http://www.forgotten5.com/2017/08/28/th … never-was/
This story gets told a lot, especially around here, but this retelling is particularly heavy on the details of what might have been:
One more thing that would look different today is the gap in athletic budgets for some of these teams. You can look at a team like Southern Miss and see they have one of the smallest athletic budgets in the country around $20 Million annually. That’s pocket change compared to the budgets of schools in the Power-5, especially when you factor in how much money they receive from their television contracts. Had Southern Miss been a part of this super conference for the last two decades, and competed at the highest level of college athletics, you can bet that the budget would be much higher.