A few thoughts:
(1) I think the person who said that brands are more important than markets is correct. The Big Ten made a pretty big long-term mistake in being so focused on TV markets when it added Rutgers and Maryland (moreso Rutgers). Sure, they added a bunch of TV sets in New Jersey...but a lot of those TV sets don’t subscribe to cable anymore, and that was pretty much the only thing bringing a school like Rutgers to the table.
(2) so what does a school bring to the table besides raw potential television subscribers? Things like brand loyalty, which means future *streaming* subscribers, regardless of the state where they’re located. Texas was ahead on this with the Longhorn Network, but it failed by relying on the old “surcharge on cable Bill” model. Notre Dame is now trying to do it via streaming with Fighting Irish TV. But Texas fans subscribing to ESPN+ because it has Longhorn Network is really what they’re shooting for.
(3) how else can a school bring value? By being good and helping to improve the quality of play in the conference. A whole lot more unaffiliated fans tune in to watch two ranked teams playing a conference game than they watch a ranked team beat a lousy one. Nobody new is tuning in to watch #2 Ohio State beat the brakes off of Kansas, but they might tune in to watch #2 Ohio State play #14 Oklahoma State. Teams ebb and flow between being good and bad, sure, but being consistently good (in all sports, but mostly football and basketball) is huge.
(4) a school has to make logistic sense. Covid changed a ton with athletic department finances. No school wants to sign up to start chartering planes for all of their teams to go from Boston to College Station or Stillwater. Sure, they’ll do it in football or basketball and make their money back, but it’s a huge sink for schools to send the rest of their teams to these far-flung areas. At the end of the day, Texas and Oklahoma are still contiguous states to the SEC footprint, and that’s important. But I’m positive that Penn State loves the financials of being able to bus their soccer teams to Rutgers or Maryland versus flying them out to Iowa City.
(5) so what does that mean for college sports? I think you’ll end up seeing two rough partnerships - you’ll see the Fox conferences (B1G and PAC-12) and the ABC/ESPN conferences (SEC and ACC), with each having their own subscription service for $15 a month. You’ll see teams from those two conference pairings play each other more OOC to maximize revenue, and things like that. The B12 teams will get scooped up by conferences in one of those two groups.
(6) so what should the ACC do? I think the answer’s obvious: hope like hell that Notre Dame runs into the Longhorn Network problem and doesn’t see massive subscribers for FITV (but enough subscribers that ABC/ESPN believe that they’d get a sizable bump from ND fans by adding it to their service), and that they join the ACC as a full member. You also add West Virginia - the teams are good and would raise the quality of play in the conference, the brand is solid (Nike wouldn’t have made them an Elite basketball school if they weren’t making money out of it), and it makes logistic sense. I don’t think that’s necessarily a great thing for Pitt (except for adding quality games that the fanbases would care about), but I think it’s a net positive for the conference.