if the original Big 12 teams would have just resigned themselves to the fact they had TV markets that couldn't compete with the Big and the SEC, they could have taken a few fewer millions annually and preserved a solid athletically competitive conference
but, greed wouldn't allow this
I'll probably go to my grave believing that unequal revenue-sharing was a big part of the cancer that killed the original Big 12. And, yes, Texas, Texas A&M, Oklahoma, and Nebraska all supported it and benefitted from it.
The difference between how the Big 12 handled revenue-sharing and how the SEC handles it are part of why nobody wants to leave the SEC and why teams did want to leave the Big 12 when they got the chance. It wasn't just the money. It was the screw-your-neighbor mentality that the money represented.
The SEC wasn't the monster that it is now in the early '00s. There were several very good conferences and the Big 12 was one of them, maybe
the best, with national championships in '97, '00, and '05, and appearances in the NC game in '01, '03, '04, and '09. But the Big 12 wasn't built for the long haul.
I'll bet that if the Big 12 gets new members and survives as an almost-P4 conference it will maintain unequal revenue sharing, setting the stage for further breakups down the road.
As for the complaints from oSu and Tech about the probable OU/UT departure, they have no grounds for complaint. Both of those schools were ready to go to the Pac back in 2010-ish, leaving the other Big 12 schools in the lurch.