"You should host seminars on how to behave on opposing fan forums. Charge a pretty penny toward that Bison tailgating rig. " from Milkman 1/6/2016
What I'm reading is the media deals being offered to the PAC are not what were offered to the BXII. And the BXII got a contract clause that if they pull in existing P5 members they are PAID additional shares by their media rights holders. Nobody gets a smaller split after adding is huge for existing members.
So if you're UA or ASU and the PAC money isn't there, but is in the BXII, what do you do?
More importantly, SDSU has a lot of power right now. The PAC is interested to keep a SoCal presence. The BXII knows this also. If the BXII got the UA/ASU combo plus SDSU the PAC would be looking at ... what? Fresno? Yeesh.
The number you're quoting is $ spent already that gets transferred from Legacy Fund to General Fund 2019-2021 Biennium. The number that is more shocking for your purposes is found on the RIO page of the fund's "current" balance:
$8,476,529,257
https://www.rio.nd.gov/legacy-fund
The 800,000,000 some came from a percentage that was set up by law of the "earnings" balance can be sent to General Fund. Over time this should keep our property taxes low, not necessitate so many sales & income taxes increases, and allow them to invest in getting more things into ND to diversify it a bit from an agricultural based economy.