I will grant you that Duke is a nationally elite school, UVa is among the very best public institutions and schools like Georgia Tech are very highly regarded in a particular niche. But you can throw the rest - probably including Louisville - in a bag, shake them up and you’d never recognize the difference between them except for public versus private. Don’t try to persuade me that Clemson and Florida State are great academic institutions. Don’t try to tell me that UNC athletics put academics first. In fairness, I think Virginia Tech is an excellent school that can hold its own with its conference peers, but even as an alum I will not pretend that all of its programs are particularly special.

Please. The academic snobbery angle is tired, irrelevant and discriminatory. It’s the same play used to keep the Hokies out of the ACC for many years and yet a decade or more has shown that Tech is the best expansion member of this century and it is not even close.