I miss the rivalries and getting to know players within the conference. It’s definitely more fun to watch your conference rivals’ games every Saturday to see how the conference race turns out. Not having that really diminishes my enjoyment of being a BYU fan, especially after the 3rd loss in September.
But overall independence lets us watch a LOT more games and provides a better opportunity to get into a P5 conference. Even if that opportunity is remote.
Those two factors outweigh the fun of conference affiliation, although not by a whole lot, at least for me.