First of all... Hi, welcome to the board.

Second of all, I couldn't agree more. We (my brothers and I) take these schedules as a chance to get out and see the country together. BYU is playing in so many unique places and venues that are only available to us because of independence. Nebraska, Michigan State, Notre Dame, Wisconsin, Mississippi St... All places that we likely (with the exception of Notre Dame) wouldn't visit unless if by complete chance, but we've been able to visit all of them in just the last 4 seasons.

To go back to the MWC or a G5 conference anywhere would be a death wish for our program. We would be admitting that we couldn't cut it as a big name program, and we wouldn't be taken as a strong opponent for other teams/conferences (remember that the SEC, B10, ACC consider us a "P5" caliber football team when it comes to scheduling out of conference games...). We would fall even further into irrelevance, and that's not even to mention the loss of revenue we'd take by negating our contract with ESPN and BYUtv.

Those that argue we need to get back into a conference are just trying to relive the "glory days of old", which we millennials have only heard about in lore and legend. We've had some good times as a generation... Sark (Cotton Bowl is my first solid BYU football memory), Beck, Hall, Jimmer, even Taysom when healthy, but let's be honest... with the way that college football is (pretty much a 4 year workers contract where some have to pay to work, others get paid in free "education"), it's a semi-pro league where only the heavy hitters have a chance at anything (Bama, Ohio State, USC, Texas, Clemson, FSU, Notre Dame) with some occasional outliers creeping in and surprising folks (Oregon, Oklahoma, Michigan State, Washington, any team in the SEC). It's controlled by $$$ and A LOT OF $$$$$$$$ (seriously... have you been to Bama's stadium? Good grief!), and that power isn't going away anytime soon.

We need to realize that we'll never be the BYU of old ever again, and especially if we go back to a G5 conference. We may shake it up every now and then, and we may be one of those interesting teams once a decade or so, but if we're truly honest with ourselves, I think we all know that we've been pigeonholed as a team that was once good and has some really cool history, but has gone the way of the SMUs, Colorados, and Syracuses of the world.