...path to a NC (but admittedly it's always been difficult), incredibly difficult to continue to put a quality schedule together that doesn't put all our eggs in a September-mid-October basket, and we would very likely have an easier time recruiting if we were part of a P5.

So yeah, independence has been FAR better than being stuck in the MW conference.

But restating the biggest dings are:
1) Not having great bowl tie-ins stinks
2) Scheduling is not great: front-loaded schedule, tough to get teams to play here, and Nov's are ugly.
3) Recruiting isn't what it would be if we were part of a P5