We had all those home games lined up when we were independent for years into the future. We had out clauses in all of them, which means we didn't need to beg anybody to come to Provo for the next dozen years.
We easily could have kept enough home games to play 7 or 8 home games every year for the first decade in the B12. Why didn't we keep the easiest path to victory? Unforgivable.