I keep seeing a lot of things arguing that we can't go AAC because then we'd lose the massive recruiting advantage associated with being independent. Looking into it, I'm not seeing the advantage.

BYU recruiting has unequivocally gotten weaker in the Independence Era.  So let's look at the data.

2000-2010 BYU recruiting rankings average #48.4 +/- 10.2
2011-2021 BYU recruiting rankings average #69.9 +/- 9.3

Recruiting ranking is a pretty good stat to look at since it compares us directly to other teams, who are the ones we have to compete against after all.  But I know some folks don't like that idea, so let's just look at BYU's average recruit rating (the ratings of the individual recruits, not the team rankings).  https://imgur.com/Za0AoGX

And look at that!  BYU's average recruit has gotten better over the years - by an average of 0.1366 per season, nothing to sneeze at!  So recruiting is clearly (well...maybe) getting better!  But wait, how much of that is due to recruiting inflation?  Let's take a look at the ratings of the #500 recruit and the #1000 recruit over that time and see how they look.  https://imgur.com/a/Qzr8JIT

Hmm, looks like they've also been going upward, especially at the lower end.  So our recruits are getting better, but the average around us has increasing even faster.  From 2002-2010 (with the exception of 2006 which was just bad), the average BYU recruit was near the #1000 recruit rating, but with the advent of independence, that gap has widened. https://imgur.com/a/zB3CoCK

From 2002 to 2010, the average BYU recruit rated 1.02 points below the #1000 rated recruit.  From 2011-2021 that gap more than doubled to 2.65 points.

Putting it all together, BYU Recruiting has been getting worse over time, with the differential between a BYU recruit and the #1000 recruit increasing.  https://imgur.com/a/2adoFi5

Just because this happened at the same time as going independent doesn't mean independence has caused it.  There are obvious other factors that could be causing this.  What is inarguable though is that BYU's recruiting has been worse in the last 10 years than in the decade before that.  The only argument you can make is that maybe the decline would have been even worse if we hadn't gone independent. There simply isn't evidence beyond anecdotal that independence has been any sort of recruiting benefit.