The importance of them joining a P5 conference while we didn’t cannot be overstated. It made Utah, not BYU the place to be for the best Utah recruits, and even Mormon recruits from out of state. Add to it the positive feedback effect it had on making their program better, and consistently winning against us, and the gap became more and more insurmountable. IMO independence vs a G5 conference wouldn’t have mattered. BYU football would have begun to decline either way once Utah went P-5. With such a limited pool of recruits, we can’t afford to have Utah recruit as well as they do, and I don’t see this ever really changing unfortunately. This is the new normal.