Nice thinking Pete, but its actually worse than you envision. News Limited and the Storm would have been left to payout the full contracts (overs and all) as its obligations to the players. NRL players are non assignable without the player's consent, that is why clubs are unable to freely trade players like you see in MLB where a players turns up to find that this week they're playing for a club in another city miles away.
The obligation on contractors to mitigate losses does not extend to moving cities and states. Soooooo,
the big 4 (or the big 3) could have agreed to all play for Brisbane or the Titans - all on minimum pay salary contracts, while the Storm had to pay their full contract minus the minimum. This then leaves the new club in an even better squad and legal cap position than the Storm who were cheating over the cap,
This is a scenario the NRL could not reasonably let happen for the sake of its fans.
In terms of fans' resentment of the rort, the NRL did well to get the big 4 down to 3 in the face of restraint of trade restrictions.