it seemed credible at the time. It is my belief that ESPN did that because a 16-team merger as I laid out would have threatened the still not so power SEC. Of course the SEC was powerful but it was not the juggernaut it is today and a powerful ACC might have made that transformation all the harder, especially if FSU and Miami did not fall off the map.

I am not really a fan of WVU being in the ACC, not really for anything to do with the ACC itself. WVU fits in with the ACC in so many ways that many look past the most important NON-fit - culture. WVU as an institution and its fans as people are just different from those in the ACC, even those in Blacksburg which is pretty much on the border of West Virginia. Culture is a big thing to a conference and WVU would always be a stepchild, if for no other reason than the mission of WVU towards its state students and how that affects WVU's academic image.

But, I would have held my nose and screamed about the injustices of the ACC to anyone who would have listened had this merger happened. It made sense then before so many bad decision came along driven by the basketball minds of the ACC. Had those old farts been out of the power loop, the ACC would be so much more than the lifeless shell it is today. I could live with that.