Look if you are always the nice guy and people know they can walk on you and disrespect you with no blowback or defense, they will. It works with CFB also. I think if Tom were to really get angry, share the truth, and show what morons UW and the P12 are being in this situation, then the media would turn on the P12 for this and we would have more power.
Unrelated, BYU being pansies with Notre Dame and others doesn't help. Tom seems to go into negotiations as the weak nice player when scheduling instead of leveraging ESPN. Back in 2011 with the BIG12 opportunity to join, I wish we would have gone in a little weaker.
Also, if we are going to keep signing TV contracts with ESPN, we need to demand more help and positioning from them to have more teams legit count as as P5 worthy. Tom seemed to only be interested in renewing with ESPN and not interested in other media offers. I think he missed a golden opportunity to at least leverage for a lot bigger contract from ESPN when he seemed not interested in Netflix, Amazon etc. I think he could have really offered Netflix/amazon etc, live streaming football where conferences wouldn't. I think it would have turned into tons of money. I understand there are reasons to keep ESPN at a worse payout. I just think Tom is a nice guy, but a weak cheese negotiator.