Definitely see the threat in the Big 10 wanting VA and unc, new geography and (for some reason) both AAU schools. If that happens we might see how much the B1G values Duke.
I think that danger might be attenuated. The B1G’s former business model was convincing cable companies that, because there was a B1G team in their service area, they needed to pay exorbitant carriage fees for its network. That is why it grabbed Maryland and Rutgers. Those athletic departments were basically tear downs. They merely wanted the land underneath. With that business model, the North Carolina and Virginia television markets were very attractive.
That model was always a dubious one. Is Rutgers really New York’s team? Can people in Manhattan even find the B1G Network on their cable lineup? (Hint: It is up there in the triple digits next to the public access channel with the nude talk show.)
With cable cutting, that model is less important and becoming even less so. Now the B1G schools have discovered that their true talent is producing their own fans through their freakishly large enrollments. Those students/graduates, plus their families, plus the usual Walmart fans that come from being mostly flagship universities create an enormous pool of potential subscribers before you even get to casual fans.
All this was also two rounds of expansion ago. With the addition of USC and UCLA the B1G achieved what talking heads, at the outset of realignment, declared to be the Pythagorean ideal number for a conference: 16 teams. Even the B1G’s current logo was a sly reference to its ultimate goal of 16 teams. Weeks after finally reaching that number, they blew by it with the additions of Oregon and Washington. At this point, even considering schools with recognizable and marketable brands, can the B1G still grow the pie enough to justify a bigger number of slices.
I am afraid that UNC is now that girl in high school who heard that the guy everyone was crushing on thought she was hot and has ever since been planning some great future with him. Meanwhile, the guy has long since started dating someone else.
Aside from real estate, I never really got UVA and UNC as natural or cultural fits for the B1G. The B1G schools are enormous land grant universities. UVA and UNC are smaller, older, more venerable institutions founded on the liberal arts model.
The B1G’s fetish for AAU membership always sounds a wrong note for me. What it mostly indicates is that member institutions do a huge volume of expensive research. It is not a direct indicator of academic status. Boston College and Wake Forrest say, “Eat me!” Nebraska dropped out not because they stopped doing research there and started huffing paint. It simply got to a point where they were doing accounting gymnastics to satisfy the AAU’s requirements, which value some types of research more than others, and decided that it was not the best allocation of their resources. Pointing to AAU membership mostly celebrates a particular characteristic that B1G schools value about themselves. Schools such as Wisconsin and Michigan are nationally and internationally recognized in their own rights. Yet they persist in this mean girls, “Hey, check us out! We're the cream of the cow colleges!” thing while looking down on schools like N.C. State and Virginia Tech whose academic rankings would place them solidly in the middle of the B1G’s.
I really do not see Duke in the B1G. The B1G currently has only one private university and that one was a founding member. If the B1G passed on Stanford, I am not sure what could ever make a private university attractive to it.