1. It's hard to say whether or not they are overpaid. I guess that question will be answered at a later date. I do think that yearly home and homes with like-minded schools is close to ideal for a conference and the Catholic schools are close to that. It makes for compelling storylines. Throw in the fact that they do have talent (GU and Marquette), potential ('Nova, St. John's, DePaul, and Seton Hall), and locations in rich recruiting areas (NYC, DC, Philly, and Chicago), and I can see how the new conference has a chance to make a splash. Throw in Butler and Creighton and that only becomes more true. The rivalries are there, the names are there, and the potential is there. Their games will be fun to watch and, because of that, their games will likely get good ratings. However, Syracuse is in the ACC, and the ACC has Syracuse, Pitt, ND, UNC, Duke, Louisville, and a bunch of teams with potential but not consistency, like Wake Forest, FSU, Georgia Tech, Boston College, NC State, and (now) Miami. If the good teams stay good, and half the teams with the potential to be good actually are good any given year, then the ACC will be the best basketball conference ever, and it won't even be close. Joining the C7 wouldn't have been the end of SU basketball, and they aren't a joke, but we are on a whole different level in the ACC. I can see them being the #3 conference some years, but we are clearly #1. I do not envy them, but I am pretty sure that many of them envy us. However, I doubt that they would admit it.
2. Conference championship games generally make money*, and people generally don't turn down higher pay checks. I agree that regional conference are important, and I agree that schools should have something in common. In my opinion, with the exception of UL, the ACC is generally comprised of great academic institutions. Also, the ACC has Miami, Duke, Wake Forest, ND, Boston College, Syracuse, and Pitt, which are all private schools (well Pitt used to be Private and now it is semi-public). The next closes major college conference to that is the Pac-12 which has a grant total of two private schools; USC and Stanford. Beyond that, UNC, WF, Duke, and UNC are all in one state, and Clemson, VT, and UVA are in neighboring states. Even in the north, BC and Pitt are both of SU, and BC and Pitt are both of ND. Each of the 4 northern schools has a long history with 2 of the other 3 schools (If a ND - SU rivalry and a Pitt - BC rivalry is created, then each school will be 3 for 3). Finally, and this ties into the previous two points, the ACC has the only two Catholic BCS football-playing schools. We are not a random assortment of institutions. UL is the only true outlier, and they make $87 million a year in revenue, so I am willing to look the other way.
3. You seem to define "have" as Texas**, Michigan, Penn State, Notre Dame, and Ohio State. If that's the case, then everyone not named Oklahoma, Tennessee**, Florida and Nebraska is a "not have," and it's pretty much always been that way and it won't change in the foreseeable future. This might be an age thing, but I grew up 1,000+ miles from Syracuse and I knew who they were when I was a kid. Your friends either started watching in the 70's and stopped watching in the mid 80's, or started watching in the early-mid '00's. Everyone else, which I think is most fans, knows who we are and what we're about.
*Yes, I know FSU lost money, but that's just because the game's profits were split 12 different ways by the conference. The conference as a whole benefitted.
**I mean elite in the ticket office. Even these teams aren't on the same level in terms of on the field performance as the others.
