But it's also closer than people here think.

Boise St athletics brought in $50M in 2020, $24.8M of that coming from football (see here or just google Boise St football revenue)

BYU athletics brought in $72M in 2020, so $22M (or 44%) more than Boise St. Even if we assume that all of that extra was from football (spoiler alert, it's not, seeing as BYU has more and better "other" programs than Boise St does), that wouldn't put BYU's money multiple times that of Boise St.

The best source I could quickly find to break things down by sport actually claims that the BYU football program only brought in $23.2M, which would actually be less than Boise St's football program.  I don't personally think that's accurate, but I think it's clear that Boise and the AAC schools are at least competitive from a $ perspective with BYU football now, even if they weren't when the decision to go independent was made.

And for me that's the key; at this point, the bowl access is worse.  The money is about the same.  The exposure is even about the same with Boise and top AAC teams on national television about as often as BYU and often drawing larger audiences.

But at the time BYU went independent, the G5 teams didn't have that bowl access, the money was substantially worse and the idea of a G5 conference having a contract with ESPN was laughable.  There's a legitimate argument now (well, two months ago) for joining the AAC or MWC (if we could get some serious concessions, more than even Boise did), but at the time, those arguments didn't exist.