It definitely had some disadvantages but I think those were worsened over the last decade.
Agreed. But even if those disadvantages had improved, even dramatically, we're probably still having this conversation today.
With the dollars at stake here and NIL/pay for play knocking - plus the complete absence of any central authority in the sport to moderate these greedy, destructive impulses that lead to consolidation - I think this end result was more or less inevitable all along.
Texas had its very own network that was quite lucrative despite being a disaster, and that wasn't enough to keep it happy. If there's a singular data point that explains all this, that's it.