The BYU Cougars and Hawaii Warriors have signed an agreement to play football almost every year through 2020, StarAdvertiser.com has reported.
Specific dates and locations were not discussed which shows that the contract will be fluid as the years progress. BYU, which plays its first season as an FBS Independent in 2011, needs some regular opponents to fill out their future schedules. 2011 will be the final season for Hawaii in the WAC before they join the Mountain West in 2012.
BYU leads the overall series against Hawaii 19-8. In their last meeting in 2002, the Cougars beat the Warriors 35-32 in Provo.
Last week, BYU fan site DeepShadesOfBlue.com reported that several big name opponents were lining up to schedule the Cougars. Reportedly in the works are 3-game sets with Nebraska, Wisconsin and possibly Penn State. UCLA and USC are among the schools rumored for a series of two games.
We have some additional BYU scheduling information to pass along. Keep in mind that these are only rumors unless or until officially announced:
- BYU will travel to Arizona State to kick off the 2013 season on Friday night on ESPN
- BYU will play Penn State in 2014 at FedEx Field in Landover, MD
- Starting in 2015, BYU will play Syracuse home-home-neutral (Meadowlands Stadium)
- The neutral game in the Nebraska series will be in Denver, CO
- BYU will play Ohio State home-home-neutral (Dallas, TX)
If even half of these rumors are true, then the future schedule for BYU will be a thing of beauty.
Only if BYU fans hate home games. Hard to maintain a schedule when every series has more games outside of Provo than in it.
We certainly don’t hate home games, but would rather our team play a good schedule than a bad one. If this is what it takes to get the teams to play us, fine. At least most of these teams are agreeing to come to provo once in 3 meetings. Plus, BYU has a decent fan base (not huge, but probably larger than half of the “bcs” teams) that is spread out across the nation. BYU will have a good turnout to all of these away and neutral games. These games are great to the BYU fans that live close to these game sites.
I don’t see how these games are any different for BYU than they are the opponent. A neutral site game in Denver or Dallas is just that – Neutral. 1 game @ Ohio State, 1 game in Provo and one game in Dallas isn’t a 2 for 1. This is exactly how Notre Dame schedules. The Neutral game counts as an away game for both teams and they still schedule 6 or 7 home games.
Ouch. A lot of 2-1 and road games in there
I Understand that BYU wants to schedule these high profile games but how many do the football program think they will win. It’s too far to tell at this junction but I will say that becoming an independent will not do them any favors in the long run and will impact recruiting and BCS chances in the future..It was hard enough selling a recruit to come to a mormon university with strict guildlines and year long missions but now U break away from a conference and try to sell yourself with high profile games that u have a 50% percent or less chance of winning..BYU is not Notre Dame.Utah is already signing the best recruits in the state and are in a BCS conference (PAC-12).Their is no guarentee that BYU is promised a spot in the BCS if they run the table.The TV Contract With ESPN Family Of Networks is a plus though.I understand that the athletic director thinks is a genius move but He Will learn in the upcoming years that “U Have to be carful what u wish for”.Maybe Not in 2011 but The future holds all the answers on whether BYU’s Independence will be a success or failure!
The mission is two years long for LDS players only. Non-LDS who play for BYU don’t have that requirement (as they are not church members.) And it’s not “really” a requirement, a good percentage of LDS players want to go on a Mission and BYU accommodates that desire.
Well said Omaha!
The BYU admin’s attitude towards ‘home vs away’ is very different than most NCAA schools. Because of the terrible TV exposure problems caused by ‘the mtn’ over the past decade, BYU is hyper-focused on it’s national (and world-wide) exposure. A home-away-neutral contract with a high profile opponent is the best of all worlds! The home crowd is rewarded, but also the national fan base in TWO additional cities is also rewarded. Plus, the home and neutral games are virtualy guaranteed to be on ABC, ESPN or ESPN2. The away game coverage depends on the TV contract of the opponent, but is also likely to be televised by ESPN (or for example, NBC for Notre Dame games).
The emphasis Tom Holmoe gives to ‘exposure’ in every interview he does is not just lip service. BYU admin wants these games to be seen, both in person and on TV! And BYU gets all the re-broadcast rights for use on its (soon-to-be multiple) BYUtv platforms.
Critics are simply missing the boat. Home-away-neutral with ESPN providing the negotiating clout is the perfect scheduling plan for the future of BYU football.
I’m guessing that many of you have already listened to this Tome Holmoe Interview on 1280 “The Zone” by now: http://1280thezone.com/THE-GORDON-MONSON-SHOW-WITH-BYU-AD-TOM-HOLMOE/7671910?pid=49780
A lot of these rumors are blown out of the water.
