A less greedy UT who was willing to make a few consessions for the good of the whole. IMHO that's really it. Granted, you can blame the other schools for getting Texas-envy and bolting, but at the end of the day UT had the control to keep this thing together and they chose not to make any concessions when they could have still saved the conference. That said, I can't blame UT for trying to milk this thing for all its worth, especially since they'll likely be fine (at least financially) in the long run, but they initiated the destruction.
I think that when this conference merged with the members of the SWC (and I user merger as opposed to acquisition because it truly was a merger), all of the historical ties that other conferences seem to leverage and bank on for stability went out the window. It went from a conference held together by decades of membership and rivalry to a large business entity where each of the member schools seemed to really only care about their individual fortunes (or in the case of OU, another school), and when some schools started to thrive (OU, UT), and some started to plateau or drop off (NU, A&M), it made the decision easy to part ways because it was really about business, and none of the truly major players in the conference really had any care or concern for each other. They had formed a cartel to try and wrestle competitive control of the conference, but when a couple of the members of that cartel got too strong, the others bolted, and then the third started entertaining the option because it was really obvious as this thing evolved who really had all of the strength.
UT drove this conference to where it is now because Deloss Dodds was a fantastic AD who understood the value of Texas athletics, and used the system to squeeze every dime he could out of the situation. UT is being penalized because they were really, really good at the business side of athletics, and the rest of the schools want to flee the monster they created.
