I've always liked the number 24. Something about it is nice and round. There's a synergy between both size and quality of inventory.

There was a time I thought absorbing the entire Big 12 would have been a great move and that's what started me on my love of the number 24. While I've come to think there are too many weak brands in the Big 12 to make a merger a solid idea, I'm not against the number 24 for one basic reason:

The level of inventory achieved changes the paradigm of how networks pay for content.

Personally, I don't like the idea of networks(ESPN or otherwise) telling us or anyone else what schools they should add or shouldn't add. Partnerships should be two way streets rather than comparable to an employer/employee relationship.

With that in mind, I say forget what the networks want. We should add schools that grow the strength, influence, competitiveness, and academic quality of the league. If networks don't want to pay for it then they lose the content. But the only way to create that dynamic is to ensure a league is so large that not dealing with it will cost you money.

So yeah, one of the reasons I originally posed the idea of absorbing the Big 12 was that it might give us the ability to pry free a few key properties from the ACC at a later time. How? The gravity of such a league will eventually attract everything around it. That's what the force of gravity does after all. The size and economic might of a 24 team league would eventually force schools to reconsider their current affiliation in exchange for a new way of doing things...consolidation.

So I'm not at all against 24 as long as it's the right 24. In fact, I'm ok with large numbers beyond that because then you can simply break things down into regional groupings while still maintaining the advantages having everything one roof.

I propose this...

Conquer the West first:

1. Secure the Texas market from any relevant competition by taking Texas, Texas Tech, and Houston. The top 4 public schools in the massive state of TX are secured. No one else can tap the market in a meaningful way.

2. Oklahoma and Oklahoma State give you quality brands in the Midwest and in the case of OU, a brand with national appeal and cache.

3. Kansas gives you another AAU school, a national basketball brand, a new market, and an old companion for Missouri.

4. Iowa State does much the same although it actually gives us a larger market than KU does.

Then take brands you can grow with:

5. UCF and USF represent a new generation of FL residents. They both have massive enrollments in the middle of large metro areas.

Side note - USF just tied Oregon for the most consecutive games scoring at least 30 points in the AP poll era...23 straight games. This happened under 2 different head coaches so you can see the program is gaining strength.

6. You take West Virginia so that there's no one to help the ACC pad their bottom line. While demographics will always hamper WVU's ability to be a growing brand, they do fit in regionally and would attract viewers from an entirely new region of the country. And they will help form a nice bridge between the SEC and any new additions from the ACC in the future from that portion of the country.