This is old thinking. If we wanted to go independent as recently as two decades ago, we could have. But now independence won't be an option if a team wants to be part of the larger opportunity to compete for a national championship. This is not about ND, it's about $$. And the larger group of teams (us, the other two in the Final Four, and others) see this ND payment disparity issue for what it is, a problem (not just with ND, but others) that will only get more pronounced under the current system.
What I've described is just the next natural progression. It's looking forward, not backward. Same reason we moved to the SEC. It was to make more $$ collectively. The playoff's experiment is working to generate more $$ and buzz, as most expected. It took a lot of compromise to get there, some of that compromise is obvious today, like making the Cotton Bowl and other bowls playoff games. Some of it less obvious, like the deals made to get alignment of the schools.
Now that this has been seen the potency of this experiment, the schools will want more and sooner, rather than later. Part of that will be driven by concerns of blue blood teams that need to compete against ND for talent (players, coaches, administrators) being concerned about payouts like this year's. And part of the next round of compromise to make more $$ will be for there to be no "independent" teams and no conferences as we know them historically. Just one big league, with all teams earning the same rewards for achieving the same post season success.