Academic/research non-starters.

But I'm not so sure he is. I find it really hard to believe that the athletic conference has anything to do with the research dollars. Correlation does not equal causation.

If athletic conf affiliation stature has so much to do with research dollars, then how do you explain the Ivy League? You don't. In fact, other studies have shown virtually no link between a school's academic results (can't remember what they measured, may have been partly incoming student profiles) and sports league. This makes sense because top flight researchers and govt agencies that dole out dollars are not conflating the two, and neither are top high school students. They don't care about the sports, why would they think that an NCAA tourney run in bball has anything to do with organic chemistry in amoebas?

He's also conveniently ignoring the fact that the LA schools left... why? It wasn't research dollars governing that decision, we know that much. If that's what it was about, they certainly would have stayed.