Something that I looked up during this whole saga is the percentage of out of state students in the Arizona university system. Arizona, Arizona State and Northern Arizona get a higher percentage of out of state students than any other university system in the US. Further, more California college students attend the Arizona schools than any other state.
It doesn't take a whole lot of kids at 50k/year a pop to make a pretty compelling argument as to why they should stay in a league with a presence in California (Cal, Stanford, likely San Diego State too).
So while we may be debating $10M/year delta in a tv deal between the Pac and Big12, the decision makers at these schools could be looking at the 1,000 California kids a year paying 50k a year at 50M a year and weighing how the athletic conference changing to a Texas based league could impact that.