Will the SEC pay 20 million...or wait 27 months?

Well personally, if it boils down to either of these two possibilities, and no other, then I'd have to think about it more. But I tend to be like most everybody else where immediate gratification is concerned. I like it. Haha!

FWIW - The way these things usually work is that the departing school from a conference that has a penalty fee does not cut a check to the conference it is leaving, but instead the conference it is leaving withholds future payments due from TV network contract receipts that are paid to the conference (and would otherwise have then been paid by the conference to the school).

For example, that is how A&M's exit fee to the Big12-2-1 will be paid, and the SEC will not be paying a dime of that fee in any way you look at it.

So, your query should probably be rephrased to ask if a school wanting to depart from the ACC (whether VT, FSU, Clemson, NCSU, or ???) to join the SEC will be financially able to forfeit to the ACC up to $20 million of the TV monies that such school would otherwise have been paid by the ACC (which the ACC would have first received from the TV networks). Given what might be significantly greater yearly revenues that the former ACC school would receive as an SEC member, that financial issue might be a "no brainer" to resolve in favor of joining the bigger money SEC. (If there would not be such a big difference to the school in leaving the ACC for the SEC, then that might keep the school in the ACC.)

Unless the SEC is DESPERATE (which it will not be, IMHO) to get a particular ACC school, such that the SEC is willing to pay money to the ACC on behalf of such school to get the school into the SEC quickly, do not imagine that the SEC would be paying the ACC a dime to get a school.

As for whether the SEC would wait 27 months (at this point that means waiting until the 2014 football season) to get a current BigEast school (for example, WVU), I think that is highly unlikely, for two reasons: (1) the BigEast might want that departing school gone much sooner, as seems to be the case for Pitt and Syracuse; and (2) no BigEast school is worth the SEC's while in adding to the SEC IMHO (sorry, WVU, you just don't provide enough added TV$$$$$ or fertile recruiting ground to make it worth it).

All of this is noted by me in passing, because it seems to me that the SEC's play is for Mizzou, as soon as 2012's football season, for a host of reasons ... and in light of my guess that the SEC is not going to 16 teams anytime soon, if ever.