I will tell you exactly the options right now as far as WVU goes:
There is serious talk of the SEC wanting to go to 20 teams, allowing for 4, 5 team pods. WVU/Ok State would be in if they expand to 20.
ACC is the option if the SEC stays at 16. WVU is more attractive than people give them credit for. Large fan base (compared to most ACC teams) and very good TV ratings, which is more important than population footprint this time around.
Very distant possibility of B1G, but that is totally on Gee's influence. WVU has increased their research profile, which will help, but we are still a long way off from being AAU.
One thing I have been assured of, WVU will like their landing spot regardless.
So you say serious talk and then go back and say, "Well...if that isn't true."
The SEC isn't expanding past 16 and if they do, they'll raid the ACC and only the best/most valuable ones. This would be the likes of Clemson, FSU, Miami, etc., not wvu.
Compared to the money, alumni base, endowments, and overall influence, wvu falls well short.
At any point, if the SEC does say they'll expand,
wvu would have to contend with 14 ACC schools and 7 leftover Big 12 schools and somehow be better than all of them?
Not happening.
wvu can't sell its own people to stay, pays outsiders to live in it, with terrible internet all around, a crumbling infrastructure, poor academics, and incompetent state leadership...yeah, wvu is a swell addition to a conference all about making money.
The ACC is the best option for wvu however, wvu is not the best option for the ACC.
The ACC rejected wvu for its academics. "Louisville!!" Yes, Louisville, but they showed they had more to offer, combine that with a bit of a panic reaction at the time, they got the exception. You think the ACC is going to make another one, for you? They used their "get out of jail free" card, in this case, "accepting a lower quality academic institution into a high academic conference" card.
One problem with wvu fans is they think they can pick and choose, with how they talk when the reality of it is, the big conferences pick and choose who they want, and if they wanted you, they'd have had you by now.
The Big 10...spare yourselves the embarrassment. Not only will they not take you, they'll reject your application with a letter showing the last decade of your school's entire institutional operations and point out how tremendously underacheiving it is. They'll then remind you of where you are on the college ranks. They're arrogant, rich, academic/athletic assholes, they know it, and they don't care.
Gee was booted from ohio state for remarks that were socially insensitive towards specific populations. We mustn't forget Brown University's "E. Gordon Gee Lavatory Complex" either.
That's your damn near 80 yr old president, expected to somehow rekindle ties with a conference that already has forgotten he exists? Good luck on that.
Of course wvu will like their landing spot. They'll brag the conference needed them, even if it is the AAC, and will never accept they weren't much to begin with.
Sadly though, wvu is too broke to go the one route they seemingly got the closest to a national title in, the route they spent the most time in, and (probably) the route everyone in the NCAA would like to see them exist in...Independent.
While wvu may like to believe, "all P5 schools are equal" the reality is, "some P5's are more equal than others."
