Except its actually not a ‘made up thing’ and is codified into the NCAA bylaws:
NCAA adopts new Division I model giving Power 5 autonomy
And we sponsor more sports than basketball. The Big East in fact is not a ‘power’ conference- it’s a high-major in one sport and low major in everything else. Just because you and others don’t care about anything else doesn’t change that.
We just don't know the significance of P5 for basketball yet.
The NCAA has a financial reason for wanting to hold onto the tournament, and the football school have a financial reason to rip it away. For the NCAA, this is the entire reason for its existence, and it would otherwise be incredibly diminished if the tourney was taken away from them. It's possible the NCAA would cease to exist.
There's no way to know if schools outside the P5 power structure would be given an equitable seat at the table.
Given the way the P5 have treated conferences like the MWC or AAC, you could certainly see the possibility that they would try to screw over the BE. Especially once the NCAA is out of the picture and the selection committee then becomes P5 dominant.
Everything points to the P5 then slowly snuffing out conferences outside the structure either through money ($$ for coaching, $$ for facilities, TV slots) or else through certain slights (seeding, tourney berths, etc.). I'd add refereeing to that too.
The NCAA structure right now establishes a balance between all leagues. We don't know what the future holds.
