Seeing as this a thread with my school in the title I figure I will jump in and give my thoughts as an NC State fan/grad. First, getting past the point that I am not in favor of 16-team super duper mega ultra omega conferences in the first place, and that I am an ACC traditionalist that wishes the conference had no more than 10 members, I will say that, since expansion is now upon us, I am glad that Syracuse and Pitt were the first two in. I have no problems with Syracuse, and have always followed/respected you guys since I first became aware of the fact that conferences existed back in the '80s when first learning about sports.
While I grew up in NC in ACC country, I was always interested in the Big East as well, and would follow the Georgetown/Syracuse rivalry as much as possible since, in '82 as a stupid kid, I was a UNC fan. I even remember being confused that the Big East used to allow a player 6 personal fouls before being disqualified from a basketball game. Almost every year I choose Syracuse to make a deep run in my NCAA bracket, along with Arizona, for some reason. I don't think that most State fans are against Syracuse, or have anything against Syracuse specifically, other than the fact that many of us are not fans of expansion, and Syracuse's name has been brought up almost all the times expansion has been mentioned since around 2003 or so. In addition to that, I know a lot of NC State fans have felt that IF expansion was necessary because of football, then the only real prize would be ND, or a school in an already stable conference - which was unlikely. Hopefully ND is a part of the next round of expansion, along with the unlikely scenario of Penn St. UConn would be a decent addition if ND was the other. UConn and Rutgers would be a bit of a let-down for us old school ACC'ers.
Syracuse and NC State have had some pretty memorable contests over the years. I was at the RBC center several years ago when a Herb Sendek lead NC State team pulled off one of its typical choke jobs and gave up a ~15 point lead to you guys with about three minutes to go. I didn't even bother watching last year's game since I knew what would be the results, though I was surprised to find out we played pretty decently against you guys. I also remember watching the game where NC State beat Syracuse on a converted 2-point conversion in OT at the Carrier Dome, and I was at the game in Raleigh the next year where we beat you guys even though you had McNabb (my memory of these events may be a bit fuzzy.) In my mind Syracuse was always a decent football program, so I was surprised to see you guys struggle so much for so long these last few years. The point of this is, regardless of what you see from State fans in message boards, most State fans I know have no problems with Syracuse being in the league now that expansion is inevitable. We were mostly just against expansion. The fact is, with a likely soon-to-be 16 team conference, we will probably not face off against each other most years in football or basketball. I'm sure Syracuse's games will be primarily against the northern teams, and ours the southern - though who knows how the conference will be split. Swofford has an interesting way about things, especially when it comes to looking out for the best interests of the blues.