Many of you have asked how academics would factor into potential expansion possibilities for the ACC, should other conferences force the league into such a move.

A few main points:

• The ACC currently does not have any hard and fast academic standards that would keep certain schools out.
• It all depends on the council of presidents of the respective conference that is doing the evaluation. Odds are the university presidents would create specific academic criteria in their evaluations before they would extend an invite. Some might have certain research criteria for the school; some might want them to meet certain standards, others might not want any schools to allow partial qualifiers, etc.
• One thing the Big Ten and some other conferences seem to value is the AAU membership. As defined on that website, the Association of American Universities is "a nonprofit organization of 63 leading public and private research universities in the United States and Canada." AAU members in the ACC are Duke, Georgia Tech, Maryland, North Carolina and Virginia.

So, yes, the conference can be picky with the academic requirements if it chooses to, and the fact that it values its current AAU members is a sign there would probably be certain standards that have to be met. It's impossible to guess, though, what those specific requirements might be and which schools may or may not be ACC-approved.