Eventually there will two or three super conferences that are going to conspire to cut out the St. Peters and Loyola Chicagos of college sports landscape for rea$on$. I hope the college basketball selection committee puts a cap on how many at large bids can come from one conference. "Oh neat, you created a 20 team conference with the intent to ruin the sport for everyone. Wonderful, you get only five bids. Enjoy the NIT, douchebags."
For what it's worth, I don't think the major conferences are naive enough to misunderstand the NCAA Tournament's appeal as an event. They'll make sure to preserve the underdog component -- it's a huge money maker, and they know it.
What they're optimizing for is football revenue and regular season basketball TV revenue. And it's a wise business choice. Live TV is a dying medium and ad dollars are being poured into sports. If you're the Big 10 and you can add the second largest media market into your negotiations, you should.