The only thing that is consistent, in this second great migration of universities, (the first migration was in 1990-1991) and what drives all of this conference shifting, for two decades now, is pursuing the best media rights deals you can get for your intercollegiate athletics product, whether it be individually (BYU Notre Dame Texas) or as a group in a conference.
The power players are the conference commissioners and the university ceo's / presidents. THere is no regulation from a point of authority. There is no end goal.
(There could be an end goal, and regulation from point of authority, but there isn't yet - one or the other, or both ideally - the end goal to stop it all, is a true playoff format for a national champion in 1-A football so that every 1-A program has the same path to a championship)
Football rights are the primary economic force, with two strata related to conference affiliation, the first being direct revenue for sporting events through the regular season schedule, and the second, larger strata - that being the revenue around the football post season, which has created a major divide in the intercollegiate athletics world among different conferences in the past 20 years, with the evolution of the BCS since the first great migration of universities in 1990-1991.
Basketball is a long distance second to everything revenue wise with the primary value in the month of March, and only has significant value really at this point in time because of the changes in the reality television market and the explosion of value of live sports programming, but even still is a distant second.