This was on May 26
Says “The Internet Rumors are mainly wrong” – of which I believe they are referring to these rumors on DSOB. “Some of them are wildly wrong”
“We have some games scheduled out until 2020?
Holmoe admits that a lot of BCS teams they have been talking with have been requesting a 2 for 1 and not home and home.
“It’s not in our best interest to play BCS teams 2-for-1.”
Says if opponents are a top5-6 team than maybe it might be in BYU’s interest to play those teams 2-for-1.
He specifically says “We are not in discussions with Nebraska”.
Says they have a “list” of teams they would LIKE to play, but that they haven’t entered into conversation with many of them yet.
USC, Alabama, Michgan, Notre Dame, Ohio State, etc.
They return Holmoe’s calls, but the reply has generally been coming back as “No”.
Says that ESPN has been a help to try to get teams to play them on neutral fields. And that approach will help them open the door with big name teams that won’t go home-home yet.
Some teams are saying “Call me back in a couple years”.
In regards to discussions with the Big East, Holmoe specifically says “We’re not in discussions with anybody”.
“There’s nothing going on right now”.
Says they have an agreement with ESPN and the ACC for all other sports for 8 years and they like that contract so far.
Says any talk right now is “very very superficial”.
Says he hasn’t talked with anyone about moving to a new conference.
So he completely shut down any rumor of them having an invite from the Big East – that is unless you think Holmoe is hiding something.
So, it sounds like the rumors of great matchups with the Big 10 teams are false.
Basically Holmoe confirmed what we already know, that Independence is not an easy road and that he’s not going to try to sugar coat things where there is no sugar coating yet. Yes, ESPN has helped them, but not on the level we think they have. Yes, there will be some good matchups, but nowhere does he say that there will be a countless number of “great” matchups.
Holmoe is being humble as we all should be. There are going to be bumps in the road, and if we BYU fans aren’t ready for them because we have our darkly tinted goggles on, we’re going to get hit hard.
Obviously, Holmoe is still working hard to figure out how Independence will work in the future – which means that he doesn’t have it all figured out just yet.
Kevin (fbschedules.com) said:
We’re not sure if any of these rumors are true or not. Tried to get comment from BYU with no luck.
FBSchedules.com usually doesn’t post rumors simply because there are too many to keep track of. We posted this in correlation with what DSOB ran last week simply because it’s a hot topic this month. It was later brought to our attention that most of this info was posted on message boards, so it could all just be speculation.
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So, wait, if I understand this correctly, you are both using each other a source and then using that as a jumping off point. DSOB uses https://fbschedules.com as a source, and now https://fbschedules.com is saying they were using DSOB’s article as their source. Wow, I have to laugh at that – even as a BYU fan.
We didn’t use DSOB as a source. We received this info first week of May but chose not to post it. DSOB then posted an article which had some of the info, so we decided to post what had been sent to us.
DSOB didn’t use us as a “source” either. They were just restating what we posted.
Thanks for the clarification
Let’s understand that BYU being invited to the Big-12 is an INTERNET rumor that is much more likely to reach fruition than such a schedule of opponents.
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/700139152/A-conference-will-come-calling-for-Cougars.html
Doesn’t matter who BYU schedules in the future,all that matters is that SJSU pounds them THIS year.
Seriously,BYU will do fine as an Indy….that is how Miami and Florida State became national powers. And when the Pac 12 drops Washington State in a few years,BYU will step in nicely.
Washington State is not going anywhere. Historic and strong instate rivalry with Univ of Washington works.
Updated Rumor.
Nebraska deal is not happening, however the new word is Va Tech and Ok State are in the works.
Also a blue chip recruit that commited to Wisky but was leaning toward BYU did say in a recruiting blog he was told by coachs BYU will play wisky in 2014 and 2015.
Thanks. BYU AD Tom Holmoe shot down the Nebraska rumor specifically, but didn’t address anything else.
We just posted an article about the Wisconsin rumor from the recruit.
Play Alabama!
Not so sure Alabama would want to schedule BYU. They’ve scheduled some real powerhouses such as Kent State, North Texas, Georgia Southern, and Western Kentucky over the next two years, thus insuring the odds of out of conference victories (maybe)….
BYU played at Alabama in ’97 and lost 38-31. As I remember the the Cougars played Bama tough. IMO, they’ll be able to compete well with PAC(what is it this year 10,11,or 12?)teams, Big 10 or any of the rest. I personally would like to see them join a FBS conference, buy who really knows how all of this scheduling realignment mess is going to shake out.