Another round of conference realignment appears to be bubbling.

Earlier this week, it came out that Memphis is trying to get into the Big 12, and then news broke Thursday via Inside Carolina that North Carolina is eyeing a move to the SEC, perhaps when exit fees dip come 2030.

The ACC has been on some shaky ground of late, trying to keep Clemson and Florida State happy after the round of conference musical chairs that saw OU and Texas go to the SEC and the Big Ten essentially gut the Pac-12 by taking USC, UCLA, Oregon and Washington. When the Pac was gutted, the Big 12 took advantage, swiping some other prominent schools, which nixed the Pac-12’s Power Conference status.

Should a similar fate await the ACC, I thought it’d be fun to look at the ACC schools and group them together as potential Big 12 candidates.

The Big 12 is already at 16 schools, so if or how much it would want to expand is a question within itself, but let’s have a little fun on a Friday.

The Belles of the Ball: Florida State, Miami, Clemson

These are schools that, if available, the Big 12 should probably gobble up with no questions asked, but they’d all probably look to the SEC (and perhaps even the Big Ten) for a life vest should the ACC fall apart.

They’re football powers (despite some suspect recent results) from a brand perspective and would immediately draw eyeballs to the league.

The Big 12 has already entered the Florida market with UCF, somehow ending up with Florida State and Miami after OU and Texas left would be a major win in terms of national perspective.

The Most Elite Basketball Conference Ever Created: North Carolina, Duke

The Big 12 already has a strong standing in the basketball world, and over recent years, the league has flirted with getting even stronger in that aspect with UConn and Gonzaga having been rumored to be in talks with the league over recent years.

Duke and North Carolina would provide that basketball prominence with capable football programs, a win-win.

Could you imagine OSU going to Cameron Indoor? Sign me up.

If the ACC is going to collapse, I need the Duke-UNC rivalry to stay in tact. It’s one of the few college basketball games left that has that “I gotta watch this” level of intrigue.

Makes Maybe Too Much Sense: SMU, Louisville, Pitt

Location doesn’t seem to mean a whole lot in the modern landscape of college athletics, but SMU, Louisville and Pitt are probably the three best fits in terms of fitting within the Big 12 footprint.

Adding SMU would strengthen the league’s ties to Texas (particularly DFW) and add another major rivalry to the conference, with the Mustangs and TCU battling for an iron skillet.

Whether it was 1980s or the 2020s, SMU has shown it isn’t afraid to flex its cash, either, and money has been a rather big deal for these conferences as of late. Everyone has seen Pony Excess, I’d assume, and more recently SMU came up with hundreds of millions of dollars to get to the ACC.

The league also hasn’t shied away from private, faith-based schools (see Baylor, TCU and BYU), so SMU also fits there.

Louisville would provide a bit of a bridge from the remaining Big Eight schools to the league’s eastward expansion in Cincinnati and West Virginia. Louisville and Cincinnati are less than a two-hour drive from each other. Cincy’s closest drive right now is West Virginia — more than a 4.5-hour drive — and the next closest is Iowa State — about a nine-hour drive.

Speaking of the Mountaineers, the Big 12 could also get into the Pennsylvania market with Pitt — a big-time rival of WVU. Collectively, those three additions with Cincinnati and WVU would make a nice little pocket of teams in that region.

Let’s Wrestle: Virginia Tech, NC State

These two could perhaps fit into the tier above, but I wanted to single out their wrestling programs.

Either the Wolfpack or Hokies have won the past 10 ACC wrestling team titles, and both programs are regularly nationally relevant. The Big Ten is undisputedly the best conference in college wrestling, but adding NC State and Virginia Tech would be a big boom for the Big 12 in that aspect, with those two, OSU, Iowa State, OU (if it could ever get going again) and Missouri providing some real brand power in the wrestling world.

I’m not so naive to think that conference realignment would be too heavily determined by wrestling, but Virginia Tech and NC State also feel like they could culturally fit in with the conference.

Raleigh seems like it could be a Big 12 city, and Blacksburg feels like the Virginia version of a classic Big 12 college town. Plus, who doesn’t love the “Enter Sandman” entrance?

Farther West?: Stanford, Cal

The argument to go get Stanford and Cal would be to continue the Big 12’s Manifest Destiny, but I personally don’t love Cal or Stanford as Big 12 fits.

And, it’s not like Cal and Stanford are really all that close to the Big 12 schools the Big 12 already swiped from the Pac-12. Tempe is about as close to Lubbock as it is Stanford, and while those two would be some of the closer programs to the Utah schools, it’s still an 11-hour drive from Salt Lake City to Stanford.

Sort of Indifferent About: Virginia, Georgia Tech

I mean, they’re fine. Virginia is a strong basketball school and also wrestles. Georgia Tech would put the league in the Atlanta market, which could be beneficial. But neither really feel like Big 12 schools.

Not Super Exciting: Wake Forest, Boston College, Syracuse

These just aren’t all that sexy to me as Big 12 programs.

Wake Forest and BC are small and don’t stand out that much athletically, while Syracuse is fairly big for a private school and has a deep history in basketball, but it’d expand the league super far into the northeast — Syracuse is more than 2,000 miles from Tempe.