I am not inclined to be vociferous in defending Penn State. I do note that Penn State could always withdraw from the NCAA and avoid (at least technically) some of the sanctions. I do hope the NCAA was careful in conducting its hearings and afforded Penn State the opportunity to try to defend itself.
At some point, however, the NCAA is going to get push back from some member schools, who may decide to form their own association, at least for some sports, although I don’t know what the NCAA is authorized to do if, say a football program left the NCAA while the same school’s basketball program elected to stay.
The university signed off on the sanctions before they were announced. They agreed that the Freeh report was more than adequate to support the allegations and that these penalties were appropriate. I imagine the university was faced with a choice - either go along with these penalties, or face much stiffer penalties that you can then fight through an appeals process.
I doubt it. (Just shooting of at the keyboard here)
Say 10 or 15 D-1 schools decide to leave. Where would they go? Would those schools have the level of competition and financial backing from the networks to make a go of it? Kind of doubt it.
It depends on what kind of TV they could negotiate.
A similar thing happened in English Soccer. The big clubs decided to tell off the FA (the English Soccer equivalent of the NCAA), and they formed The English Premier League, which is now the most lucrative professional league in all of sports.