Back when Dave Brandon was running the nation's second-largest pizza chain, the president of the University of Michigan, Mary Sue Coleman, asked him to help the Big Ten launch the first cable channel devoted exclusively to a major college conference.

Brandon, a Michigan regent at the time, was still years away from taking over the school's athletics department. But the creation of the Big Ten Network in 2007 would accomplish two things: It generated heaps of cash that would change the economics of college sports forever, while...