Our options up to this point have been:

1) Stay in the MWC with its crappy bowls
2) Go to the Big East with its likely crappy bowls
3) Try to negotiate our own bowl arrangements (which are likely to be no worse than what we had with the MWC).

The only way it's a gamble is if we turn down something better than our current position. In my opinion, BYU has yet to have an option that is better than independence. If we turned down the Big XII thinking we could fare better as an independent, that would be both a gamble and stupid.