It’s driven by a cartel alliance between 5 conferences, TV (primarily ESPN), and placed prostitutes at the NCAA (to allow the antitrust violation). The SCOTUS decision in Oklahoma v NCAA certainly allows individual schools the right to negotiate TV contracts. However, for the life of me, I don’t understand why legal action is not pursued to breakup the monopoly of the this cartel alliance at the expense of fair intercollegiate competition where all 130 qualifying institutions are treated equally. The cartel always attempts to head off any threat to their monopoly. If you recall when Utah (led by Smith at QB and kicking the crap out of everyone) went undefeated and Senator Orin Hatch of Utah was making threats of asking DOJ to initiate an antitrust investigation of the BCS, the PAC 10 immediately took action to expand to invite Utah into the cartel.