Brigham Young has not been a very happy member of the Mountain West Conference for a number of years now. It has complained bitterly since the conference left ESPN and formed its own money losing network with its small reach and the resulting movement of the conference's football games to Versus and the CBS College Network, not exactly America's first, second or third choices to get its college football fix.
Once archrival Utah jumped ship to the Pac-10 (12) and upped its TV payout from $1.5 million to $12 million, the die was cast. BYU knew it was time to leave. But where o where could it go?
BYU decided it needed to become an independent in football because there was no logical landing spot for its programs that would be a significant upgrade from the MWC. The WAC would certainly not qualify. The Pac-10 had already said no and the Big XII showed no interest, besides who knew how long it would be around. BYU also knew it had one thing that no other college football program west of Notre Dame had: its very own network. BYU Network is in existence and carried by both satellite companies and most major cable companies. It has state of the art mobile HD equipment that would make ESPN proud and a HD studio just ready to go for those Saturday afternoon studio shows. The WAC was only too happy to welcome back BYU in all other sports since it was still smarting over the departure of Boise State. (Once BYU told the MWC it was leaving, the MWC invited Fresno State and Nevada to join; Fresno accepted and last I checked, Nevada was considering it) It all seemed almost too good to be true.
Well, we all know that when something is almost too good to be true, it's not. There are two major flaws to the Cougs' plan. One, there is no plan to get the Cougars national exposure on a network that football fans who are not Mormon are used to watching. They will need to cut a deal with ESPN or Fox to get some kind of backup exposure. Almost as important, if not more so, Notre Dame has two things, besides NBC, that make independence work for it that at least at first report don't appear to be available to BYU. ND has direct access to the BCS bowls through its special arrangement and it has other bowl access through its deal with the Big East. Scheduling will also become a chore, particularly late in the season. After all, once you get past ND, Army and Navy the ranks of the independents is depleted and everyone else is in the meat of their conference schedule. Still, it's worth a try and outside of Texas, BYU is probably one of the few schools with a built-in national appeal to at least have a reasonable shot to pull this off.
UPDATE: As of this writing, Nevada has accepted the invitation from the Mountain West and BYU is still a member, although rumored to be waiting only on approval from LDS Church officials. How the now weakened WAC will play into any decision is unknown but the WCC, which is composed of religiously affiliated (albeit not the same religion but the sensitivity is the same) schools that do not play football. The addition of BYU to Gonzaga and St. Mary's could make the conference more attractive to ESPN and increase the conference's profile resulting in better visibility on the WWLS, perhaps rising to the late game on Big Monday in at least a couple of weeks a month.
UPDATE: As of this writing, Nevada has accepted the invitation from the Mountain West and BYU is still a member, although rumored to be waiting only on approval from LDS Church officials. How the now weakened WAC will play into any decision is unknown but the WCC, which is composed of religiously affiliated (albeit not the same religion but the sensitivity is the same) schools that do not play football. The addition of BYU to Gonzaga and St. Mary's could make the conference more attractive to ESPN and increase the conference's profile resulting in better visibility on the WWLS, perhaps rising to the late game on Big Monday in at least a couple of weeks a month.
