Second, there are already non-NCAA leagues.  The NAIA is one, but the MCLA is another.  The NCAA allows schools to offer MCLA lacrosse teams when all their other sports are NCAA.  So the precedent for that already exists.

It seems like the great trick of the NCAA is to make people think that they are the ONLY ones capable of doing what they do.  And that is a monopoly.  But our own fault really, because we are the ones who buy into it.

Your own analogy about Miami football proves this point exactly.  If 10-20 of the biggest schools in the country all said, bye bye NCAA!, it would lose its power almost overnight.  People should not fear their government, the government should fear its people.  May be very similar with college sports, and we’ve just forgotten it.

Do you realize how much support schools get from the NCAA? Even the big time ones? Big schools wil never hop out of the NCAA to create their own league and decide to pay its players! Yeah ok we know, big schools have a lot of money; but that doesn’t change the fact that they are extremely frugal and would only like to spend money if they know they’re going to make money. For one, if a BCS school decides to drop out of the NCAA alliance with a single sport, i highly doubt the NCAA would let it participate in other sports. The NCAA is a tangled web of control that stretches to every collegiate sports team in the nation! They’re not some dogged organization that’ll roll over at every whim of the university. I know they took it easy on Miami football for the ponzi scheme that has taken place over the years, but when you compare the punishment that USC received for its violations, the only “just” course of action for the NCAA to follow was to give the Miami football the death penalty. But of course they wont do that because of what Miami football means to the fans, NCAA history, and (most importantly) revenue of the NCAA.
Frankly, individual school (no matter the size) will not be able to do anything to reform the NCAA. The only organization with that power is the NCAA itself. Im not saying, athletes shouldn’t get paid. Being one, i know it would be nice; but there are so many different positions you need to look at when passing down money to 18-21yr olds in college. What i am saying is that the colleges and universities’ athletics underneath the web of the NCAA dont have as much power of the NCAA as people assume.