LUconn wrote: It's certainly not an ideal situation and that's basically where the discussion should be. Not whether or not it is right for us to take legal action, but whether or not BEING indy is even survivable. Long term, I don't think it is, but the strategy is to be better positioned for the next game of FBS musical chairs in the short term. It's a high risk/reward move.
Since we can agree to disagree on how we're perceived in the athletic community, I'll tackle this part.
The strategy of going indy is based around the idea that there will be more musical chairs in the future. Where does that come from? If the NCAA rules that 10-team leagues can have a championship game, the Big XII will stay at ten. The Sun Belt will boot NMSU and Idaho when their contracts are up. That would leave Idaho, BYU, NMSU, UMass, Army, and Liberty as FBS Independents hoping for a spot at the table. It doesn't take into account JMU, Jacksonville State, EKU, NDSU, and Montana as possibilities to fill those spots as well.
The issue then becomes that the leagues are stable. Unless the P5 tries to form the super conferences of 16-teams, there's nowhere to go. There's the chance of the NCAA allowing those independents to form their own conference, but even then, is being in a nationwide league in football while our other sports flounder really the place we want our school to be in? Not only that, but that conference would take years before they could even get a bowl game tie in. We're looking at 5-10 years at best before a postseason is even in play.
We'd do all of this on the off chance we could convince 8-10 public school presidents to allow us into their league?