The Pac-10 and Independent talk

I have heard multiple times on a local sports station KFAN about BYU going independent and Utah joining the Pac-10. The host is back in the area after being in Seattle and realized that nothing either school did would get any national attention except for one maybe two weeks a year, just look at this past week when BYU went to the Rose Bowl to play UCLA. As for Utah it will be the Louisville game. This all comes back to the TV deal.

For the BYU situation there have been rumblings from others at KFAN and even some discussion at Cougar Legion. The host on the show mentioned that BYU does have the national following which is from the religion affiliation. The main focus was based on technology, because I believe as well that eventually you can see any game on your wi-fi hand held device. BYU could create the Cougar Sports Network or something like that and have the games online, sell rights to local network most likely KSL, and broker any deal with TV nationally and even with satellite radio for max coverage. Scheduling would allow BYU to play better opponents that have national interest. Another point he made which referred to both teams is the type of facilities which are top notch.

For Utah the Pac-10 seems logical, because with the sports such as minor sports in gymnastics and volleyball . Overall the athletics are a good fit, football has been good recently and men's hoops which are the money makers have history. Two main roadblocks are first 2 teams would need to be added and the other is the fact the Commissioner is old minded and doesn't see the reasonig for a title game in football. Plus, for this to work Utah would need a second team that is a research university, similar graduate programs, and of course competitive athletics. This school most likely would need to be a state school for the research part of this. A few schools that come to mind would be Boise State, Fresno State, Nevada, Colorado (this would cause major shifts), and maybe Colorado State. The Pac-10 i snobbish about everything, and Utah is small time now but have the potential to bust out, but both of these programs need to move out of this conference to be able to see how good they really could be.