Pitt has nearly 30,000 kids on campus, and exceeds half a billion a year in research spending. BC has half as many students and less than 10% of Pitt's research spending. As an academic presence, Pitt simply dwarfs BC, regardless of its academic ranking. From VT's perspective, Pitt is a much better partner. BC is nearly identical to Duke, minus Duke's massive research presence.

Of course it's nice that the ACC seeks out top schools, but VT is interested (obsessed?) with increasing its research capacity. Every time the ACC grabs a research non-player like BC and Syracuse, the membership gets farther away from VT's mission. The funny part is the the supposed crown jewel of the ACC - Notre Dame - is a marginal research U.

Quite frankly, VT's dream conference would be the Big Ten.