And I'm not advocating going back to the MWC - I know it doesn't exist any more in the same way.
My point is that people talk about independence as superior to G5 because
* It gives us more exposure... except that Central Florida, Memphis and Cincy all get more viewership and higher television ratings
* It gives us more money ... except that we only get $4.5M from ESPN (+WCC) contract, and AAC's ESPN contract is $7M/team
* It gives us stronger recruiting ... except that recruiting tanked when we went independent (compared to where we were before). It's also not ranked as highly as several AAC teams
* It gives us more big wins ... except that we won basically the same number of P5 games while in the MWC and at a much higher percentage. And that multiple AAC teams win at a higher percentage.
Utah and TCU both had a 7 or 8 year run winning 75+% of their games against P5 opponents before they got the invite. We're at 40%... The end goal is a P5 invite, and to do that we've simply got to win more (and in bigger, more meaningful NY6/playoff type games) and show out against our competition. And I firmly believe the AAC provides the best opportunity to do that.