Utah’s just too scared to play us again

That said, it is a pretty unreasonable expectation for BYU to not only make themselves attractive to a P5 conference, but somehow be able to get another G5 school to “get their act together” so they are an attractive pair for a P5 conference.

To be clear, I’m not suggesting they pour money into another school. But I am suggesting that if they’re serious about joining a power-5 conference it might be in their best interest to look over SDSU, Boise St, UNLV, Nevada, Colorado State, Air Force, Navy, Cincinnati, UConn, USF, UCF (the previous 5 only really make sense if the Big 12 is the goal), SMU, Houston (the previous 2 only really make sense if the Pac 12 is the goal), or whoever else they think has potential, and join forces to make a coordinated effort and campaign to do whatever it would take to convince the conferences to add them. It’s just a simple fact that at least one of the major hurdles they are facing is that most of the other candidates don’t look that appealing and an odd number of teams is a non-starter at this point.

Hawaii?? Uhhh, what? Hawaii might… MIGHT be an option if they were trying to join the Pac 12. (Though, still, kind of a long shot). But I mean, Big 12 teams COULD be scheduling Hawaii now if they wanted to be. Hawaii seems pretty open to playing whoever, especially if they’ll give the a game on the islands. But of the current Big 12 members, 6 teams have played 8 games total all-time against the Warriors, and two of those games where when TCU was in the same conference as them and had to play them. Adding Hawaii would basically be trolling the heck out of West Virginia. Adding BYU is pushing it, considering you didn’t take Louisville or any other schools to help make WVU travel a little less crazy, but at least BYU has a history and a program strength that would make it understandable. Hawaii is actually one of the schools that’s considering dropping football as a sport. They aren’t a program at the peak of the group-of-5 conferences and saying they’re far away would be impossible not to take sarcastically. They wouldn’t be an attempt to deliver a major population center like the runner-ups when it comes to far away schools like San Diego State, UCF, or UConn might be able to. Look, I understand having an affection for Hawaii, and it’d be great to see something happen to help reinvigorate their program. I definitely don’t like to see them down. But the Power 5 conferences aren’t very likely to add a team that needs saving. They’re going to add teams that are almost doing as well as a Power-5 team already.

As a UT student I was considering going to a game when we were scheduled to play at Hawaii sometime around 2000. UT canceled the game. They cited travel issues and expense. I’m sure there were other reasons including turn around time for the next game and such, but look… they were scheduled to play there once (and for the second time in program history) and they cancelled it. Notre Dame did it a time or two as well.

Your thoughts on “football only additions” seem fairly sound (though I don’t know that BYU wouldn’t want to get their basketball program into a major conference). The FCS thing… meh, might work for other schools, but I know Texas scheduled exactly 1 in their history and the alumni and ticket holders went nuts. The AD promised it wouldn’t happen again. The “Hawaii every other year” thing sounds appealing in theory, certainly but like I said above, it doesn’t always end up being as appealing to the schools when they have the chance to do it.

Well, if you are suggesting that BYU join the Big 12 as a full (football only) member, that is probably a reasonable idea, but as I said above, no power-5 conference is likely to go with an odd number of teams. This is especially true with the Big 12 since only adding BYU doesn’t get them to 12 members and a championship game, which one would assume would be part of why they might consider adding members. So, like I expressed above, BYU should be concerned with who the 12th team would be if they truly want to be #11. And they have to keep in mind that the program has to be attractive enough to either convince the 10 teams to further divide up the same pot of TV money, or attractive enough to convince the TV networks to renegotiate their contracts due to added value.

If you’re suggesting that they go for some kind of agreement like Notre Dame, well, there are some differences between the situations. First, Notre Dame came to the ACC because they needed a place to stash their extra sports. If not for that, Notre Dame probably wouldn’t have agreed to it. BYU is in a different position where that is concerned. I think they’d probably love to get their basketball team into a major conference, but as you pointed out, it’s a perfectly viable option for them to keep their other sports in a smaller conference, and that avoids some scheduling issues. Also, the Big 12 only currently has 3 football OOC games a season per team in the current format. While I strongly advocate that Big 12 teams beef up their schedules, some schools may actually see playing BYU as one of their 3 games every other year (or 2 of every 4 years depending on how you format it) as quite a bit more restrictive than what ACC teams are doing (since they get 4 OOC games and end up playing Notre Dame less frequently). I’d argue that, if most Big 12 teams were to call BYU to schedule a series, that BYU needs enough games that they’d gladly just sign them up without any type of conference agreement, especially if it were a 1 for 1 home/home type series. So I guess I don’t see why it’d be urgent to lock them in to a conference-wide agreement. (Plus, with their rivalry with Utah, and future series coming up with UCLA, Arizona, Utah, Cal, Washington, USC, Washington State, Arizona State, and Stanford, it looks like they have a pretty good scheduling relationship with the Pac 12 already… if they’re just going to have a scheduling agreement rather than a membership).