Picking back up from my last post about conference autonomy or "conference deregulation" as someone else mentioned, the ACC was pushing this so they can do away with divisions and rotate through the conference more often than once in every six years. It's currently a huge issue among ADs in the ACC which is why the 9 game conference schedule is going to get voted on.
The other problem with the 2 divisions set up is that you would need to expand in pairs, the ACC is waiting on ND to go all in and then their expansion partner would then be chosen. Conference deregulation and a conference without divisions would also get rid of this problem and allow a conference to expand with 1. So in theory with a 15 team conference, UConn's schedule could have BC and SU as annual opponents and cycle through everybody else in 4 seasons with an 8 game conference schedule. If a 16th school is added, the ACC could go to a 9 game schedule, each team plays 3 annual opponents and cycles through everybody else in 4 seasons. The ACC could do this right now if they wanted to, but the rules are that you have to have 2 divisions to play a conference championship game and the ACC would be missing out on millions, so this idea is DOA.
The other problem, let's say the Golden Domers do the unthinkable and join the ACC in football and UConn comes aboard with them. The divisions would surely need to be reshuffled and cross-division games would need to be re-done. This is a near impossible task and it's been attempted before, but to no avail.
To sum everything up, conference deregulation and/or Notre Dame making a move is the key to the ACC expanding.
As someone mentioned already, Louisville was the ACC's move to strengthen itself in football which it badly needed. If VT and Miami were still at the top of their game, maybe the ACC would have went with UConn.
I've recently had these conference realignment discussions with fellow ACC fans and most were holding out hope that if the Big12 did not extend their GoR, then in several years the ACC could possibly persuade UT or WVU. I felt this was the wrong strategy as UT is way out the ACC's target region and while WVU is solid in both football and basketball, UConn has more to offer in several key areas (though not as strong as WVU in football). Most importantly to me, if the ACC is going to make an effort to go after the highly populated NE market, it needs to make another push in that territory and not risk another P5 conference (BigTen) possibly strengthening it's position in that region.