It's pretty tough to set a budget when your revenue is based on team performance. Obviously that happens to some extent when it comes to attendance and merchandise revenue, but if it's the different between 18 million and 54 million (50% swing off 36.1m) that's huge. Also, what if 75% of the league makes the NCAA tournament or goes bowling? The more I think about it, the more I'd advocate for a lower static allocation (ie 30m) and then pool the last 6m per team and divvy it up to the top performers.
You can pay teams a fixed amount and then have a variable component based on performance. Say the total revenues for a 14 team conference are $504 million or $36 million per team. You could pay a fixed $30 million per school for a total of $420 million and then pay the rest of the pool, $84 million, based on performance. So, a school that has a good performance year might earn $60 million and the next team earns $50 million,... Or, you could have multiple teams make $45 million based on performance,....
Remember, this is something like the Big East tried to do with Miami, but Miami opted for the steady payouts of the ACC. In my opinion, unequal payments says the conference will not last as an entity for long.