The way he was talking, I think they may feel that if it costs them a couple hundred million or more, so what - they'd be down that much from the lost revenue (in comparison to B1G or SEC) anyways. So get a spot in a different conference, leave knowing you'll come out even over the course of the time you had left in the GOR, and then sue or see if the ACC totally crumbles so you don't have to pay anyway.
It is not true; it's just something that sounds right to people online. Grants aren't awarded for athletic association (and that's the only association that is being discussed here), and playing football against another school doesn't make a researcher suddenly realize there are people at Stanford working on similar projects and thus a collaboration could be born (any decent researcher already knows of EVERYONE in their field).
FWIW, I'm a college professor who spent a combined 7 years at Stanford and Cal.
Being in the same athletic conference as Stanford (or whoever) does not bring grant funding/ research upgrades/ etc. Any ASU researchers working on projects that overlap with Stanford researchers are building those collaborations regardless of athletics, and vice versa. Hell most researchers don't even know what athletic conference their school is in. This internet myth of "being in the same conference impacts academics" sounds right to people who aren't in academia, and as such it just refuses to die. It's like the old line of Ann Richards getting Baylor into the Big XII (it was Bullock).
McMurphy said in an interview that the Big XII has 4 pro-ratas from ESPN and 2 from FOX but they think they could get 4 from FOX with the right group. Which to me just means that the Big XII is looking at either UA, or a group of 3 that must include UO and UW.
My man this is just a dumb take. Hell in their press conference CU mentioned exposure/ recruiting in Houston and Ohio multiple times. But back when the four were add, taking up the most oft-discussed expansion target on PAC message boards (Houston) along with 3 other new teams in new markets absolutely stabilized the Big XII to a degree beyond what simply adding BYU and UCF alone would have done.
Adding the four is what allowed the Big XII to stick together, stabilize, and start to build momentum. I honestly have no idea how that's not abundantly obvious.
I'll miss the PAC, same as I miss the original Big XII (and the Big 8 and SWC for that matter). , the 11-team B1G, and the original SEC. Regionality is what made college football great, IMO. But oh well.