Think about it.
You're ESPN. You kept the Big 12 together and its most lucrative assets (Texas & OU) out of the Pac-12 (where their content would be out of your hands) in 2010 by deliberately overpaying for its tier 1 and tier 2 rights and Texas' tier 3 rights.
Now, 6 years later, OU demands a network, expansion and a championship game and expects you to fork out even more money to make it happen or they're going to walk - not to the SEC where you would still own their content, but to the B1G where you wouldn't, thus setting off a chain of events that could send Texas to the Pac and leave you owning the content of a seriously devalued conference.
Then you begin to suspect, OU isn't really that gung ho on expansion. They just resent the LHN.
So what are you going to do if you're ESPN?
Pay at least $50 million more per year so the Big 12 can expand (and possibly alienate Texas in the process)?
Or pay OU an extra $5 million per year for tier 3 content so they can feel better about themselves, the Big 12, Texas and the LHN?
Honestly, I don't see what's so hard to understand.
I dont like it, UConn fans can't like it but does it not make sense?