Horseshit. I literally do so almost every damn week of the season. I even watch local FCS games. Yes, I will watch a decent matchup between two teams in my region (Rocky Mountains) over some big-name matchup between teams a thousand miles away more often than not. If you'll always default to the bigger name, that's totally fine, but don't act like you have a clue what I'll watch for myself.
All of this. I enjoy the lesser-known late-night games, and as a longtime mountain time zone resident, I enjoy watching MWC teams play in a still regional league outside of the big-time limelight. I'd turn on a WSU vs Boise game anytime as the nightcap to a solid day.
For the sake of argument, a good portion of that extra AAC money will be eaten up by the ridiculous travel (UW estimated an additional $10m per year for their B1G travel).
They'll have offers from both the MWC and AAC; that's the decision. (I hope to god they take the MWC, but some sports personalities have already been suggesting they should take the AAC).
Are you literally asking what else could drive up endowments of major universities? Even though I already told you the endowment increase of those two universities is nothing out of the norm for well managed university endowments? Do you understand university financials and all that goes into them at all?
Suggesting this is correlated to the Big XII is stupid. Any decently run university will see their endowment grow at a good clip. In the same timeframe, Baylor's grew from 870 million to a little over 2 billion. Hell the AVERAGE growth among R1 schools just in fiscal 2021 was over 30%.
While I have no doubt this is true for some people I also think it's one of those things that gets overblown on the interwebs. In my 7 years at Stanford and Cal I never met anyone who didn't have great things to say about my undergrad (Baylor).
Just depends on how you're defining "better." The average Big XII team has been better, but the ACC has much greater variance, including better performance at the top end.
Dude this is a really long post to get hung up on terminology. TCU doesn't want to help elevate SMU in any way, competitively or financially. But yes, they're pussies for taking that approach.