Warde was hired for 1 reason and it had nothing to do with conference realignment directly. He was brought in because the NCAA had given him an award for turning Buffalo's awful APR situation around. Susan and the members of the selection committee believed, wrongly as it turned out, that if they announced they were bringing in the NCAA's poster boy for correcting the APR, there was a good chance the sanctions would be lifted or at least reduced. My neighbor was on the BoT at the time and on the subcommittee that made the selection.
Turned out he didn't get us off the hook with the APR and he was otherwise inept. (Unless you favored the eyeball helmets).