I can absolutely tell you unequivocally and without hesitation that’s not true about UVA fading as an expansion target, and even more wrong about them “deemphasizing” the primary to revenue sports. They spent $12M on their new men’s basketball roster and even more than that on their football roster. Their AD was the senior Football administrator who helped hire Kirby Smart at UGA and remains close with many SEC athletics directors. Virginia is every bit a desirable expansion target, essentially the 1B to North Carolina’s 1A.
It doesn’t matter, though, because neither UNC nor UVA are going anywhere until or unless the SEC (or Big 10, for that matter) membership majority decides that they want to add new schools, which is certainly not definite. UNC can want to go to the SEC all we want (and heaven knows that’s where I want us to be), and the powers that be at UNC can say that the SEC is our intended destination, but until or unless the majority of the SEC members want to add additional schools, this is all for naught. I don’t claim to be an expert on any of this stuff by any means, but I would have to imagine that the SEC schools would need to see that adding North Carolina and Virginia would be a significant revenue boost for them to offset further dividing the overall revenue pie.