got into a BCS game. You take as proof 10 years as independence without a special bowl game as proof that independence won't work, so I present 13 years of evidence that being in a G5 conference won't work.
It's crazy that you ignore most factors affecting BYU's success in football. We can debate all day about what would happen to recruiting if we joined a conference, but it's mostly speculation, and it would be strange to argue that winning wouldn't help recruiting. Some factors that we have data to show are likely affecting our success: 1) poor coaching, 2) Utah joining the Pac12 (you'd have to be a strange kind of blind to suggest this hasn't hurt us), 3) bad luck, 4) honor code, 5) greater pressure against religious institutions...