As far as ease of expansion, I'll concede that it's hard to quantify independence vs AAC.

On the one hand, we'd have the opportunity to prove on the field that we're the best choice. Making it much harder to select a lesser AAC team for expansion.

On the other hand, any and all entanglements do present hurdles (though the money difference is big enough that I can't imagine they're insurmountable).

Bottom line though is that by joining the AAC, we'd certainly be no worse off than our competition for expansion (since they're all also AAC). If you believe that UCF, Cincy, Memphis, Houston are inherently better options, then maybe we do need independence to swing it our way. That would help in a case where the Big 12 prefers them, but doesn't want to deal with conference buyouts.

I don't think BYU is inherently worse than those schools though, and there's no way the Big 12 expands without taking at least one from the AAC anyway, so it'll clearly be feasible at that time to move from the AAC