In a conference you can lose potentially once or even twice and still have access to the playoff or a bigger bowl, if you lose once as an independent odds are you are out. There might be a chance at a bigger bowl with 1 loss, but the odds would be against it, and you would not have a chance at the playoff.
We would make more money in the conference, and the TV access would probably be pretty similar.
It also puts us in a better position to not be left out from any future conference changes.