Exactly! You don’t want to move from one financially unstable home, paying all the exit fees and entrance fees, to another unstable home. That’s just chasing your tail because you’re going to have to move again shortly.
It's a valid point at the moment. But at some point - and I think it'll be before 2036 - the B1G, SEC, and B12 will have hit a limit on # of teams they'd accept. Let's say all three went to 20 teams, so that's 60 teams getting considerably more money than the ACC and remnants of whatever's left out West.
Let's say all three conferences fill out at 20 members. It would probably look something like this, using some metric on value to determine which teams to choose:
B1G adds: Notre Dame, Oregon, Washington, Stanford
SEC adds: Clemson, Florida St., Va Tech, Miami
B12 adds: Arizona St, Utah, Ga Tech, Cal, Louisville, NC State, Arizona St., Colorado
That leaves a motley crew of the following remnants of the ACC/Pac12 and others:
From ACC: Pitt, Virginia, Syracuse, BC, Duke, Wake
From Pac12: Oregon St., Wash St.
AAC possibilities/Independents of Note: Army, USF, ECU, Navy, Memphis, Temple, Tulsa, Tulane, SMU, UConn.
Given I don't know squat, any of the teams mentioned as "adds" may be replaced by another team. But for purposes of this exercise, the number of teams left in the pool and their geography matters more than the specific team.
Logic would suggest that Oregon St. and Washington St. simply join the Mountain West.
That would leave a potential 12 team mostly eastern conference of: Pitt, UVA, Syracuse, BC, Duke, Wake, Temple, Navy, USF, ECU, Memphis and UConn. It's a butt-ugly landing spot, but a conference that should earn a much better contract than the AAC. Maybe it's just a 10 school conference instead of 12 and there are no directionals.
Much as I love UConn, I don't see any way the B1G or B12 takes us given the other options available. So, joining the ACC would not involve exit fees and probably not much in the way of entrance fees. But, during the years that the ACC was still viable, the revenue would be greatly preferable to what we're receiving now.