When ACC presidents and chancellors participate in an early morning teleconference today and then cast votes on league’s expansion candidates, Louisville is the most likely school to receive an invitation, multiple sources told ACCSports.com.
The ACC — which recently lost Maryland to the Big Ten and is filing a lawsuit against the school seeking full payment of the approximately $53 million exit fee — is looking to get another big-name school into the fold.
Conference bylaws state an expansion candidate must receive 75 percent of the vote for approval. Louisville already has said it will accept an invitation if it comes.
Sources also told the website that Cincinnati, Connecticut, South Florida and Navy have expressed interest in joining the league, but only Louisville has a realistic chance for admittance.
“Given the way the conversations have gone to this point, either Louisville will be approved for an invitation [Wednesday] or nobody will be approved for an invitation,” one ACC source told the website.
With Maryland leaving for the Big Ten in 2014, the ACC expects to have 13 full members by the 2014-15 season (considering the pending arrivals of Pittsburgh and Syracuse from the Big East), plus Notre Dame as a full member in all sports but football. The Irish have agreed to play five football games a season against ACC teams.
K-State coach favors bigger Big 12
Kansas State coach Bill Snyder still believes the Big 12 ultimately should expand to at least 12 teams, creating two divisions and a conference championship game.
Snyder said yesterday “there are a number of programs in our conference who have and would profit from that type of system,” pointing out that teams with multiple losses would generate more interest late in the season by still having a chance to play for a championship.”
The 73-year-old Snyder has seen the Big 12 go through a dramatic series of changes since he took over the once-downtrodden Kansas State program in the late 1980s. When the old Southwest Conference disintegrated, the Big Eight expanded by four teams to become the Big 12, and played a conference title game every year from 1996-2010.
The game has cut both ways for the Wildcats: They were in position to play for a national title in 1998 before losing to Texas A&M in double-OT but managed to win the Big 12 title and earn a Fiesta Bowl berth in 2003 by upsetting then-No. 1 Oklahoma.