Conference affiliation is not unimportant, but I think it's clouding everyone's thoughts too much nowadays. This article was fair in it's discussion of conference affiliation, but our interest as fans in the program shouldn't be dominated by this. USF just needs to be worried about winning the games it plays and the rest will take care of itself. Better conference affiliation could help us with recruiting, but it's not the end all. If we were moving up from 1-AA, I'd be more worried about our recruiting position, but our place in the state right now is good enough to attract whatever recruits we'll need.
All this conference affiliation talk is mostly high school-type drama and politics. I'd rather be the guy who goes about his business and isn't worried about being "popular" with the other conferences. In the end, he'll be a great success. I think Boise State has been the best example of this in recent history. Granted, they're playing the conference game too, but if I were a Boise fan, I'd be happy with the coaching and program rising based on success on the field.
Again, I understand that conference affiliation isn't irrelevant, but I'm not going to sweat over what we can't control or make too big a deal of it. What we can control is winning the games on our schedule, and I think we have the coach to do that.