The OP premise is that there was some type of better option here for the C7/New Big East. Sure, the New Big East would rather have stayed in the Old Big East with Syracuse, Louisville, Pitt and UConn. That's why the hybrid stayed together as long as it did - it was the best option out of an admittedly bad set of options after Miami/BC/VT left for the ACC.
The issue, of course, is that the Old Big East died. As a result, the choice was either (a) stay in the AAC where the only 2 schools that the C7 cared about at all (UConn and Cincinnati) are doing everything they can to get out of there AND continue dealing with conference realignment stability beyond their control with a bunch of schools that they had no history or institutional commonalities with in the name of a sport (FBS football) that they didn't even play or (b) create a new conference where they could completely control their membership AND get paid more TV money for just basketball alone than the AAC gets for both football and basketball.
Believe me - there are problems with just signing all of your TV rights over to Fox. Exposure does mean something beyond money. However, simply being able to be the conference realignment predator of non-FBS Division I basketball schools as opposed to being constantly negatively impacted by being in a conference that's the prey of power FBS football conferences was reason enough alone to split. Stability means just as much as money in conference realignment. It had to be done from the C7 perspective.